Min wage would be $44 / hour if it had grown at same rate as Wall Street bonuses

Yes. It's your wage that's the issue, not theirs. Feeling like you deserve more, should never be a reason to deprive others. New Zealands cost of living is extremely high, and wages need to be commensurate to allow ordinary social reproduction - marriage, children, rent, groceries.

You realise your point is moot right? The economic arguments against the minimum wage rely on the idea that it's a necessity to underpay for business to function. The less people underpaid, the less strong the argument for having to ensure a low or no minimum wage.

There are two big forces driving this divergence.

First, the last 50 years have seen a series of "one off" increases to global labor supply. Between Asia and former communist countries, American workers have been forced to compete in an environment dominated by the largest globalization of labor ever. That competition pushes wages down for anything that can be done outside our borders.

Second, as the issuer of the world's reserve currency during this period of massive globalization (while all this increased trade is creating a demand for dollars overseas), America's financial sector is involved in exporting dollars the way Norway exports oil. So Wall Street is sitting at the center of an incredible boom driven by international forces + the increased financialization that has come from having an artificially strong dollar (kind of a Dutch Disease for us, where the "sector" thats growing is the dollar-printing sector). Most dollars are printed using private debt, so Wall Street is basically the Saudi Arabia for dollars.

Given these two forces, of course Wall Street compensation was going radically outpace the minimum wage. (Not that I would/could have predicted that in 1970 if I had been alive then.)

So, McDonalds employees should not have a good salary because... It hurts your feelings? I've seen better arguments.

You are playing exactly in the game that the extremely wealthy want you to play. Being disdainful or even hateful of the teenager that flips burgers all day long, while they delegate their entire work, do nothing but lines of cocaine and jet-ski while you kill yourself working 50 hours a week (most likely for them, too), earn hundreds to thousands of times your salary, yet the shit job that is making burgers is the problem?

This is the same line of thinking that pins the country's economic performance to the stock market. Stock market performance is not a strong indicator of the country's economic performance.

Wall Street bonuses are up because Wall Street is making more money. Perhaps because Boomers have all their money saved up and invested with Wall Street banks that use it to make more money.

Businesses aren't making that much more money, and while CEO pay has exploded, there's usually only 1 CEO per company. Walmart's CEO makes $22m total compensation per year, if they made the same as their average employee you'd be able to pay each of the 1.6m US employees $14 more per year. Big whoop. The apparent value that the best CEO for the job can bring Walmart per year far exceeds $22m, but a cashier can be replaced by a machine.

What we're seeing are the effects of automation and the devaluation of replaceable workers it causes.

My recommendation? Middle managers all the way up to C-suite rent-seek when they ask people to do more without raising wages to compensate for the additional effort. Counter-rent-seeking is a totally valid, reasonable response: unionize.