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Comment by w3pm | Hacker News Reader

Costco is free to pay their employees as high of wages as they'd like, no legislation required. This lobbying isn't out of their good will but a strategic play to hurt competitors that rely on lower wages. Such is politics.

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That Costco isn't doing this purely out of goodwill needs to be mentioned further.

If Costco already starts all employees at $11.50, increasing the minimum wage to any point less than $11.50 doesn't initially impact their own bottom line, but just serves to increase their competitor's costs.

Costco is more concentrated in higher wage, higher cost states on the West Coast. They'd love to extend California wage rates to Walmart's red state operations.

The other side is that if people see an increase in their pay, they'll have more money to spend (hopefully at Costco).

Not at Costco. The average wage of a person who shops at Costco is 74k. Sams Club perhaps; the customers they attract are at a lower income.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/business/yourmoney/17costc...

Why does that automatically preclude being motivated by good will? If their goal is to provide better wages to their employees then they would be best able to do so by increasing their competitive advantage by any means possible. Clearly there is a limit to the level of wage increase they are able to sustain when their competition is paying their employees rock bottom wages.

There's no reason why corporate interests and good will can't sometimes go hand in hand.

Isn't competition that takes advantages of factors beyond the free market still competition? In practice, shouldn't the free market extend beyond the "market" itself, and into the state as well? Because all real-world capitalist economies are really mixed economies where the state still has an effect on the market. So aren't rational economic actors making use of every weapon at their disposal by lobbying, pursuing tax loopholes, patent trolling, etc?

Yes, it's called rent seeking.

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