When has an empire ever fallen because they were paying their workers too much?
The
Song dynasty, and the Abbasid Caliphate.
For the Song Dynasty, it was a lot of people who had cushy jobs kind of like our white-collar jobs of today, and they got destroyed by the Mongols.
For the Abbasid Caliphate, it was again a bunch of people who had research jobs, and since they had those jobs the birthrate was low in Baghdad the capital, and they got destroyed by the Mongols.
If you want a modern example of an empire that has fallen I can give you two off the top of my head. The British, and the French today. They will one day be middling powers vs great powers and will have undeserved seats at the UNSC.
The British pay their workers well in a complete package in terms of healthcare plus salary added together. Their healthcare system is the most generous of all systems relative to the anglosphere. But they underfund their military, a good portion of the youth don't have jobs and live off the government, and to top it off because they have a good life expediency their pensioners got old, and undynamic as you do when you age and voted against their best interest permanently by leaving the EU which meant British consumption, and exports went down. The US despite Trump hasn't left NATO, still trades with Canada and Mexico despite his aggressiveness at getting better deals. So permanent damage was done in the UK, but not in the US however, if you want my reasoning the US has damage over time due to imperial decline due to many things including high wages. High wages mean a US NGAD fighter platform, submarine, carrier, and tank is better designed but more expensive, and China thus has the economic advantage however if China were to invade Taiwan right now they would lose even if it's a 1v1, but by 2050 that may change.
The French similarly are too benefits heavy. Their military likes to sit in vehicles while Russian military units get out of their vehicles in Africa vs French ones even though their portion of Africa supplies France with most of their fuel for their nuclear power plants. Guess which military West Africa likes more.
Of course even without my examples, and assuming I didn't know any of this. A lot of this is just logic. Empires get complicated and complacent. Bureaucracy/rules mean less efficiency.
I will even give you a personal example. My grandmother in China who I love told me in China the bigger the city the higher the quality of healthcare for even things as simple as family physicians. That sucks right. Not necessarily. It means you get what your economic value gives you. Whereas in the US even rural areas have similar high-quality healthcare workers which means more expenses across the board, and it adds with regards to opportunity cost. China puts its healthcare savings into R&D and infrastructure, and its military increasingly puts in the consumption of healthcare. It's cold logic but there is no such thing as a free lunch.
