People are dumb. Reason Amazon can pay workers less is because those workers readily accept those jobs knowing the remainders will be made up by food stamps and other gov't subsidies. Make it more difficult to get these subsidies and Amazon will be forced to pay more.
It used to be wages went up when unemployment was low. That's not happening. I don't have as much confidence in your theory as I used to...
Bob Smith makes $10 an hour...he pays zero taxes, qualifies for food stamps to feed his fam and has a part time gig where he does contractor type work and makes an additional $200/week. He drives a Lexus and lives in a rent control apartment. If he makes $15/hour he loses the flex of food stamps and rent control and he may have to pay taxes so it actually mean he makes less in the end when he makes $15/hour.
Interesting theory, you have any support for it? With wages so stagnant I think the higher paying jobs just don't exist. Now that may be caused by employers knowing it's too easy to get government support, but I'm really not sure why wages are so stagnant.
They aren't stagnant in all fields. It is supply/demand. If you are a banker and Bank of America is paying you $150k/year, you may or may not get 2-3% raises annually. If you want a true adjustment you need a promotion OR you move to Chase and they pay you $175k. Human Resources due to economic stagnation has not had to give major adjustments but now with baby boomers close to retirement and the demand almost outpacing the supply the wage growth begins with corporations. But even for the wealthy white collar persons. If under BHO I made $245k all in and was in the 35% tax bracket, me getting $255k all in causes to go into a higher tax bracket and I lose some deductions so I am actually worse off. That has been true for a long time.
So the same applies to hourly workers. So long as they make under a certain threshold, they are better off as they qualify for EIC, food stamps, rent control, more flexibility to do under the table jobs, etc. You start increasing the wage and that goes away for them.