I was thinking about how minimum wage laws are essentially a redistributive tax because by requiring corporations to pay minimum wage for jobs that would not be paid minimum wage in an unrestricted free market, they are probably forced to slightly decrease the wages of non-minimum wage earners.

I think much of the media narrative about the minimum wage is framed as whether to prevent corporations from exploiting their employees if there is no collective bargaining or if they are undocumented and thus fearful of asking for higher wages, but we should more often consider the possibility that some jobs which today do earn minimum wage could never pay minimum wage in a free market.

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