Corporations exist to generate profit. Money that goes to employees is considered operational costs. In other words, profit isn't for employees. In order to increase profits, which corporations are designed to strive for at all times, they must either increase the revenue generated by employees relative to the cost of employing them, or they must decrease employment costs while maintaining their revenue generation. It's pretty damn broken.
Yeah, this is called people, even and especially most Economists, not getting it. There's kind of a "no shit," feeling when people say "corporations exist to generate profits." Its so blatantly obvious that no one is disputing it. Pointing it out is kind of without purpose given that everyone knows it. Rather, we're saying the point is being missed and you are wasting effort focusing on the totally obvious instead of said point.
People and businesses fail to grasp the cyclical nature of business. Every business loves "customers" and more accurately their payments. Those same businesses want to keep their "employment" costs low. The great big joke of a point they are missing is that the employees ARE customers. Even if they aren't directly, they are indirectly, because they are the customers of the business' customers who in turn enable the business' customers to pay.... Did you catch that? In short, employees are your customer's customers, without whom your customers can't afford to pay you.... I don't buy a damn thing from my boss, but somewhere in the mix, I buy something from someone who pays him....
Fishermen exist to catch fish, but if they overfish, they won't have any in the future. Similarly, if corporations don't pay anyone anything, then they will kill off the customer pool, because no one will be able to afford anything then.
Henry Ford Understood this, which is why he intentionally lowered the price of his automobiles to make them affordable to as many people as he could. His Shareholders hated him for it and won the lawsuit over it. The shareholders were short sighted, greedy idiots. Mr. Ford wanted a garage on every home, one of his cars in every garage, and one of everyone's wallets feeding him tons of money.... Mr. Ford realized that while the "automatory machinery" (old timely, crappy automation machines) did save him labor costs, THEY SIMPLY DIDN'T BUY ANY OF HIS CARS.... It's called cultivating customers, and we've forgotten it.
Summation, No one makes any money, no one can afford to buy anything, no customers for businesses, no money for businesses. So paying your employees nothing isn't as great an idea as it sounds, because it comes back to bite you.... Kinda like its doing now....