Minimum wage/revenue-based

About

Revenue-based minimum wage is the idea that minimum wage for any given company should be based heavily on that company's gross revenues.

Businesses making less money overall should not have to pay their workers as well as those making more money. This would give small businesses ant entrepreneurs a competitive advantage over larger, better-established companies and help encourage innovation, while requiring those companies with a well-established revenue stream to share that wealth with those who make it possible.

During times of crisis, as a company's revenues decrease the minimum wage for that company would decrease also -- allowing companies of all sizes to control worker costs without as many layoffs.

The Current System

The current system does the opposite, making it much more difficult for new businesses to get a toehold without a lot of volunteer or off-the-record labor, while allowing companies with steady large revenues to keep that wealth for themselves or shell it out to executive in bonuses and severance packages. The current system also provides no built-in flexibility for dealing with downturns in a company's fortunes.

Side Effects

One side effect of a strictly linear system in which minimum wage is a fraction of corporate revenues is that it places a theoretical upper limit on the number of employees any one company may have. This may very well be a good thing (see too big to fail); if it is not, however, then it should be simple enough to include a factor in the equation to prevent this, or at least to raise the maximum number of employees to whatever level seems reasonable.