People argue about whether superman could beat up batman. The reason why we can't have real wages is because of our monetary policy. The government mal invetment doesn't get liquidated in our current economy so you can't really argue that wage laws or regulation has anything to do with the cost of doing business. You can't have entire industries subsidizing their losses on farmers, it just can't happen without printing money, and if you are going to print money then there is no real wage because the market is distorted. Taxes absolutely have a huge affect though, and the real tax, which is the inflation tax or printing of money, everything else is mountains to molehills.