[aidenn0]

The ceiling makes sense because a high salary is a reasonable proxy for individual bargaining power. I'm sure I could convince my manager to let me work strictly 9-5 in exchange for halving my salary (which would still put me over the 55k mark).

[wenebego]

Okay, so what about those making 60k?

[aidenn0]

1. Yes, when you have a hard cutoff for anything you get strange behaviors near the boundaries.

2. Are you saying there should be no cutoff (graduated or hard) anywhere, so that CEOs with total-compensation in the millions get paid overtime?

3. At a 40 hour week that's about $30 per hour, quadruple the federal minimum wage[A]. If you are salaried and making more than quadruple the minimum wage than you are more likely to have negotiating power than if you are making less than quadruple the minimum wage.

4. There's also a disconnect between the law and actual company behavior; the salary is only one test in the law; companies often give bogus job titles to reclassify non-exempt employees as exempt. This is rather clearly illegal.

A: Yes states can set higher minimum wages. They can also place extra restrictions on who is exempt from overtime laws (and probably should do so in this case) TFA is about federal law, so I'm addressing it as such.