Quote (PlasmaSnake101 @ 7 Apr 2021 11:43)
My larger point was an optimal solution is wage growth that allows for a stay at home parent, largely reducing the need for childcare.
How exactly do you enforce said wage growth? As has been pointed out many MANY times, many small and medium businesses operate on razor thin margins and cannot afford to pay higher wages. Many corporations already pay higher than minimum, and simply don't need to compete.
Part of the problem comes in when the market is labor-rich. When you have more available labor than you have jobs for them to do, there's no incentive for employers to pay more. If you attempt to enforce sudden massive mandatory wage increases, there will be corresponding price increases to cover the difference in the small-medium business world. While the Walmarts and Amazons might be able to take the overhead hit with minor or no price increases at all. AKA, suddenly everything else becomes far more expensive, while nothing has changed at Walmart/Amazon. Then, all the customers go to walmart and amazon because it's cheaper, and all the small businesses go out of business, and now Walmart, Amazon, Target, etc. will raise their prices to come more in line with the purchasing power of the lower income crowd.
In order to gain higher wages for labor, you need a job-rich market, as opposed to a labor-rich market. It's only in many employers competing for the same forms of labor that you gain incentive to pay more. Government policy to enforce higher wage standards seldom provides more jobs, but instead drives out the smaller and mid-sized competition, reducing the number of jobs, and further increasing the labor pool, without any corresponding jobs existing to soak them up. At that point, you end up with more people on public assistance, and an even more increased cry for yet more money because taxes have to be increased on those "higher wages" in order to offset the higher social program costs.
Do you start to see the problem here?