“Wage slavery” as it is often used is a bad term that takes away from the fact that there are more total people in slavery or forced labor than ever before in the history of the world. Chattel slavery is repugnant and debases all moral people. Working a shitty job for low pay and an asshole boss sucks but is a difference in kind, not degree.

You literally just stated the opposite of what I was arguing as if it was a fact, with no argument given.

And to be clear, we are well beyond "asshole boss" or anything legal in the western world. We are considering a situation where you are treated identically to a slave except that instead of being forced to work via beatings and supplied food, you are supplied just enough money to eat - buying everything at the company store - and forced to work by "well otherwise you starve to death".

(By food I also include things like shelter and so on...)

I presented a different view, not an argument. I stated my view as fact because it is in fact how I see the world. For arguments about chattel slavey and wage Labour, the Wikipedia article does a pretty good job: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

There are people in the world who are functionally chattel slaves who happen to receive a nominal wage, but this is not what the term “wage slavery” typically refers to; that term (and perhaps your argument, though I am not sure) equivocates wage labor with chattel slavery. I and others believe the difference is vast, important, and moral.

> well otherwise you starve to death

That's why such work is a good thing, not a bad thing. It saves people from starving to death. Which is what happens periodically during famines in extremely undeveloped countries, such as most of history.