Living Wages

A company sets it's prices based on what they paid to create the product and what they want as profit. A company will rarely charge less than the production cost. Even when they compete with other companies, they will still make a profit. Inflation and ridiculous markups ensure that companies make a profit.
Bartering is all but dead in this country. I can not go into a store and make them give me a product for less than what they paid to make it. They're always going to make some sort of profit. Even with discounts and coupons.
Here's what's fucked up. A company puts out a job notice. They're the ones who need the workers. Yet they're the one's who set the price of labor. Shouldn't it be the other way around? They're the customers and the product is labor. The laborer should be setting the price.
For more skilled workers this is the case. Sort of. The Employer sets a price and the prospective employee negotiates that price. If they're good, they get what they want.

I think that workers should be the lead in setting their wages and benefits, not businesses. Even with competition from other workers
Workers should look at their costs of living, look at the hours they are willing to work, look at the difficulty of the work they are willing to do, look at the costs of their education, look at their goals. They factor all this into to price they will set for their labor.
Unskilled laborers should not feel like they have no negotiating power. We found this out when Mexican labor dropped in agriculture.
In today's economy, most employers complain that the job applicants aren't qualified. This means more leverage for those who are qualified.
I hate the fact that unskilled laborers are made to think that their labor isn't valuable because some inflated sense of labor competition.

What sucks is that when businesses compete they still make a profit. When people compete, their wages drop or remain stagnant while inflation and costs of living goes up.
It leads me to believe (warning: conspiracy trip) that businesses have more solidarity than we think.
Companies do give away products for free; but not at the expense of their profits. They do it because they can afford to.

Where in the world are people taught how to put a real value on their labor?

Workers should not be settling for a minimum wage. They should be negotiating a living wage for themselves