anyone earning that wage who has a family would be entitled to a variety of benefits, working tax credits, child tax credits, council tax rebate, all of those benefits obviously come from the state via the taxpayer. and to me it looks like those who earn more pay to support those earning less and while in the case you illustrate is a small business which may go bust if it had to pay a living wage to it’s workers, many big business earn simply millions for their stakeholders leaving the government to shuffle money from peter to paul (and creaming a bit off for themselves in the process).
i’m wondering how liberatarianism would address this. i’ve read many advocate getting rid of taxes altogether and i can’t see how that would address the problem of the very many people who work but simply aren’t paid enough to live on.