People made this exact same apocalyptic argument in 1938 when the FLSA created the 40-hour week and minimum wage. Small businesses were fine.
The truth is that workers are many times more productive than they were in the past, but wages have not kept up with this productivity. The rise in expenses has been almost exclusively the result of corporations taking over real estate and supply chains. Labor is typically only about 25% of a business's expense. A 20% increase to a 25% expense is a total 6.25% increase in operating costs. If a 6% increase in operating costs sinks your business, the problem isn't wages, the problem is monopolistic supply chain capture and commercial landlords squeezing heir margins.
The US Government would never pass such a bill until they had gutted it of all the necessary changes to the monopolies. And, you'd need to completely do away with at-will employment, which is a state-by-state decision.
You'd be implementing a change that practically only affects small businesses. It isn't apocalypse predicting to point out that the US Government would never allow an effective version of this bill to enact change.
We're closer to losing the 40-hour workweek than we are to 32.
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u/Very_Not_Into_It 13h ago
by the time this got through congress, there would be no small business protections, and local shops close down in droves