As a thought exercise, let's turn the discussion upside down. I'm surprised that socialists and communists are talking about a minimum wage when they are always railing against "the rich not paying their fair share." What they really want is a maximum wage, not a minimum wage. They try to achieve that through confiscatory income tax policy instead of outright legislation of maximum wages over minimum wages.
But what if they became so emboldened as to try to pass a maximum wage law one day?
What if liberals tried to cap the wage that people could earn? What if, say, a CEO can't earn any more than $1 million instead of $25 million? The same with athletes, movie celebrities, and recording artists. This would force a realignment of all the wages below in order to reapportion the pay-to-contribution ratio.
More practical, what if a law capped the maximum wage at some multiple of a company's lowest wage (or federal statistical median wage or poverty wage...)? Since a true minimum wage is zero, we obviously can't pay that to the bottom rung (except in slavery conditions) as a zero minimum equals a zero maximum multiple, so a true bottom wage would emerge that aligns with the legislated maximum wage. This is only one example scheme for illustrative purposes.
Today, the sky's the limit regarding the highest wage earners, so there is no pressure from above to fit the lower wages into a cohesive structure. This is why people are legislating minimum wages instead of letting market forces set the wage. Would a maximum wage actually make market forces align a true living wage to it that fits?
I'm not a proponent of any of this, but I wonder if a maverick Republican somewhere might try to throw liberals for a loop by turning the minimum wage debate into a maximum wage debate and box them into agreeing that a maximum wage would better set a livable minimum wage all on its own?
Just to be clear, this would all be anathema to the American Dream, which sets no limits on what a dedicated individual can achieve.
-PJ
“Just to be clear, this would all be anathema to the American Dream, which sets no limits on what a dedicated individual can achieve. “
But is that what an overpaid corporate executive does to get his pay? There is already a “tax cap” on high wages, IIRC, and that is why many corporations use alternative methods to compensate their executives. I think the limit is 1 Million Dollars, but that is just memory. Beyond that is not deductible. I think most of the high pay is not based on “dedication” but massive conflicts of interest in the boardroom.