You could do either. Real world economics and history, however, suggests you would do neither, because the incentives of the labor market mean you can get adequate work for far below the cost of a living wage, and you didn't get rich by throwing good money after bad, so to speak.
Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and still be the richest man in the world. He could also afford to pay every employee far more in wages than he does, and Amazon would still make money hand over fist. As companies go, Amazon is one of the more laissez-faire, so it's not as if he wants to, but his hands are tied by overburdensome regulations. He doesn't, because why should he? Why not spend a few million dollars on a ten-thousand year clock instead?
Many people living in low income housing are already employed, and the market has already decided the value of their labor is worth just enough to scrape by with government assistance, and no more. Depending on the free market or the magnanimous (and mostly nonexistent) charity of the capital class to lift up the poor doesn't work.
> You could do either. Real world economics and history, however, suggests you would do neither...
You digress.
> Jeff Bezos could give every Amazon employee $100,000 and still be the richest man in the world.
Jeff Bezos doesn't have that much cash. I guess he could award that much in stock though. True enough.
> He could also afford to pay every employee far more in wages than he does, and Amazon would still make money hand over fist.
Wrong enough. Amazon is already spending most of its income in the areas where it employs most people. Turns out shipping cheap junk for free across the globe isn't that profitable. That business is cross-subsidized by other more profitable areas like AWS.
If Amazon were to use those remaining profits and put them into fulfillment workers' salaries, the company would be pointless from an investment perspective, the stock price would tank, the company would have trouble raising capital, and Jeff Bezos wouldn't be the richest man in the world.
It's similar for other companies like Wal-Mart that work on razor thin margins but employ a lot of people. Sure, all of these people earn a low income, but at the same time they benefit from low prices.
> Many people living in low income housing are already employed, and the market has already decided the value of their labor is worth just enough to scrape by with government assistance, and no more.
Sure, but "the market" is society as a whole, not just some billionaires. Billionaires aren't forcing down their wages, it's the ordinary people consuming their labor, who only buy at the lowest price.
The least productive people are always going to be poor in relative terms. In absolute terms, the salary of an Amazon warehouse worker puts you close to the global 1%.
You may believe the narrative that all these profits go into the pockets of a few rich people, and if only those people left some of that money on the table, everybody would be way better off, and it's all capitalism's fault. It just doesn't add up. Capitalism doesn't tolerate high profit margins over an extended period of time, it drives prices down for everybody, which benefits those the most who don't have a lot of income in the first place.
