Maybe... but the minimum wage has been stagnant in the US for decades but inflation has been continuously rising. I would have guessed that corporate profit contributes more to inflation than the minimum wage rates, but I honestly don't know.
Honestly... if it were up to me... I'd just end the stock market.
Corporations doing everything possible to increase shareholder value means they are highly incentivized to keep wages as low as possible, costs as low as possible, avoid paying as much tax as possible and lobby governments to produce policy that keeps them extremely profitable.
Of course though, now that pensions barely exist and everyone's retirement is linked to the stock market, it doesn't really seem possible - and it would be harder for industry to raise money to build new factories, etc... but I'm sure we HAVE to come up with a better solution than we have now because it's completely unsustainable to keep going in the direction of ever-increasing wealth inequality.
This is the problem. The problem is not corporations themselves. The problem is, whenever government exerts control over the business sector (any business sector), it is just a matter of time before corporations co-opt the decision-making power and get the government to enact regulations that entrench the status-quo corporations and lock out would-be competition -- a process known as regulatory capture.
Here's a potential solution I encourage my students to evaluate and critique: transfer all regulatory power and authority in the U.S. to the individual states.
Under that scenario, if Jeff Bezos wants to get legislation enacted to hinder all would-be competitors, he has to bribe (or otherwise influence) 50 state legislatures and 50 governors, instead of just a handful of powerful D.C. politicians.
All it takes is one hold-out state to provide fertile ground for a would-be competitor to take root. Under the current system, regulatory capture is endemic and impossible to stop.
Oh. That's interesting...
I've never thought of giving the states control like that... I definitely can see how smaller industry entrants could thrive in individual states... and I guess to a degree the US already has that with several states/cities banning ridesharing apps for example.
I guess the potential unintended consequences it could make the US less efficient for industry that gets economies of scale from operating nationally... a railroad company might get all the approvals to run East to West, build all the infrastructure, and then a competitor gets them banned in a middle state which disrupts the entire business case.
Incumbents might have an advantage because they have the resources to lobby 50 states whereas a new entrant wouldn't have the resources to compete.
I know that monopolies and oligopolies are the ideal scenario for corporations, and it's hard to think through all the consequences to see if individual state laws would help or hinder that process... I think I'll have to sit with it a while... I imagine industries would be affected very differently.
What a great comment exchange I need to read it more :D thanks for the reply I’ll catch up on it!
Agreed, so many great concepts here.