Comment by lenerdenator

It's worth noting that a lot of shares in publicly traded companies are held by retirement and pension funds.

Money paid to a shareholder is money not paid to the person doing the labor and vice-versa.

That's not to say that pension funds are the sole reason that wages haven't kept up with costs over the last 50-ish years, but it doesn't help, particularly when management/the oligarchs are compensated mainly using the same shares that those retirement and pension funds use to generate revenues for the people they cover.