They can afford it if they can create something of value that you're willing to accept in return. If they can't then that is the real problem. You have to ask why they can't create enough wealth to trade for the things they want / need.
They can't because there are huge factories in China that can produce widgets cheaper than they can, because there are farmers with million dollar combine harvesters that can produce food cheaper than they can, et cetera.
We live in an industrial economy. Most people can create more value for the economy by working for somebody else and/or don't have the safety net that allows them to take the risks necessary to start their own business.
Software developers make $100+ an hour. The jobs are there for people willing to adapt to them. You can't just wait to be handed a job that matches your current abilities.
I doubt there is ANY employer demand for high-paid programmers.
The demand from an employer perspective is for highly-skilled programmers. If a proven highly-skilled programmer was willing to happily work for minimum wage employers would be lining up for miles to hire that person.
The highly-skilled workers are the ones demanding to be highly-paid.
If flipping burgers was more difficult then there would be a smaller supply of qualified workers, those workers could demand to be paid more, and the employers would have to pay up or risk getting crushed by their competition.
Or an economic choke point, depending on your point of view.
The market works best when there are more people making decisions -- it smooths the curve. If we have fewer and fewer people deciding where capital is allocated, it is going to be a big problem. Sure, people can, and are, making a very good living doling out capital in one way or another, but that is missing the point.
Everyone is making decisions about spending their capital every day so decisions are quite distributed.
I think you meant that it works better when capital is evenly distributed. I don't know if that is true but there seems to be lots of evidence that it doesn't work well when its distribution is largely determined by who can steal the most (as is the case with the current system).
>I don't know if that is true but there seems to be lots of evidence that it doesn't work well when its distribution is largely determined by who can steal the most (as is the case with the current system).
You are going to have to unpack that statement for me; you lost me there.