> the most critical and important jobs in society are among the lowest-paid: retail and foodservice

Pay has nothing to do with how critical or important a job is. Nothing.

Pay is determined — like everything else — by supply and demand.

Nails are the most ‘critical and important’ component of a house. They are also the cheapest. Because the supply is endless. The chandelier in the entryway, on the other hand, is neither critical nor important, yet it costs a great deal more than a nail.

Nah, it's status. We have a teacher and nurse shortage in the US, they're critical professions, and they're super underpaid. Supply and demand doesn't explain the low wages.

You just described supply and demand.

If the wages are too low, you’ll have a shortage.

To remediate the shortage, wages must increase.

Yeah but step 2 of that is "wage increase" (then step 3 of that is "either school A increases wages or school B increases wages and gets all the teachers, etc.) You can't arbitrarily pick a point at which you stop making an appeal to authority to Econ 101; it's all or nothing.

The point here is, the situation should make us ask ourselves "huh, I wonder why wages aren't increasing." But I can save you some time and tell you the answer is mostly we don't think those jobs are high status enough.

Comparing people to nails is a new one! I'm not sure I find it apt, though.

>Pay has nothing to do with how critical or important a job is

Well yeah, that's the observation I was describing. The difference is that I think that's a bad thing.

>supply and demand

We aren't describing free markets, so you're going to have to fill that out a little bit to meet reality.