Your argument seems to ignore that market forces agreed that engineers were underpaid, and it was only by illegal collusion that their wages were kept to what they were.

Very true. We have the value-add potential that, on paper, would justify upward of $700,000 per year. Unfortunately, most of us are managed ineptly and so much of that value is squandered. There are plenty of ways that the surplus generated by our talents could be spent (expansion, higher salaries) but right now it's wasted on a high tolerance for mismanagement.

Who wants to hire that attitude?

Programmers can add immense value relative to the cost of employing them. There are many ways in which this surplus could be reinvested. Unfortunately, it tends to be invested in tolerance of mismanagement.

We're capable of adding value at 5x our base salary (and that's a low estimate; 20-100x is defensible) but this gives corporations an excuse to run us at ~20% efficiency.

The percentage of managers in technology/software who add more than they take away is small: maybe 5 percent. Another 15 percent or so are essentially neutral, and the other 80 percent do more damage than they add.