Wage subsidies to the employer or to the employee? I assume you mean the employee - this is essentially what welfare is though, and to me welfare is kind of like acknowledging the need for basic income without totally committing to it. In an ideal America, nobody would be forced to live below the poverty - let's assume that's our goal. We have three options:

If we force the employer to a pay minimum livable wage above equilibrium, a producer surplus of labor is created (deadweight loss) - this is where the unemployment argument against minimum wage comes in. It's a very good argument, too, since automation is a very realistic "substitute good" (service) for many high volume employers, like the entire food service industry. If we put employers in that position, they will rush to replace as much labor as they can, and since we're only committing to address the supply side in this scenario it won't be long until that deadweight loss becomes a huge portion of society. We are in effect hastening the inevitable.

Alternatively we can let the free market (so to speak) determine equilibrium wages and let the government subsidize the rest. But then why would employers pay employees basically anything at all, if the government will just pay the rest? Anything below a fully livable wage and the entire labor supply is back on the market. Labor remains an oligopsonistic market, which is the root of the problem. Everybody must still have a full-time job, and now employers get to pay just enough so that you can get by with the rest of your subsidy. We set out intending to subsidize the employee, but we ended up 100% subsidizing the employer's cost of labor.

But by guaranteeing a fully livable wage, not just a partial wage subsidy or in-kind transfers (food stamps), we've transformed labor from a fully inelastic good to a fully elastic one. In other words, now, if people don't want to flip hamburgers for $7/hour for the extra income, they don't have to. They can walk away from it. That's going to have a profound impact on the equilibrium price of unskilled labor. The tables have turned and the suppliers are in now in control because so many of them will have been removed from the market.

Whereas in the present state unskilled laborers have no choice but to take the wages their employers choose to pay them, now businesses are incentivized to pursue automation instead of paying high wages without endangering the near-impoverished. This creates profits which can be fully taxed to help offset the cost of the program. Corporate investment in productivity improvements yield greater profits over time, eventually exceeding the initial outlay as well as the added tax expense.

Of course this isn't a magic revenue-neutral solution to pull everyone out of poverty at no expense to anyone. Basically, we need to simultaneously finance huge investments in productivity while protecting the huge number of people who will be impacted by the change. It's just a question of how to manage the the tax incidence in the near-term.