Employees can't control their own wage increases though..but it explains why job hopping is prevalent and understandable nowadays as the only realistic way to keep up.

Increasing minimum wage would definitely increase money spent throughout the economy, but I think business owners would offset that cost by creatively reducing/stagnating pay and benefits for middle-class type roles. And the resulting extra demand (without extra supply) would prob lead to higher prices for common goods/services (even more inflation), therefore compounding the issue we are discussing now. On top of that, a big chunk of the extra minimum-wage money spent (by the employees) will end up in the pockets of the richest as they "reinvest profits back into the business". IMO this is essentially transferring wealth from the middle-class to the upper-class via extra money paid to the lower-class.

My personal favorite way for boosting wages would be a job guarantee. Hand-wavy explanation: Having the government hire people who can't find work elsewhere puts a floor on both unemployment and on the minimum that other entities have to provide in a job. More detail in this interview [0] of Pavlina Tcherneva, author of 'The Case for a Job Guarantee' by Mark Blyth (the most entertaining political economist, IMO.)

[0] https://soundcloud.com/rhodescenter/is-now-the-time-for-a-fe...