> This logic horrifies me because it applies equally well to wage disparities based on protected classes.

I dunno if GP meant to imply that, but this is kinda the key flaw with the "equal pay for equal work" thing. most engineers earn way more than the median income. this is a direct result of existing in a market-based economy where wages are determined by supply and demand rather than some abstract notion of fairness. you can't complain that the payscale is different for atlanta vs sf while maintaining that it's totally fine for you to make 5x as much as the cashier at 7-Eleven.

> you can't complain that the payscale is different for atlanta vs sf while maintaining that it's totally fine for you to make 5x as much as the cashier at 7-Eleven.

It's that the "equal work" part? Comparing one cashier to another cashier (assuming same hours, same responsibilities, etc) is equal work, so is part of an "equal pay for equal work" conversation. Comparing a cashier to a software dev is a wholly separate conversation.

taken in isolation, sure, "equal pay for equal work" makes sense. but it sidesteps the question of why certain work commands higher pay in the first place. the answer lies in the balance between supply and demand. engineers were quite happy to accept the market equilibrium pay when it placed them near the top of the income food chain in their locale, but suddenly they are quite unhappy to see other engineers getting paid even more. maybe I'm not articulating this quite right, but there seems to be an inconsistency in here. it strikes me as similar to the type of feminism that only cares about seeing more women as CEOs.

If a company is found to be discriminating by protected class, they are in big trouble. Sure, it can be difficult to catch. But what is your point exactly?

Markets currently play a massive role in determining prices across our entire society. A wage is a price paid for an individual's labor.

Labor markets are not perfect. No market is (despite the wailings of the ideologues). We try to fix these issues with specific policies and regulations. There is plenty more work to do here. But if you are advocating for the abolishment of labor markets entirely, I would love to see the details of your proposal. I don't know of any society today that has managed to do so.

The point is that “the markets don’t work that way” isn’t an argument that “society shouldn’t work that way.” We intercede in the case of protected classes because “economics therefore morality” isn’t a sound argument.

Ok fair enough. Do you grant that some interventions are more practical and cleanly implementable than others?

Perhaps the assumption in the original comment is that legally restricting market discrimination for wages by region may not be practical and / or would have significant harmful side effects.

I would need to give the idea more thought. It certainly seems a far more complex and less clear-cut matter than the existing protected classes.

Protected classes are specifically excluded from market forces. That's why they're... protected.