wages and fairness

Two distinctly different issues currently making headlines, have reached a convergence. The first is the manufacturing of inexpensive clothes in countries like Pakistan and the second is the attempt to unionize fast food places. Both of these issues center around the willingness of American consumers to pay more for products based on some moral concept surrounding the production of these products. If you raise the price of items sold in a fast food restaurant by one-third you can double the wages of the employees. This means that a $3 dollar item raised to $4 dollars would increase wages from $8 to $16. In the case of Pakistan the wages there would increase five-fold if you raised the price of garments by one-third. A five dollar shirt selling for $6.50 would increase the hourly wage from 24 cents to over one dollar. If Americans knew these facts would they be willing to pay more? We have some experience with this and that is Wal-Mart where low prices are the big attraction and most of the products sold there are produced overseas. If every low price store increased their prices by one-third it would not mean much but if only Wal-Mart did that and not their competitors it would make a difference. The people who currently shop at Wal-Mart are the ones who are most hurt by low wages but it doesn’t seem to matter to them. Is it a wise thing in a market economy to introduce the moral issue of using who makes how much to set the price? You can expand on this by asking if it is reasonable that some people like CEO’s, sports figures and movie stars should make millions while other millions make minimum wage? If the average family income in the United States is $50,000 shouldn’t everyone make $50,000? These kinds of questions have inspired renewed interest with the Presidents emphasis on fairness.