As a theoretical religious communist, I have a counterpoint. An independent livable wage would be too high for many jobs and would ultimately lead to the elimination of those jobs. While that might sound good, I’ve had autistic people tell me that retail is the only thing they can do.
I feel like a lot of people should be getting paid and treated better then they are, but then there are redditors who think that fast food employees should be getting paid $30 per hour.
Hypothetically, if fast food employees had to be paid $30 per hour, the first thing that would happen is prices would go up. Then large numbers of employees would be fired. The employees who remain would be the absolute minimum necessary to do the job and they would end up extremely overworked. They would also be expected to be on call to come in at any moment during their time off and they’d likely be on an extremely strict attendance policy since not showing up could mean the restaurant has to close down.