> increasing wages does not increase quality of life
That's a whopper of a statement. What are you basing that on? As someone whose increased wages allowed for home ownership and breathing room for emergencies, this seems intuitively incorrect, but we don't have to rely on intuition: there are solid studies that found the same, as well as pointing out the broader societal impacts of wealth inequality related to low wages, e.g. https://healtheconomicsreview.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
Thats not what I mean... I mean from a macro level increasing wages through something like a minimum wage. When you increase minimum wage, the new minimum wage becomes the new low wage and the quality of life goes back to where it was before through inflation.
edit: should be standard of living instead of quality of life.
I completely disagree that higher wages does not increase quality of life. Especially when we are discussing minimum wage workers. Certainly there is a threshold at which the increments have a diminishing effect. But minimum wage workers are still roughly around 50 thousand dollars a year away from that point.
When you are making minimum wage, every dollar counts in relieving the stress of simply trying to exist.
edit: I thought you said didn't. My point is that wages are correlated with inflation, and increasing wages does not increase quality of life.