Some of the poorest people I've ever met are the hardest working. Woman my Mrs knew had three jobs and was broke. She was a dinner lady, school cleaner then went to work in B&M.
The richest people are often bottom feeders. Property flippers, speculators and the likes. The idea that the wealthy contribute more is horseshit, as was evidenced by covid, shop workers and care workers were essential, yet were and are paid pennies.
I read a thing a while ago about how the states and Western Europe were built by the protestant work ethic. Not the work ethic itself alone, but frugal lifestyles that meant people saved their money and had their own wealth.
That's exactly what our system doesn't want. It doesn't want you to have financial freedom, no matter how hard you work. It wants you treading hot coals so the fear of destitution keeps you motivated to eat shit.
Note too how poor our adult education system is. If you want to retrain for a better paid job good luck with that, unless you want to paint nails while speaking conversational Spanish.
I'm not into conspiracies but is it any surprise that after lockdown, when people saved money as they had nothing to spend it on (you couldn't get a builder in Liverpool as everyone had loads of money to spend on extensions and the likes), people were quitting jobs to pursue their dreams of, you know, happiness. The great resignation.
Then emerged a 'cost of living' crisis and now all same said people are broke again and fearing for the future.
* strokes chin.
So in the context of minimum wages it doesn't matter. Any rises barely touch the sides anyway and it's largely performance art.
The issue is the fundamental stricture of our society and how wealth flows (doesn't flow) through it. The destructive evidence is around us for all to see. And that's not going to change until we hit rock bottom, which I fear we're not far off.