I always wonder if minimum wage does more harm than good.

This conversation usually derails, so to be clear no, I don’t think people should work for poverty wages, a viable business should include happy non-subsidized employees.

My question is whether a global price floor psychologically depresses wages by establishing a global price anchor. Price anchoring is well known to influence the price people will accept.

For jobs like cashier that are fungible just blanket get minimum wage, would they pay more without one when the employer can’t just point to the anchor price and say take it or leave it? Would they be faster to localize wages to local costs?