It is a vicious cycle. You want these high paying wages for working in a place that only survives by providing low prices. The same places that most of the people who get a government check frequent. Without those discount warehouse full of Chinese imports, the person who is living on a fixed income would not be able to provide for themselves and their family. in order for these places to provide the type of wages you want to see, the prices will have to increase, therefore putting a bigger burden on those in the lower income bracket, which will put a greater demand on the government to supplement their entitlements.
It is a vicous circle that is not so simple to fix. Simply "paying" these people more money wil not rememdy the situation, since the rpices go up, and their buying power will decrease.
I too would like to see corporations such as Walmart who have a huge number of people who get governmental insurance have to help supplemnt that in some form, but again I do not have a clear cut answer and neither do any of the rest of these arm chair economists on here, yourself included.
But again, like I said, asking you to define "fair tax" is as a legitimate task as asking someone to define "living wage".