Not trying to start a capitalism war, but would an Earned Income Tax Credit be a more viable alternative to higher minimum wages? I've not done the leg work, but the IRS has a lot more info to help determine who's making how much that could help make the EITC even out unequal pay.

I'm not really on top of the various policy debates, actually. What's important is not to be distracted by this idea that "life sucks, and you can't really do anything about it -- so just keep your head down and look after yourself." Being as this is not only exactly how the powers-that-be want you to see things; it's entirely integral to their strategy of keeping things the way they are.

In fact, they even have a name for this strategy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Very good point - it's a bit disheartening to see many people eschew political action in favour of self improvement.

Self improvement is fine and necessary and honorable and all, but ultimately living together in society is necessarily political.

Note also that a lot of what is taught in undergrad/MBA economics 101 distracts from that, and (even while aspiring to be value neutral) implicitly promotes a trust in markets and corporations that is naive and misguided.

James Kwak's book "Economism" is a nice antidote to that:

https://www.amazon.com/Economism-Bad-Economics-Rise-Inequali...

EITC is a sort of backdoor minimum basic income. There's a few places experimenting with basic income right now, so we'll have empirical data soon.

As consumers we could do better. Instead of just focusing on the price and features we could be also interested in how the product was produced.

I think the pressure from consumers can be even stronger force than regulation. It can act faster and it is not so susceptible to lobbying and loopholes.

Corporations maximizing profit to shareholders? Truly a headline grabbing evil.