So at this point, I’d rather have better investment returns than a higher salary.
The economy can grow over time, but on any given day it's a fixed pie, and it has to be divided among workers (who are doing the labor now) and retirees (who accumulated the capital in previous decades that today's labor uses to magnify their productivity).
Everyone is feeling squeezed as individuals because of falling incomes, but the real culprit is a falling ratio of income-makers (labor) to income-takers (capital, whether retired individuals or just wealthy).
This cannot last. The ratio of labor income to capital income will eventually be restored (hopefully in a peaceful manner, but we can't rule out alternatives). The reasonable fix will be raising retirement ages, but good luck getting a sufficient raise there to restore a 10:1 ratio.
Raising salaries 10% would barely even touch cash returns to shareholders
The broader issue is that shareholders have deluded themselves into thinking that they are the end-all-be-all of a company when in fact their contribution is limited.