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Earlier this year, Seattle-based Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price announced he was setting the minimum wage for his workers at $70k. About 70 of the company's 120 employees would be receiving the raises over a 3 year period and Price cut his salary from $1m to $70k to make the change happen. His reasoning: He read an article that more money for people who make less than $70k leads to increased happiness.
His plan may have backfired:
What few outsiders realised, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.
More troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase - despite repeated assurances to the contrary - also left. While dozens of new clients, inspired by Price's announcement, were signing up, those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To handle the flood, he has had to hire a dozen additional employees - now at a significantly higher cost - and is struggling to figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long the bonanza will last.
Two of Price's most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle's close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Price's action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.
To make matters worse, Price's brother and company co-founder Lucas filed a lawsuit less than 2 weeks after the raise increase announcement, accusing his brother of violating his rights as a minority shareholder.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Tuesday August 04 2015, @10:18PM
Can you honestly say that wouldn't irritate the hell out of you?
Yes, I can. Or to be more verbose, my logical, deliberately thought faculties can overrule the primitive and irrational emotional response which might cause me to feel wrongfully aggrieved. The capacity to do this is, to me, synonymous with mental adulthood--a state of being that many people, even of advanced age, do not ever achieve.
You're making the case, a strong one, that people make irrational, petty, spiteful, emotional decisions that do not accurately reflect their reality or stated goals. Sounds like an argument against full capitalism to me. An important premise often leaned on by apologists for unrestricted capitalism is that humans can be counted on to basically act rationally in pursuing their own self-interests. That seems to not be the case. It looks like people actively sabotage their own well-being by acting like spoiled, petulant, children. Thankfully it is the saving grace and primary strength of humanity that we can externalize mental faculties like self-control and enculturate ourselves to any number of "unnatural" ways of thinking and acting.
I have no doubt that people can be trained to not view salaries as a zero-sum game. I'm an existence proof that such a mindset is neither inevitable nor universal. And I don't think I'm a paragon of virtue and altruism.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.