Here is employment data on meat industry workers:
https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-demographic...
Here is ag farming:
http://www.ncfh.org/facts-about-agricultural-workers.html
The people you are holding up as exemplars are not the people who hold the views you're discussing.
You seem correct on that at least.
Effort has little to do with value. Utility also has little to do with value. See the diamond/water paradox for that second part.
There are certainly abuses in our society, rent seeking and outright fraud exist. But this childish rejection of capitalism that’s become trendy lately is tiresome. Capitalism is a technology that lifted billions out of poverty. Brilliant, earnest people (as well as some very evil people) tried alternatives in the last century and they failed horribly. No one has proposed plausible alternatives.
By all means we ought to couple capitalism in the private sector with a robust public sector, but to be against capitalism at this point is to be against human flourishing.
It’s not a new phenomenon, or unique to America or the west.
You can dozens of passages of the bible critical of the merchants and money makers, and many of them are arguments still echoed today.