The minimum wage is a federal issue in the news just now...and I may have misunderstood your earlier comment as to being targeted to the high net worth individuals. but you seem to be wanting to narrow the range....
The reason you need integrity in the system is to prevent sweatshop scenarios that come from anti-competitive monopolies, price fixing, bribes of public officials, no pay equity, sexual harassment issues, etc. It also causes all participants (both corporate and individual) in the system to pay their fair share of taxes, rather than attempting to "free-load" off the rest by enacting loophole schemes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The properly functioning system should to be self-regulating - in other words the government functioning with officials with integrity would attempt to level the playing field and prevent unfair oppression or discrimination, etc. The corporations would attempt to adhere by standards that would promote vigorous competition, but without resorting to illegal or immoral tactics to gain advantage. The employees operating with integrity would give a fair day's work for a fair day's pay, would not steal from the company, and would genuinely work for the best interest of the corporation as well as themselves. Corporations would ensure that the workplaces were safe for workers even though it would increase costs. The corporate boards would operate with a conscience by enforcing sanity in executive pay packages, and attempting to make sure that profits were shared more equitably throughout the employee ranks, rather than just concentrated at the executive levels. Those corporations and individuals breaking the law would be dealt with immediately and with equal justice regardless of position or wealth. In other words, rich individuals or corporations could not "buy themselves out of trouble". The basic argument is that the "trickle-down theory" of prosperity does not work correctly without integrity in every participant of the system. Since that is basically impossible, then you must take the proper steps to make sure that individuals are not taken advantage of by corporations or government. Corporations should be dis-incentivized from replacing U.S. workers by hiring workers in other countries which are being paid "below-market" wages such as China, India, etc. To do otherwise is to profit at the U.S. worker's expense (who is now unemployed, or has lost wage bargaining power) and the foreign worker's expense (who is not being paid fairly for their work). To encourage massive outsourcing to other countries whilst the population at home is struggling and unemployed is at its heart immoral. Particularly because the supposed "cost savings" from such moves is not really passed onto the consumer through lower prices, but instead just enriches the corporation's leadership. Knowingly hiring illegal aliens should result in an immediate fine of $200,000 per illegal. In other words, take away the incentives to do the "wrong thing".
Society is dependant on lower skilled workers. IMO Mav, it was the false promises of the Great Society that diminished the honor of working a "blue collar" job. There's nothing wrong with "moving up" from the after school cashier job at Burger King to Manager. Or being a cook at BK. There's many jobs in the 20-30k range (i.e. $10-$15 hourly) that poorer Americans feel are beneath them. Hence immigrants. American culture has debased us as a society by portraying solid working class jobs as the domain of the intellectually lazy or uninspired.
I agree that integrity is good, but in a competetive (or competetive monopolistic) system it is unnecessary assuming that people are free to enter/exit the system at will. If an employer isn't maintaining market standards, you find another employer that is. This forces the first to increase or s/he will find no workers. That was my point from before. Punish people for breaking child labor laws, hiring illegals, etc. but don't implement a minimum wage. It could be argued that if the other laws were enforced, any binding minimum wage could only be bad for society as a whole. IOW, the laws would prevent sweatshops and such, while at the same time the minimum wage would find its own equilibrium. It is very likely that equilibrium rate would be very close to the current MW. OTOH, if friction is preventing people from leaving an employer to find a job that will pay the competitive wage, the government would be free to subsidize that person/family to aid in transportation (or whatever else might be necessary) to a better employer. Eventually what happens is that the bad employer has to increase personal standards to find employees.
I think you guys have been brainwashed by your corporate puppet masters to make a big issue out of something that really isn't. Lets put things into perspective, the cost of oil has more than doubled in the past 3 years yet the economy is doing fine. Even though, oil is used throughout the economy. Everything else has gone up in price over the past few years, yet people still buy,buy,buy. But give a guy a liveable wage and all of the sudden it's the end of the American way of life. Give me a break!
On the whole I agree with you. I just have a hard time believing the market will ever get "free enough" for a true, fair equilibrium minimum wage to be reached. In a true free market operated with integrity, if the minimum wage is lower than the "true equilibrium point", then it is basically irrelevant, since employers must pay more than that to attract workers. If it is set too high, then it has a negative effect of causing employers to attempt to do more with less workers, which could potentially result in unemployment since some businesses could not bring along the higher costs and remain profitable. In other words, you might hire only 3 workers instead of 4 and make them work harder. The problem I see today is that people are assuming that our market is totally free and reaching such an equilibrium. In some portions of the country, this may well be true. But when you have large illegal alien populations in certain regions, and a lot of negative outsourcing going on, then an argument could be made that the "free market equilibrium" minimum wage that is reached in such a scenario is unreasonably low. It's like how we are trying to have free trade with trading partners that are not allowing the same access to their markets. In the end, that should not be done without first fixing such inequities. On another note, I think it's ludicrous how we have all of these complaints from companies about how our education has gone downhill, and we don't have the same excellent workers as before. You get what you create. They claim there is a "programmer shortage" and allow tons of HB1 VISA people over here. Then, you get massive layoffs in IT later - duh! Then you wonder why people don't want to go into engineering anymore - hello?!? Over the last 20 years, we have proven that an education has gotten more and more expensive, with less and less financial aid, and the jobs that are attained after completing college are much less lucrative and subject to layoff risk, outsourcing risk, etc. It is no surprise to me that many people have decided to f*ck it and just don't want to go through the hassles of getting advanced degrees for questionable reward.
take a look at Arizona.... a right to work state. No minimum wage. low scale workers earn $2.95/hr. Less than welfare. What is the incentive to work?