[quote=SK in CV][quote=livinincali] You worry that McDonald’s might make too much money but you have no consideration for how much harder you just made it for Joe the Pizza guy to start his 2nd restaurant.[/quote]

Why should we care whether it’s hard for Joe the Pizza guy to start his 2nd restaurant? Is there a shortage of pizza joints? Is it a good thing if he only has to sell 20 pizzas a day employing people at the current minimum wage? Is there some reason public policy should support that?[/quote]

Ok, I’ll bite. I care whether it’s hard for Joe the Pizza guy to start his second pizza joint. I want competition and innovation in the pizza joint market. I want a fertile bed of innovation and local alternatives to Papa John’s and Pizza Hut and Domino’s.

There’s a shortage of *good* pizza joints (and other small biz restaurants), and if the marketplace is chock full of mega-corp, franchised pizza joints (ones that can afford an employment law compliance department at that scale), then there will be no reasonable path for newcomers.

I don’t think there should be public policy to support a pizza joint selling any particular number of pizzas per day to stay afloat. I also don’t think there should be public policy actively inhibiting any group of people (employer and employees) from agreeing on how to split the potential profits from trying.

Also, since I’m alreay spending the keystrokes to post, let me say that calling SDR out on his commision is the height of irony. No one sets a minimum wage for SDR’s profession. It’s legally possible for him to agree to take a job for effectively less than minimum wage, and no legal policy is currently standing in the way of clients paying him so little (per hour of labor).

The right to undercut one’s competition in terms of price is not a right that is afforded our workers whose skills are in least demand.