I think your examples aren’t as “normal” as you think.

Yes one can gain experience but unless it’s experience to rise above your position it shouldn’t be viewed as a benefit. One would expect of you’re working in a kitchen to learn how to cook. The situations where you’re actually gaining from your job is when you gain experience that actually advances your career. I’ve interviewed a lot of people in many varying fields and this doesn’t happen as often as one would hope.

And the compensation is not anywhere close to allowing people to move out of their situation. I’ve moved out of state before and if it wasn’t for the fact my current job at the time allowed me to move and keep the same role it would have been extremely difficult. Financially we are talking moving costs, first/last/security on a new place, starting all utilities, etc and chances are your old place won’t refund anything. In 2015 moving two of us a state over and doing it all by myself (no movers) we were still looking at a couple grand once you include rentals, gas, etc. If you’re already living paycheck to paycheck that’s not even possible. Took me over a year of saving with a good paying job to not have that kill us.

Capitalism in no way makes the worker’s life easy. We pretend like they benefit from it but that’s only as far as their boss is willing to allow it.

I don’t think that the answer is communism,

I agree. The issue is that in the US capitalism already controls our government. Take healthcare for example. Let’s say we move to a single payer system. This would mean that the government would select some entity to define the costs of all medical procedures. And who do you think the current federal leaders are going to pick? Someone who is going to look out for those groups who currently line the pockets of the politicians such as Big Pharma and Big Medicine. Rather than saying the cost of materials for an arm cast comes to $10USD they will opt for every crazy extra the hospitals charge today. The $30 arm cast will become $300 because those who make the money on medical pay the politicians to allow them to continue to make money.

Now how do we do this with business and the economy. We currently see with capitalism that only in the extremely rare cases of monopolies does the government truly come in and enforce regulations. We have laws about pollution and yet they allow for Cap and Trade rather than just forcing everyone to be good. We see labor laws that stop horrible things from happening but God forbid they pass a tax bill that says “you must spend this rebate on your employees direct paychecks.” Nope it all goes to shareholders. Our government is impotent and cannot actually help the middle class. At least not in it’s current state.