OTOH, for all lemmy harps about the minimum wage, almost no one gets paid that.

The percentage of hourly paid workers earning the prevailing federal minimum wage or less edged down from 1.3 percent in 2022 to 1.1 percent in 2023.

I don’t think 3 million people is ‘almost no one’.

And that’s only what the statutory minimum wage is currently. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be $25/hr by now. About a third of Americans make less than that.