Prices also show this. If you want to go get a couple of beers in Oslo you’ll find $10-15 to be normal in central parts of town ($10 average for the city). Nominal wages don’t say much. Purchase power does.
And yes, taxes on sugar and alcohol adds to high prices for alcohol.
The oft-repeated "$500 in savings" thing was based on the savings accounts, which most Americans don't use or don't have because they aren't useful. I don't have $500 in a savings account either, but I have much more than $500 in cash available in the case of emergency. That study is frequently misinterpreted; it measured something irrelevant to how Americans manage money.
Perhaps if we return to a system of minimal government-run healthcare with less regulation (which requires paper pushers) we can reduce healthcare expenses to something that most people can afford out of pocket.
If true, that’s a question of priorities, not resources.
The likely reason why he can earn this much with a supermarket job is because everyone else has more disposable income, which means it's easier to make products more expensive and to afford to pay higher salaries for such jobs.
I think there have been at least a few studies in the past few years that show just how important it is for an economy for everyone to have decent amounts of disposable income. It means there are more consumers who can afford more types of products = a healthier economy.
A healthier economy with more spread-out rather than consolidated companies, means the companies are also more willing to pay higher/more competitive salaries, as opposed to if only a handful of companies dominated the economy.
In the U.S., the middle-class has been drained out of disposable income. Recent reports have shown that something like 60% of the country can't afford a "$500 emergency".
That is likely due to several reasons:
1) the crazy situation with student debt that the U.S. has gotten itself into (I believe it's because the government guaranteed the loans, which made it easier for universities to keep increasing the prices, but what's important is that the situation exists and must be fixed/ended)
2) the crazy healthcare system that leaves almost everyone financially bankrupt if they have a more significant health issue, or they just can't afford to pay for full coverage. Again, U.S. is just about the only country that has this problem.
3) the rising (negotiation) power of mega-corporations, who are allowed to become ever larger, and the fact that they can outsource workers from abroad almost at will.
They have just about obliterated any negotiation power workers have in the U.S., which also means most workers get little pay and they can't hope for too many salary increases over the years (even to cover for the real inflation, not the "low" inflation the government keeps talking about but doesn't jive with how fast product prices are rising in the economy).
There are also studies showing that basically since the 70's the real salary has stayed the same and hasn't increased with productivity at all. The salaries of CEOs and the payout to shareholders on the other hand have skyrocketed.