I still think modifying our regulation system to help encourage enough business activity to reach "full employment" would work better - if employers are always a little hungry for employees, they'll have to pay and treat them better.
I'd rather see them just a little hungry for good employees. The problem is that most of them are hungry for employees, but instead of spending just a bit more on wages to get better people, they hire more idiots and snowflakes that get less work done. I've worked plenty of places that could have done just fine on half the staffing if they'd been willing to pay ~25% more to attract the people who would make that work.
Granted, there are some tasks that need x number of warm bodies, like answering phones or things that have to be done continuously at 2-3 separate locations, (one person can't greet customers at two doors 100' apart, for example, or assist a customer at the bakery counter and another at the shoe department simultaneously) but many non-time-sensitive tasks can be completed quickly enough to stack more of them on one person's list...if that person is being compensated properly; when I did a couple summers as a janitor, I quickly figured out that even though I (and three of the others) could do 3-4 times as much as most of the people there, (and this was verified when we had to cover their exact duties due to sick days, etc.) there wasn't even a process for rewarding better performance, so it became a matter of working at a leisurely pace for ~4 hours, then hiding out and watching TV until about 30 minutes before shift change when it would be time to look busy for the incoming shift. If they'd been willing to double the pay for the four of us, they could have eliminated 8 others and saved 33% in wages alone, plus whatever else went to benefits, insurance, etc. plus the damage that was happening because of imbecilic workers who didn't care if they trashed a carpet, burned up a vacuum cleaner, etc. That would have had us running borderline ragged, but at a really good pay rate for essentially unskilled labor, and adding a fifth hard worker would have settled it into a tiring but manageable day's work while still being cheaper than what they had.
