They use the windfall to increase profits and enrich investors,
Enriched investors make more investments and/or pay more taxes.
No they pay lower rates of taxes on investment income than workers would pay on their wages. Remember Warren Buffet saying his secretary paid a higher rate of tax that he does. So raising the minimum wage also raises government revenues.
Remember Biden's oft-quoted phrase "valuing work over wealth". Less than 40% of wealthy Americans work, while 80% of the people who received government assistance in 2019, had full-time jobs. No one who has a full time job should require government assistance just to keep a roof over their head.
It's easy to use a broad brush. Hopefully we all find in reprehensible that a Wal-Mart worker would qualify for TANF or Medicaid, while the Wal-Mart heirs avoid taxes. But I've yet to hear any objection, that is not based on emotion and no facts, why there's some great economic argument against taxing - Wal-Mart profits (or Amazon or … name the corporate behemoth) or placing a miniscule penny tax on short term, large stock trades or even taxing healthcare providers - to pay for people to get healthcare whose employers don't provide it as a benefit, which the vast maj of employers offered 40-50 years ago.
Or why is it so much more expensive as measured by a % of income to go to college as it was 40-50 years ago.
I have no idea where your statistics about how many people get aid come from, and I'm not complaining, but generally these figures don't exclude "aid" like medical and education assistance. Placing taxes directly on small biz or even franchisees like Subway, can hurt employment. But even Wal-Mart said it was ok with Obamacare so long as it's competitors had to pay the same taxes.
Only the lowest entry level Wal Mart workers qualify for things like that, and it's better than having people either not work and get all benefits and work at a minimum wage ish job and get some benefits.
Government made it harder for companies to provide health care by creating minimums of coverage, and you blame the companies?
College became more expensive when loans to attend became easy to acquire, increasing the overall $$ availible. Colleges raised prices to match the increase in availible money.
It would be better if the workers received a living wage. Think of the costs of administering the income support programs - application, means testing, collection of taxes, distribution of benefits. Every $1 of benefits costs the taxpayers $1.50 in taxes. Wouldn't it be cheaper on the economy and the taxpayers, to increase the minimum wage to the same levels the workers get in benefits and have Walmart or McDonalds reduce their profits accordingly?
After all, corporations can deduct wages from their taxable income. If they give a worker a $1 per hour increase, that only costs a profitable company 78 cents, since 22 cents out of that dollar would be paid in taxes. Better for the taxpayers, the workers, and the economy, since workers will have more cash to buy consumer goods, and taxpayers will pay lower taxes,, and fewer government workers will be required to administer the programs.
Lower taxes, smaller government, increases to local economies.