In our Capitalist America we really do have a form of slavery in states with really low minimum wages for jobs. Talk to any minimum wage worker trying to survive off that income, it's next to impossible. They are being paid slave wages. My wife has been a minimum wage worker for decades. When I married her she was homeless. She had a full time job, but slept on the streets because she didn't make enough money to pay rent or anything. She had more debt than income. Her debt to income ratio was like at 80%.
In a way she was being paid slave wages as a fast food worker and this could be called a form of slavery that fast food joints often use on their workers to keep them working. It is exploitation at a massive scale in the USA. More states should follow California and raise wages for fast food workers, end the barbaric slave wages that seem to put so many fast food workers in a form of slaverly they can't seem to get out of. Why they even bother to show up for work if the job pays so little that it seems they are working for free and can't pay their bills?
1) General rule of economics and business is you pay what you need to keep a worker versus what it would cost to replace (with training expenses) them.
2) Your "wife" was in great need to increase her job skill range to be able to get a job that would pay more. Or move to a location where her low job skills paid what supported the local cost of living prices.
3) If an employer pays more to his/her workers than that proportion of the costs of the goods/services they provided, then the prices must be raised in order to cover expenses and keep from having the employer go bankrupt and out of business, hence ending whatever jobs they did provide. Which means they will have to raise prices to pay for costs of such. Which might result in lost revenue/income if the competition can undercut his prices and that could mean the employer's operation closing out of business and their workers out of a job.
4) I continue to find it disturbing and disappointing how ignorant the young socialist indoctrinated like your self tend to be on basic economics. If your wife's employer paid her and her co-workers more, than the p[rice of the goods/services he provided would have to have risen to keep his business from going broke~bankrupt and hence no more jobs for your wife and her co-workers.
Would you have been willing to pay $3.50 for a burger that used to cost $2.00 in order for your wife* to get paid a dollar more per hour ??? Do you think the customers of her employer would have been willing to pay the increased price or would they have gone elsewhere that offered a cheaper price ???
5) "Capitalist America", or "capitalist" any other Nation/Ethnic/Culture/Social Construct means a system that ensures costs of providing a good or service are covered and enough extra produced to provide the profit = Reward to the Provider for having provided such. (Versus having not bothered at all to do so!)
For example, you strike me as the sort who will not provide the basic, or extra of labor and expense, to provide a good or service to others that would require more out of your pocket than from theirs in return for what you provide. i.e. I doubt you would be willing to do something for others without at least covering costs if not at least making a slight profit for your efforts and expenses, and risks.
But hey! ... I'm use to seeing your sort as the hypocrites you are, expecting others to do more, above and beyond than what you yourself are willing to do, especially for your fellow humankind. Which is what makes sleaze like yourself the scum you are.