A 19th-century theory claimed wages are doomed to fall back to bare survival
Ferdinand Lassalle popularised the 'iron law of wages': pay workers more than subsistence and population grows until competition drags wages back down; pay them less and the workforce shrinks until scarcity pushes wages back up — so wages are pinned to bare survival either way. The idea built on Malthus's population theory and Ricardo's economics, but most economists today reject it: real wages have climbed for generations without population wiping out the gains.