Minimum wage isn't a maximum wage

From +LowPay NotOk

What's really amazing here is I pay less than that for milk in 

Alaska.

As fast food workers across the country are getting their fair share of abuse at demonstrations today, there is a form of what seems to be  pervasive ignorance that needs to be addressed about what the minimum wage actually is.

It was best illustrated in a news story the other day about a shopping mall that straddles a boundary between two cities in California. The city on one side of the line has set the minimum wage at about $8 per hour. The city on the other side of the line has a minimum wage of a little more than $10.

The store owner on one side of the line, the only one interviewed in the story, said he kept losing workers because they could make more at stores across the mall in the other city with the higher minimum wage and he wondered how he would ever keep employees.

Here's a clue for that store owner and for every other sanctimonious business owner who somehow tries to say workers would be paid more if only the minimum wage were raised:  YOU DON'T HAVE TO PAY THE MINIMUM WAGE!

The minimum wage is just that, the minimum you are allowed by law to pay an employee. It doesn't mean that's all you can pay. If the store owner in that mall wants to keep his employees, he can raise their wage to match the other side of the mall. If he wants the old ones back, pay a little more than those on the other side are paying.

There is no MAXIMUM WAGE limit, just look at the one-percenters.

It's amazing that capitalists want a free market, but then hide behind a regulation to control one facet of that market, instead of paying wages that match the competitive environment.

If you want to keep your employees pay what the market demands, if not, don't whine about losing employees just because the minimum wage is higher on the other side of the fence.

(Kind of a sad sidelight to this is the reporter didn't even challenge that store owner about giving his employees a raise to match the other stores.)

It's the customers, stupid