Instead of endlessly fighting for incremental hikes in the minimum wage, why not introduce legislation to constrain the difference between what the people at the bottom of a company make vs. those at the top?

The notion that companies will be forced to cut staff and raise prices if the minimum wage is utter bullshit, as has been proved time and again by raises in the minimum wage over the past century.  The REAL problem is that those at the top of our big corporations (like, for instance, Wal-Mart) make THOUSANDS of times the amount that those on the bottom of said companies do.  Despite the fact that executives don’t actually work any harder than sales clerks, and often aren’t any smarter, better educated, or more talented either.  Yes, perhaps a CEO is a bit more difficult to replace than a cashier, but no one in the modern corporation is indespensable and it’s about damn time we stopped acting as if the success of a company depended more on the labors of the guy in the expensive suit than the labors of those in blue jeans.

So I suggest that we establish a standard limit, requiring the COMPLETE wage/benefit package (no sneaking millions of extra dollars in through stock options, bonuses etc!) of the top earner in any company to be no more than, say, a few hundred times the amount earned by the lowest-paid worker in the company.  Then every time some damn fool in an expensive suit wants to reward himself with a juicy fat bonus he’ll be forced to pay due consideration to the efforts of those beneath him in the chain of command, without whose efforts his exalted position would be worthless.

As a side benefit, it might allow big companies to pay higher dividends to their stockholders, which could - just maybe - put the focus (and reward!) of capitalism back on the pooling of resources to promote innovation, rather than on the mere moving around of bits of paper (or electrons) to generate (a convincing illusion of) wealth.

(Stock trading vs. stock investing folks, think about it.)