unions

We're talking about very different categories. Your post is about consumer behavior and increasing exploitation of employees by underpaying even a living wage. I'm talking about the capitalist system itself - c + v + m, where m is surplus value. That's what a capitalist gets after they invests (and returns) their capital over and above the costs. Workers, on the other hand, do not receive a fair wage (in which case the net profit would be distributed equally among productive workers, adjusted by the difficulty of reproducing labor), but only the portion necessary for them to return to the labor market again and again. I will insist once again on the need to study Capital, at least its first volume. For a better understanding, of course, you should read a textbook on dialectical materialism, but it is not absolutely necessary.