No? They designed the law to require overtime wages be paid. They left a threshold in the law to permit existing conventions of non-hourly-measured "manager" positions, presumably because changing how those are administered was felt to be too disruptive.
And sure, all rules can be gamed, so right at the threshold we see nonsense like this. But to argue that this was the intent is ridiculous. The law wasn't for these employees at the threshold, it was for the folks farther down the org chart. And it quite clearly works as intended for them, since they're being paid overtime.
It is saying you can be a customer service rep, and if you work overtime you are owed overtime pay.
But they can "promote" you to customer service rep manager, raise your pay by a bit (but lower than your overtime pay would be), and have you continue to do the exact same job (maybe with some token manager duties thrown in) for the same or even more hours and not need to pay overtime.
Was that the intention of the law? Idk - given the priorities of the people who make laws maybe it is.
The law is pretty clear about it. There's just very little to no enforcement of it beyond private lawsuits because a significant proportion of the US population actively reject any action that would favor worker protection over corporate profit.
Something strange happened to America. They were on the exact same socialist trajectory as the rest of the world but it went all wrong.
And they are using their considerable superpower resources to drag the rest of us down with them.
probably a combination of becoming the worlds industrial hegemon immediately after ww2 while the suddenly facing down communism. industrial jobs were well compensated the rest to the world was buying from us because ww2 bombing destroyed everyone else industrial base so there was money to spend, and socialism looked to much like the Soviets to the average American. then in the fallowing decades American labor unions became infiltrated and taken over by the mob (remember Jimmy Hoffa). the combine association of communism and organized crime gave it a bad smell the much of America.
It's probably not the explicit intention, but I believe that an intelligent species would probably recognize that it's in their best interests to elect lawmakers who understand the concept of economic incentives and as a corollary; perverse incentives.
Most perverse incentives aren't real, they're just cynicism.
As an example every new safety technology like seat belts comes with complaints that it'll just encourage people to drive worse (fancy term "risk compensation") but in fact there's no evidence this happens.
There is at least one piece of research however, that shows wearing a bicycle helmet (or being a male) causes people in cars to pass more closely presumably with an assumption that you're less at risk.
I'm not sure what reading of FLSA would lead to that conclusion. The law defines the categories entirely with relation to how/how much you are paid and your job responsibilities. From the paper:
> While salary, pay frequency, and whether a position is a learned profession are typically externally verifiable, whether a position satisfies the executive or administrative duties criteria depends on the employer’s assessment of the position’s responsibilities and is difficult to verify externally. Often, the only piece of externally observable information suggestive of a position’s duties is the job’s title. Thus, employers can strategically choose job titles to imply that a position involves managerial duties, and as such exempt from mandatory overtime payments, although the actual responsibilities of the position do not satisfy the executive or administrative duties tests
seems like they designed the law explicitly to encourage this.