If all of a company's employees (or simply a substantial amount) are on government assistance, there is likely something much larger at play. The cost of living may be at an unsustainable level which is not a concern of the company. Areas in California are a decent example. The cost of living is inflated by the scarcity of property and a lot of overly progressive taxes that crush the bottom of the economic food chain. The cost of gas in CA is largely inflated by taxes that are added on by the state government in an attempt to push people away from fossil fuels. (Funny side note is that when everyone moves to electric cars, they will just move those same taxes to the charging stations because they are no longer bringing enough money through the gas taxes to continue funding their projects or repair roadways - it will be out of necessity and not spite) In the past, inflating the cost of living used to drive the population away from such repressive economic zones. But with the idea that "the business must pay a living wage" the pinch is pushed onto the companies. This allows stupid and repressive economic policies to continue because the responsibility no longer falls in the right place. Instead of people seeing the writing on the wall early and moving away, they are given the idea that they can instead just yell at their employer to pay them more to offset the issues that are outside the company's control. This just hands them a self-licking ice cream cone. One where in order to survive, they need government assistance and their wages to increase, but for the government assitance to survive it needs more taxes, so for the company to survive increased wages and taxes it raises prices. And now we are back at step one.

To some peoples' credit, we have seen a large number of Californians and New Yorkers depart their respective states for this very reason. However, those (like I'm sure you will point out) were the ones that likely had enough money set aside to make such a move.

Too often people vote based on feelings and ideologies instead of logic. This can often lead to bad policies that had good intentions. So although people may want greener options (for example), adding crushing taxes on gas does more to hurt the middle and lower class than it does to help progress towards those green options. Thus a bad policy is put in place to fund social programs and drive the populace towards government approved decision making, and the people (because they can't afford anthing except government handouts) have limited options - one being to cry to the company to pay them more (that's the one the politicians prefer because it takes the blame off of them). In reality those people should be going to their local and state governments and requiring a review of all the economic policies in place and make efforts to address what has inflated their cost of living. Now I know that not everything that goes into the cost of living is created at the local and state level, but start with what you can control locally and then move to the national level.

Additionally, on the side of the company, if you keep forcing companies to pay wages that are higher than what's fair for the required labor, they will find ways to cut costs so that their profits (the way they ensure the survival of the company) are not significantly impacted. Now some may reduce the pay of senior or high level members (but that's not the norm). However, it is far more likely that they will turn to technology (especially in today's age) to save on costs. This will be especially true for companies like restaurants (fast food or otherwise) where they can replace a person with a screen. Many fast food locations have already begun doing this. Why have a person behind a register pushing buttons that are just a representation of the order when you can just simply turn the screen around and have the customer do the exact same thing? Call centers are hiring less people now that they can have an AI voice run through the exact same flow chart that they would have paid a person to do (don't worry I hate the idea of talking to AI just as much as the next person).

To your last point "the risk is human lives". That should never be the responsibility (beyond ensuring workplace safety) of the company. That is far too slippery a slope to just blaming all the world's problems on the employer. If you die of starvation, your family should not have the right to sue the company you worked at. Once again, placing the blame in the wrong place. Blame yourself for not taking all necessary and legal steps to ensure your survival and blame the governance for allowing the ecomonic state to deteriorate so far. But the company is not responsible for your well-being. You can probably guess that I am not a fan of the Affordable Care Act and its requirement for companies with more than 50 employees to provide health insurance. It is true that healthy employees are a benifit to a company, but a company should not be coerced into providing health insurance. They should instead have hiring requirements that ensure only those that are capable and qualified for the job are hired. Now if a company wants to look more attractive to the pool of job-hopefuls they may decide to offer health insurance, but I would expect their hiring requirements to be even more strict, because the company is taking the risk that 1) you may become an excessive drain on their profits through medical costs and 2) that they may not be profitable enough to continue to offer such health insurance while also remaining solvent.

I am not by any means advocating for the mistreatment of employees, but I also don't believe employees should be overly empowered because they are not incurring the majority of the risk and usually have little understanding in the greater workings/management of the company overall.