Some time ago, I read a story about the fact that Costco actually pays its employees pretty well, up to and including register clerks. The story finished off with a Wall Street analyst who said (IIRC, this is close to an exact quote): "it's time for Costco to join the real world -- that money should be going to the shareholders."

The Ayn Rand lovers out there like to imagine, I presume, that the uber-rich are that way because they earned every penny. Ask yourself this: did the top 1% of earners in this country really create 33% of ALL wealth in 2007? Was the work of half of ALL Americans really only worth 2.3% of the pie? Or is there a different kind of income redistribution at work here? Has it occurred to those who are rich that it's silly to waste money paying the rank and file decently, when they can get away with keeping most of it for themselves? If the bottom 50% all headed for Galt's Gulch tomorrow, those tycoons of industry might find out that the rank and file actually do some of the work around here.

If top earners continue to pretend that "market wages" are an acceptable excuse for the crappy state of wages in this country, they in effect guarantee that government will eventually step in with more punitive top brackets, or they'll have a lot more unions to deal with, or both. Which is still a whole lot better than being pulled from your palace and guillotined by a mob. But an enlightened, voluntary embrace of living wage standards might prevent any of that from happening.