I think this has far less to do with poor worker sentiment for the prevailing wage than the massive and unabated increase in the cost of living, particularly housing.

Very few young people have housing security. You simply cannot live on your own anymore (and yes, I'm counting having roommates) without paying huge amounts of money in rent. There is no financial cushion to be had; at least one roommate must personally make 3x rent, or know someone who does and is willing to cosign. You must pay for an automobile and repairs, gas, insurance on top of that, Uber when your car is in for repairs, because public transit is laughably poor if it exists at all, and the cost of groceries and eating out are so high that we're starting to reduce total food consumption.

These aren't inevitable problems; they are self-inflicted political own-goals. Cities inflict insane restrictions on land, causing rents (commercial and residential) to skyrocket, and underfunding public transit, forcing everyone to spend huge amounts of money on automobiles + insurance + now high interest rate loans.

The vast majority of this problem would be solved if only we had an abundance of cheap and amenity-rich housing, as well as functional public transit. Our society is culturally much poorer, and we have far fewer artists and creatives, because the amount of work, effort, and money required to not go hungry or go out on the streets increases every year. By making housing more abundant and cheap, we can reduce the cost of living directly, since people would no longer have to pay 80% of their income in rent, and meals+groceries would be cheaper since commercial rents would go down.

Half a million Americans are homeless, largely due to the cost and scarcity of housing.

And who is served by this status quo?

There is a large voting constituency of homeowners who want to see the value of their property and the price of their rents continue to increase. Not to mention the very large constituency + lobbying arm (Oil&Gas, Auto industry) supporting the one-person:one-car model of transportation. Politicians do not want to rock this boat, not only because it would be very unpopular and cost them campaign contributions, but because the vast majority of them are well-to-do and benefit from rising housing prices. As the saying goes, it's difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary (or net worth, in this case) depends upon them not understanding it.

In California, we see this coming to a head where the state is finally stepping in (at least on housing) due to being much further along than the rest of the country in facing extreme living costs. They are slowly battling the powerful layers of vetocracy and bureaucratic cruft that has accumulated over the past 60+ years, but it is paying off. Granted, most housing being built remains automobile-dependent or exposed to noise and sound pollution due to proximity to highways, but it is progress in a state where 50 year old shit shacks sell for $1,500,000.

https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1725234349111721992

We see from Tokyo that the current state of the west is neither permanent, nor inevitable. By simply legalizing housing and mixed-use (retail) development, we can have much better and cheaper urban areas. They also have a huge high speed rail network, which makes a huge amount of land available to commuters. Highways clog and get congested during rush hour, which reduces speeds drastically. Trains run the same speed all day, every day.