Big businesses aren’t interested in raising the minimum wage to help its employees nor do they believe a higher minimum wage will help the poor. They believe it to be a tax on the competition. A minimum wage is a tax on labor and the higher it goes the higher the barrier to entry for competitors in any industry.
Any company can pay any wage they want to pay. If they want to pay $15.00 or $30.00 as a minimum per hour there is no one preventing them from doing so. But, if an upstart e-commerce company is threatening Amazon or Walmart how hard do you think it will be for them to get to scale if they are forced to pay higher labor rates when Amazon and Walmart achieved their success without such a burden?
Large employers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. , start workers at $15 an hour or more. And Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, last month said it would lift its average hourly pay above $15 but keep its minimum at $11. Some smaller businesses and restaurants are wary of large minimum-wage increases, but few pay as low as the federal floor of $7.25 an hour.
Still, a higher minimum wage puts pressure on smaller businesses that can’t raise wages as easily as large companies, which can adapt by deploying labor-saving technology or modestly adjusting hours for large workforces, said Jonathan Meer, an economist at Texas A&M University.
“It’s a lot harder for Joe’s Hardware,” he said. “We should take note that Amazon—the place with no cashiers—is the one calling for a higher minimum wage.”
Wall Street Journal
Large corporations use policies like the minimum wage and business regulations to keep competition from rearing its ugly head. Competition forces all companies to be more efficient and offer greater value to their customers. It’s what keeps a market dynamic and keeps costs to the consumer low.
Furthermore, the minimum wage is historically racist. Its creation was founded on keeping low cost unskilled minority labor out of the market. Perpetuating this racist policy is anti-American.