A Living Wage and Rational Material Existence

First, two tenets of rational material existence:
1. Markets exist as an expression of human social existence. They are absurd in any other context.
2. Human social existence, although bounded by scarcity including a lack of meaning, is by definition humane, concerned with human values.
This being said, no market based economy can be inhumane except as an expression of the madness of crowds. Economies can be insane. This economy of the United States is by analysis and anecdote a little mad and getting worse. There is one obvious problem that is driving this maniac market.
People working 40 hours a week who cannot afford the necessities of life is lunacy. I do not care what profit margins are cited or what competition exists, this is crazy. We knew in the late 19th century that innovation and economic dislocation go hand in hand. We knew that progress has a price. We knew that a living wage defined rational material existence.
Have we gotten so technologically delirious that we have forgotten the hard lessons so dearly earned? The numbers the market is generating are funny numbers. They are so because we have no reliable gauge of real employment, the kind where the employed person can eat, can adjust to changing conditions, can afford decent housing.
Without a humane bottom to a market based economy, that economy is inhumane, that economy is absurd, that economy is insane. Funny numbers make investors do funny things. We do not need that happening in an age of innovation. It costs too much in human capital, the very measure of an inhumane economy.
The problem of a living wage is technical. What number works? Set too high, there will be excessive interference with entrepreneurs and excessive inflation. This is a solvable problem. Increase the minimum wage gradually and watch the rate of inflation and listen to struggling entrepreneurs.
We need to relearn the difficult lessons of the introduction of the locomotive and the automobile. We need to revisit the psychological space of a human value economy and set a Living Wage.