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Pay a wage which is high enough to attract the talent that you need and which still leaves the company with a profit at the end. If there's a wide range that satisfies both of these conditions (and in markets with minimum wages, is legal to pay), then choose to offer a pay rate that best balances getting/keeping the talent you want vs the profitability.
If someone else can do my same job as effectively as me for half the rate, I'd expect my company to switch, just the same way as I'd happily take a 1/2 off coupon on the purchase of my next car, house, computer, or even groceries.
Construction and landscaping are notable examples. If the buyer only cares about cost, and the government adds 20-50% to the cost of wages, then the employer who bypasses the government thrives.
The double standard that enables many of our labor challenges is that people want a higher minimum wage, tend to oppose enforcement, and buy the cheapest option regardless of legality.
Laws that are helpful when fully enforced are destructive when partially enforced.
By the same token, if that next computer you buy is cheaper because it was built in a country with cheaper to implement labor laws than the ones you voted for in your country, how is that ethical?
> Construction and landscaping are notable examples. If the buyer only cares about cost, and the government adds 20-50% to the cost of wages, then the employer who bypasses the government thrives.
This complicates the landscape, but this is a problem which should be addressed separately. If the system of taxing and enforcement effectively incentivises evading them and disincentivises law obedience, then taxing and enforcement system is messed up.
We have nothing close to a free market for labor. Unfortunately, it's called a free market, and so people think the market is ineffective.
Construction was a high paying job until unrestricted labor drove down wages. (Unenforced labor laws meant contractors hiring illegal workers could undercut bids. No payroll taxes, no workman's comp insurance, no chance of legal companies competing.)
Fair wages depend on fair markets, and the labor market at the lower income end of the spectrum is anything but fair.
In any case, it is a genuine question from someone living in a decent welfare state and happy to continue to do so. I don't really care to engage in debates of who has the moral high ground, just the practical question, if you have an answer.
technically in the U.S. there is a federal (nation-wide) minimum wage, then there are minimum wages for each state. I am not sure how they are defined, e.g. the federal one is certainly not automatically pegged to inflation. there is a movement to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour but even that is hard or impossible to live on in many areas.
You have not interpreted the comment correctly. This is deterministic. A capitalistic system or game has naturally emergent behaviors, but the propaganda excusing and defending the reluctance to add egalitarian rules is very much deterministic.