In my very limited personal experience, it's not that hard to get a worker to come do a job on my house. It is EXTREMELY hard to get someone who actually does quality work and is reliable. You could argue that I'd get better and more reliable people if I paid them more, but the fact is, I pay them what they ask for. I have very low confidence that just offering to pay double would make a bad worker into a good one.
Consumer services aren't really the point being made upthread, it's employers looking for supervised labor who can tolerate some spread in skills.
But you can do this too: call up the elite contractors who you can't schedule because they're "too busy" and give them a big number upfront. "I need my carpets replaced, I figure this will be $30k, does that sound right?". They'll be there.
But you have to do the work to know what the right wages are. Employers already know this stuff, obviously.
If someone called me up and said, "I've got a software development contract opportunity for you in Country X, $1000/hr, job should be about 6 months." My ass would be on a plane that afternoon. So much for the shortage of software developers.
However, there's quite a lot of friction hiring unknown software developers (so I guess that's why I don't get those offers - I'm not actively hunting for them).
I used to hire temporary workers all around the country as part of my job as GM of a small travelling pro sports league.
I always found that there is some "market price" where people are decent and paying less gets you less quality and paying more tends to get you better quality.
Specific example: we needed security guards for an event in Las Vegas circa 2006.
* $150/day got us off duty professional guards who were fantastic
* $125/day got us college kids/retired folks who were pretty good
* <$100/day high school kids or people with questionable backgrounds who were usually terrible
I remember Joel Spolsky saying something like "You don't always get what you pay for but it's true enough of the time to be a useful phrase"
