The reason your idea requires societal change is that it’s unlikely that companies are going to voluntarily raise their employee’s wages by such significant amounts voluntarily. Therefore, for your idea to work, companies will need to be forced to do so. The only way to force them to do so is by government intervention. If the government takes on the responsibility to force companies to pay each employee their basic living costs, that’s a significant change to US society.

Let’s look at a practical example, For example, suppose you’re the owner of a restaurant. Your employees are probably on minimum wage or close to it (which is why I chose this example). I think restaurants pay about 1/3 of their revenue in wages and have an average profit of about 5 percent.

If the government forces the restaurant to double the employees’ wages, then the restaurant becomes unprofitable and probably goes out of business. I would argue that increasing wages so much that the employees lose their jobs causes more harm than good. Although the idea of basing wage amounts on the needs of employees certainly has some merits, I don’t think it’s sustainable in a capitalist society.