system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
“If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn’t be in business.” What does economics have to say about this? Is that an economically sound argument?
gpt
That statement is a normative statement. Economists like to deal with positive statements such as "if a company increases wages by X per cent, it would lose Y per cent in profit and respond by reducing employment by Z per cent".

As to answering such a question, it isn't well defined. You have to figure out what a living wage is and what "should be in business" means. If you then implement policies that do that, the specific mechanisms of those policies could convert it into something measurable or simulatable.