corporate profits decrease very slightly

This is the thing that people will reflexively point to, but this:

quality of life increases

This is the real issue. If quality of life increases, workers are less desperate, and are less willing to put up with their employers BS. Moreover, if other jobs are also paying a living wage, it's much easier to quit.

We have seen, over and over, that businesses are willing to spend money to exert control over workers. They'll do it even if it means a decline in profits, or even in revenue. Because at the end of the day, if you have your needs met, any money left over is just power, and power is meant to be used to control others.

Especially in this economy of runaway corporate greed, we need a meaningful ~~increase in wages~~ revolution to eliminate those corporations and the systemic rewarding of greed.

The fact that they could increase wages and still make money while improving society but don't, is why they don't deserve any more benefit of the doubt, or room to continue hoarding wealth and power as they are, because a system that craves constant growth at any cost will never stop on its own (nor provide paths for reform).

Oh jobs are replaced by machines, it just has almost nothing to do with minimum wage. Machines cost pennies on the dollar for production value compared to humans. The human wage is pretty meaningless at that point, even forced labor is less profitable.

But, the line must go up…

Yep.

Give a rich man a dollar and all you've done societally is remove a dollar from the economy. If you instead make him give that money to his employees things change, but cause poor people actually need money and will spend it.

You give a poor person that dollar through increased minimum wage and they spend it at a business. That business now makes more money, which is passed on to its employees through the increased minimum wage, and they spend that dollar again.

And again.

And again.

That dollar you took from the rich and gave to the poor drove a lot more than a dollar's economic activity.

OH - and it's also taxed every time it changes hands, so it also brings in more than its initial value in tax revenue.

The only reason the wealthy don't like this is because ~~their~~ our money passes through the hands of the unclean masses instead of going directly into their offshore tax haven accounts.

Ftfy

Spokaners do not drive across the border into Coeur d’Alene for cheaper groceries or a half-price Big Mac.

I actively boycott any and all ID businesses, because of the state's shitty labor and reproductive-rights laws and its nurture of Christofascism. They can Gilead all they want but it won't be with my financial support.

More than that, California (last I checked) had the fifth largest economy in the world when comparing to entire countries.

I think they'll do just fine.

Right. The problem is, CEOs maintain that as “responsibility to their shareholders” to ensure their Q4 earnings reports prove continuous growth. So prices will inevitably increase, or overhead will be reduced to maintain those margins.

Economists are also very aware of what they choose to keep fixed and what they choose to allow as a variable. It's a science that's incredibly easy to corrupt the results in. Which is why people really need to pay attention to who it's giving the results.

I've always used it as an example of when oversimplified chalkboard economics don't match experimental reality.

Card & Kreuger has been held up by right wingers for ages as evidence to the contrary but it's a very bad study