- building the business
- maintaining it healthy (this can incur additional expenses at unpredictable times)
- the jobs it generates (that never mind, they are bad in your mind I suppose or they just do it to earn money! They do... but you also pick the job in the first place to make money!)
- the expenses they have to pay in case of firing someone if it does not produce.
- social security they pay and contribute for everyone (at least in the spanish system)
Do you find ethical to just ask for more money go and leave them bankrupt, without any regard of how they coud survive, when you just went pick up a position when much of that business was built? Really? I find it unethical also.
Get your best deal, with your employer, they will give you what they think they can or want, but by mutual contract. If you do not like it, go move to the next chance, it is not anyone's fault. Nothing bad into it. It is how you do in life: you choose what you drink (and what you do not!), who you join, where you go... nothing different here.
Otherwise, the logical consequence would be that we would not. I believe in win-win deals. The voluntary ones are by definition like that. You can take a bad decision, yes. But still, you get my point.
This depends on more variables, but the goal is to avoid barriers and regulations so that the wealth increases, since these break monopolies or de-facto monopolies (via absurd regulations).
But yes, that has its own set of risks. Risks that are disregarded all the time making employers the bad part of the story and employees the good ones. This is not at all like that you can find good and bad on both sides...
An employer is not bad for trying to pay you less. The reverse argument should be true also: the employee is bad because they want more (than they deserve or produce).
No part is bad, it is natural to want to maximize our outcome. It is how things are. I see many people having a problem with this thing. But they only have the problem when it is the other who tries to do that. When they do it for their own benefit then everything is fair and alright.