Won't be able to stay in business without workers. If workers cannot live comfortably on their wages, they'll choose another job that provides those wages.
Most people earn what they can, and live off it as best they can. If that means single bedroom apartment with 10 family members eating beans and rice, then that is what it is.
People on HN tend to be out of touch with how lower income people actually live.
In my own life over the course of twenty years I went from: living in a tent with 3 others for a year, to a one bedroom apartment with a roommate in the living room, to an apartment with just my wife, to buying a house and starting a family, to then buying a house with a pool and sending my kids to decent schools.
The point is that rice and beans is temporary. As a worker, I continued to work towards better employment that provided the life I required. The vast majority of folks I knew along the way did the same. All 4 of the folks in that original tent with me are comfortably middle class nowadays.
