[vitus]

There's definitely some aspect of hyperbole, just from the wording there: "the biggest problem is [...], but wait, there's an even bigger problem [than the biggest one]!"

Comparatives overriding superlatives aside, I don't necessarily see these two issues as at odds with each other. We are bad at assigning dollar amounts to units of work, or even the productive output of a specific individual, but in aggregate companies can know how much revenue they bring in, and how much they spend (on labor, among other things), and in order to be profitable, revenue must exceed costs by definition.

So taken in aggregate, companies are still able to exploit the gap between cost and value of labor. A highly productive individual might be significantly underpaid, but on the flip side, a less productive individual might be overpaid at the same company.