Jobs that require more skill or jobs that are more difficult have to offer more to get people to work for them. Raise the bar at the bottom and all wages will go up, otherwise workers will "demote" themselves. This is a distinct effect from prices raising and workers asking higher wages to counteract inflation (if they could do that why aren't they?).
FWIW, I think you have this exactly backward. It’s higher incomes at the top that drive higher incomes at the bottom. Low skill workers in developed countries make more because they are part of what is essentially a labor cartel: there are certain jobs which can only be performed by, e.g., an English speaking person who understands the American cultural context and who is physically located in America. And restricted immigration and language barriers prevent competition from new entrants. So as more people are pulled into high skill, high pay work, incomes for even low skilled people go up, because their competition decreases and overall wealth in the society, ie wealth available to pay for their time, increases.
"Raise the bar at the bottom and all wages will go up"
The people at the bottom might be making more, but they won't have spending power for very long because the cost of everything will go up. This cycle will just continue forever, unless the government starts fixing prices, which never leads to a good outcome.
When fast food workers wages are raised, we might see a few dollars more for meals. When you raise the wages in every other industry, it has a cascading effect. Just look at the number of jobs between products on the store shelf and how it gets there. Delivery, trucking, packing, shipping, etc. In this one example, it would raise prices 10X.
Then everyone gets to benefit, no? All developing nations have far lower wages than the west, but that's often offset by lower living costs. But try to buy something out of the international market and you'll quickly feel envy. If there is an issue with higher wages then I don't see it
Plus it doesn’t pass the smell test, there are plenty of photos online of danish mcdonalds menus going back to at least 2018, that I could find in two minutes of searching. That clearly shows a standard Big Mac meal is 60 Danish Krone. Which was 9 USD to 10 USD depending on when you pick the exchange rate in 2018.
In the US, depending on location, the same meal would have been 5.5 USD to 7 USD in 2018. Maybe a bit more in Hawaii.
Maybe there were a few places in Denmark selling it for much cheaper, and it was being compared to Hawaii prices, hence why this notion came about, but that’s a ridiculous stretch.
Jobs that require more skill or jobs that are more difficult have to offer more to get people to work for them. Raise the bar at the bottom and all wages will go up, otherwise workers will "demote" themselves. This is a distinct effect from prices raising and workers asking higher wages to counteract inflation (if they could do that why aren't they?).