Reply #157: Oh, I agree

[primavera]

Sorry, I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this other than that there are always complications. Say you could get past Microsoft's lobbyists and impose a requirement that they pay an industry standard wage as opposed to the very locally set (i.e., within specifically Redmond, not even including Seattle) micro wage. Don't get me wrong, I'd like nothing better than to see that happen. But then you'd have all sorts of people squawking about big government telling companies how to run their businesses, other employers in small towns bordering on bigger cities would complain that they were being required to pay big city wages, I don't know, it just seems like it would create a lot of subsidiary problems. I honestly don't pretend to have an answer to this problem. I agree that the prevailing wage system does a poor job at best in terms of achieving its goal of prevent wage suppression, I just don't know how you could fix it. What's the alternative? Have no prevailing wage requirement? Change the methodology by which prevailing wages are calculated? According to whose parameters? Businesses'? Labor unions'? Government's? If you've got a plan, for god's sake, don't hold out on us, share it, I'd love to hear of a better way.