Life is made up of winners and losers.
Affordability can be measured using a simple formula – and the smaller the labor compensation is in the formula, the greater the economic power of those who own land and capital. The larger the labor costs, the less the power of those who own land and capital.
Cost = Land + Labor + Capital
Affordability for labour is determined:
Labor = Cost – Land – Capital
If labor were 100% of the cost of a good or service, labor could buy everything it produced:
Labor = Cost
Every year the economic elite scheme how to make life more unaffordable: compensation must come down, and prices for rents and basic foodstuffs must go up. This helps increase profit margins.
A wage price spiral is in the interests of people paid to work if it means compensation growing faster than land or capital expenses.
The audacity of a bunch of losers to undo all the hard work to maximize the cost of land and capital and limit the cost of labour will be fought by the winners. Rises in wages mean the economic elite are losing. Losing is unacceptable.
For labor to be winning, capital and land costs must be negative. But any such business which pays more to labor than its cost goes bankrupt. This means workers can't ever win by changing their compensation, although a round of business bankruptcy during labour shortages could be good for economic dynamism.