If you say so. Explain why a fry cooker should be paid 50k/yr
Because they are in demand, and negotiate it.
If no one wants to cook fries then you have to do something to get people to want to cook fries. That is how a market really works.
Right now no one wants to cook fries, so the cost of cooking fries must increase.
The question really comes down to the economic value the worker provides.
Economic value is a very slippery concept. The economic value of a glass of water is negligible in the rain, and extreme in a desert.
Taking the fry cook, if all that person can do is cook fries, then their economic value is pretty low.
Unless your business is selling cooked fries. McDonalds would not stay in business long if they can't sell cooked foods.
McD's for example, could evaluate their pricing model and based on food, labor and overhead costs, determine that the economic value of a fry cook is $10/hr. Then it is up to the worker to decide if that is a fair wage for their labor or not. If it is not, then the worker can do several things to increase their economic value. Education, vocational training, etc... If they choose not to increase their economic value, well they have made their choice.
That argument is flat out wrong. One of the major things the worker can do is not work at McDonalds and wait for McDonalds to 'reevaluate' the economic value of a cook. The value of that cook is directly proportional to the scarcity of the cook, and overhead cost is almost irrelevant. Just looks at the CEO of McDonalds, who made 10.8 million. Is he really have an 'economic value' that high based on his labor? No, he has an economic value that high based on his rarity (and even that I question.)
Your 'get educated' argument is flat out silly, as it would be self defeating. If the vast majority of cooks went out and got Masters degrees then then the majority of cooks would just be vastly overeducated. Because we would still need fry cooks. The argument you are making is that the labor pool is infinite and so it does not matter what individuals do, but we are actually arguing about a case where the labor pool has dried up, and still we get this silly argument because apparently you are so indoctrinated that you just regurgitate the words you have been told to think without ever processing what they mean.