In some countries, the minimum wage has ceased to be a baseline for entry-level pay and has become the general wage floor. This is a crucial distinction. In a healthy economy: Minimum wage = a low-productivity baseline for entry-level jobs. In a broken economy: Middle-class wages collapse, companies begin paying everyone close to the minimum wage, the premium for education erodes, and even skilled labor becomes cheap. One of EM’s key problems in recent years has been precisely this: the collapse of the mid-tier wage structure. This is why people are angry—not at each other, but at the system’s wage architecture. Yet anger often misdirects: blaming employers is risky, understanding the macro system is difficult, discussing central banks, productivity, or exchange rate regimes feels abstract, so the most visible target becomes other workers. A classic downward status struggle. In weak economies, societies begin fighting not between the rich and the poor, but among those slightly less oppressed.