> Do you have anything to back up this wrong claim? It very much seems like this is a matter of perspective.

It's pretty straightforward economics, and the rest of my comment explains it, I think.

> Again this seems like perspective. The taxpayers as a group may be subsidizing themselves but the individual making enough to support themselves would be subsidizing others. So from their perspective they are paying for a company’s unwillingness or inability to pay a living wage.

The question is: where does the economic benefit of the subsidy flow? And the answer to that is primarily back to consumers, not to companies. It flows to companies primarily in the sense that it allows some companies to exist that wouldn't otherwise exist. But it's not clear exactly how making them not exist would benefit anyone.

But then this overrides a central theme to capitalism . If a business cannot turn a profit including all of its costs then it should not exist. Forcing its continued existence must be accompanied by some collective good in order to be fair to all tax payers, otherwise it just ends up being an unfair cost. For example, why should tax payers not using a hobby store subsidize hobby store employees? It removes efficiency.

Right, but arbitrarily declaring that a specific wage level is the true one does not make something a cost to the business. We, collectively, decide that people should not make less than X. That does not make each person's labor worth X in a free market, and it does not make X the 'true' cost of paying a person. If we, as a society, decide that people should make at least X, then we, as a society, should subsidize wages below X until it is X.

The gap between the free market value of someone's labor and a 'living wage' is not an externality. It is not a secret cost that businesses are shirking. It is a social obligation that we made up because we want our citizens to have a certain standard of living, and that's fine, but we should all pay that together.

Companies should pay people what their labor is worth, and we should all make up the difference together, if that's what we believe is right.

But when you start forcing wages it’s no longer a free market. Further, we only collectively decide wages by deciding what we will or won’t pay for something. And finally, you cannot escape value. If you arbitrarily say someone’s labor is worth some value, then other labor that is more valuable is still worth more. EX: Burger flipper vs Pharmacist.