> The salary of cleaners would rise until enough people are willing to do the job or it is more profitable to install self-cleaning toilets.

or we could pass laws to bring in temporary workers from other countries and keep the wages down.

Why do pilots and cleaners need different wages, Is there something a pilot needs to live comfortably that somehow a cleaner doesn't?

The confusion here is because you are mixing up "wage", "a living", and "lifestyle cost".

Wage is compensation for labor and follows all of the normal market rules of supply and demand.

A living relates to the amount of money needed to pay for them to live. Rent, food, etc.

"lifestyle cost" is the above plus non-necessities.

Wage has zero relation to a living, and lifestyle cost. Your wage doesn't go up just because you want to spend more money at brothels in nevada, and it doesn't go down just because you stopped needing to spend as much money on food because you got a costco membership.

Or to put it simply, the rate of your labor has zero relation to your wants and needs.

Hmm, so minimum wages don't exist and when the cost of living rises wages never adapt to accommodate it. I think these concepts are far more linked than you suggest.

>Wage is compensation for labor and follows all of the normal market rules of supply and demand. //

It only follows those rules because those able to influence it have brought in that regime -- USA has been wetting its corporate pants over the idea that the hierarchy of wages might be broken by communism for some time. (Not to say communism is good, just it amuses me how they had to demonise communists - coming over here with their egalitarianism, trying to treat everyone as a person, embodying the maxim of 'being created equal' - in order to maintain capitalism and keep the peons/proles in their place. I digress.

Wages can reflect a person's worth to the owners of a company (they're worth X, because they bring us X+Y leading to profit) ...

OR they can reflect that people are "equal before God" and that one person's time is worth the same as another.

But, my time is worth more than their's -- well great, you can benefit society all the more.

But, no-one will work unless you use greed, selfishness, subjugation of others to motivate them ... well let's just keep mass murdering each other every 50 years or so we can keep the corporate masters in the style they're accustomed too.

Adam Smith pondered this 250 years ago. His writings on the subject are still some of the best.

>Why do pilots and cleaners need different wages

supply and demand

"The last few years I cleaned toilets for a living, but I decided that sucked, so this year I'm a project lead at Google."

I'll bet there are trash collectors that earn more than commercial pilots on second tier carriers.

Wasn't that myth debunked since it essentially happened to only a bunch of guys in NY ?

I personally know a small group of second tier pilots that only get paid peanuts. Something like $40k/yr, and unlike cleaners, they're mandated by a federal agency with teeth not to take a bunch of overtime.

Here's a pretty good introduction to how labor pricing works:

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-economics/chapte...