Here is the basic problem as I see it.
Practically all business organizations are organized in pyramid fashion. A couple people at the top who are in charge of overall management and direction. More in the middle for administration and specific area management, and a ton at the bottom providing most of the physical work to create the products or provide the service.
Society says that as you move up the pyramid fewer and fewer people in society are capable of doing the job. As a result they are more valuable, while those at the bottom are easily replaceable because there are never enough job supply to fill demand.
While I think this is true to an extent, I also think that a larger proportion of the population can do those 'high up jobs' than society tends to think. This is due to a poor education, and training system, but is also beside the point.
All level of employees are needed for the organization to function and make a profit, but because the higher level positions are deemed harder to replace, the people in those positions are labeled as being more valuable and as such feel justified in a higher wage at the expense of those in lower value positions. Granted those who had to sacrifice money by going to college to get those skills and higher job positions should be compensated more to offset the money lost by not working and racking up student loans.
In this sense people are treated just like a product or commodity. Why pay $2 for a widget when you can get it from another organization for $1? In the same regard, why pay a person $8 for their labor when you can get it from another person for $4? The problem with this is that one is a lifeless object and the other is a living human being who needs basic things to continue living and an additional level of things to live decently.
With an economy like there is now there is great power in the hands of those who are higher up compared to lower on the job rung. Day after day it becomes easier for those people in higher positions to think "There are few who can do what I do, thus I am more valuable and deserve more money. There is a practically unlimited supply of people who can do the bottom rung work though, so I'll continually find people who will do the work for less. If they don't like it they can starve."
And so those at the top get their wages inflated, bonuses raised, etc. While other people lose their jobs or take pay cuts.
I think many people feel there is a fundamental wrongness to this. People are still people even if they are less valuable because of poorer genetics, environment growing up, or lower work effort.
Several things in society have tried to address this and to prevent the gap from rising too much. Unions, minimum wage, and earned income credits are among them. Which is the most efficient? I can't say. It does seem unfortunate though that we need to continually come up with legal systems which try to correct our failing as a species of not acting in ways which benefit the species as a whole over the individual.
