[edanm]

> You can either mandate that businesses shoulder some of the burden of providing decent living conditions, or expect the state to shoulder that burden more directly and let businesses coast on cheap labor that's dependent on welfare.

Out of curiosity (this is a slight tangent), why do you think businesses should shoulder that burden (if you do, I'm just guessing). Just as a reminder, we're not talking about mega-corp businesses like Google here, we're talking about restaurants, which I think are commonly small businesses. Why should their owners be forced to pay for employees' welfare, vs. doing the more equitable thing and spreading that payment to everyone?

[lozenge]

Err, because they're getting the benefit of the work? Why should I as a taxpayer subsidise small business owners?

[edanm]

> Err, because they're getting the benefit of the work?

That's not the situation we were talking about, really. We talked about a minimum wage, which raises the wage above what the business would normally pay. And we talked about doing that as a way to give a social net to some workers. But this effectively amounts to a business owner paying extra money, on top of what they would normally pay to get the benefit of the labor, out of their pocket, to help workers. The question is, why does it make sense for this only to be paid by them?

> Why should I as a taxpayer subsidise small business owners?

You wouldn't be subsidizing small business owners, you'd just be subsidizing workers. Which makes sense, since the stated goal was to help workers. Why should business owners be the only ones to subsidize workers, and not everyone?