I think this is an important point, and one that is rarely discussed. We've seen our economy shift to one where the highest paid jobs are those that are based predominantly on knowledge (doctor, lawyer, engineer, and also licensed trades like plumber, electrician, etc.). Knowledge is something anyone can attain, but some people gain knowledge easier than others... we generally refer to that ability to gain and retain knowledge as intelligence. There's a huge cliff, rather than a progression, between menial low-skilled jobs and high-skill jobs, where before there was a much more progressive increase in income. This has had numerous impacts on society, such as creating the K-shaped recovery coming out of 2020, and the vastly different outcomes for unemployment across socioeconomic lines.
Intelligence is on a bell curve, flatter for men, more rounded for women, but nonetheless has a relatively normal distribution, and the types of work that are most well-rewarded in society are shifting right-wards (towards higher IQ individuals) along that distribution. It's a simple fact that our economy is shifting in such a way that the average person no longer has the same opportunities for success that the average person had 20-30 years ago. We don't know all the reasons why someone might have higher intelligence than someone else, whether it's genetic, or a factor of their home life, or some other psychological trigger that happens in childhood. But it's a simple fact, at this point, that higher IQ people are likely to have higher earning outcomes in our current economy. It's not just that opportunity is a multiplicative factor (as others have mentioned), it's that you must have the capabilities to capitalize on an opportunity and turn it into a successful outcome.
Probably many of those minimum wage workers have the necessary intelligence to do more complex knowledge-based work that is more richly rewarded, but many of them do not, and they are being left behind as our economy changes. One of the last great jobs for people who are of average intelligence to have meaningful economic mobility is going to be eliminated by automation within the next 20-30 years (OTR trucking), and within the same time span our society will have no choice but to wrestle with the reality we've created. I think it's obvious at this point that our socioeconomic structure does not work well for everyone, but that changing it to work better for those left behind will artificially hinder technological and social advancement for all. This is one of the reasons I think UBI is likely to be the path forward for society in the future. Everyone deserves basic human dignity and the needs met to support that dignity, and our continued increases in productivity through technology make it possible to allow for that even as there is no longer meaningful work for large swathes of the population.