I don't understand how to practically make this work.
There's a strong case to be made that a minimum wage helps people whose value approaches the minimum while hurting people above or below (e.g. $12 and $18 wages in an unlimited market both round to $15 with a minimum, while someone who only produces $7 of value is no longer employable). Similarly with cash infusions - giving people more money is inflationary.
Nobody wants to live in a world where people are trying to participate in society and failing. That's truly heartbreaking.
At the same time, naive solutions (decide a "living wage" and force people to pay it, set up and enforce rent control, give out stimulus payments) seem to have a lot of second-order effects/unintended consequences without actually solving the problems they're meant to solve.
There's a strong case to be made that a minimum wage helps people whose value approaches the minimum while hurting people above or below (e.g. $12 and $18 wages in an unlimited market both round to $15 with a minimum, while someone who only produces $7 of value is no longer employable). Similarly with cash infusions - giving people more money is inflationary.
Nobody wants to live in a world where people are trying to participate in society and failing. That's truly heartbreaking.
At the same time, naive solutions (decide a "living wage" and force people to pay it, set up and enforce rent control, give out stimulus payments) seem to have a lot of second-order effects/unintended consequences without actually solving the problems they're meant to solve.