But for better jobs that aren't paying minimum wage, the rules don't really change anything. Most of the better jobs pay salary instead of hourly anyway, and even for the ones that don't, if you're making non-trivially more than minimum wage then you can negotiate around the restriction anyway.

Averaging $25/hour because you worked 80 hours at $25/hour is the same result as having a base pay of $20 and working 40 hours of overtime at $30. So if you were getting paid $25/hour and want more hours, you can offer to work for $20/hour, get the extra hours and still average $25, i.e. in practice you can waive the overtime premium because doing so doesn't put you under the minimum wage.

> Companies are paying below minimum wage, refusing to pay over time, requiring off clock time, etc and employees feel like they can't come forward because they can't afford any interruption in their wages because of a number of things but chief among them is if you're living paycheck to paycheck even missing one week's wages can put you in a debt spiral.

These are really just unlawful methods of avoiding the negative effects of the prohibition on choice.

There exist employers who don't do those things, so why don't those people quit and work there instead? Because their existing job has some countervailing benefit. Maybe it's less of a commute, or has more flexible hours, or the alternative job is higher stress or more dangerous. It's not legal to have you work 50 hours and pay you for 40, but when the alternative is that you lose the job because it can't actually command that hourly wage, prohibiting that choice (or the equivalent one where you get paid for all your hours but at a lower hourly wage) isn't actually helping. Because then you get stuck with the alternative where you work for 40 hours and get paid for 40 hours but spend 12 extra hours a week commuting, which might be legal but does nothing for you than to cost you an extra two hours a week and $150/month in fuel.