SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
"Is anyone else freaking out right now? I'm kind of freaking out." said Dan Price, the CEO of Seattle-based Gravity Payments, as he announced that the new minimum salary for current employees will be raised to $70,000 a year. Price is taking a pay cut from $1 million to $70,000 and spending an appreciable amount of the company's profit to raise annual salaries from the current average of $48,000.
From the article:
The United States has one of the world's largest pay gaps, with chief executives earning nearly 300 times what the average worker makes, according to some economists' estimates. That is much higher than the 20-to-1 ratio recommended by Gilded Age magnates like J. Pierpont Morgan and the 20th century management visionary Peter Drucker.
[...] Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.
[...] The happiness research behind Mr. Price's announcement on Monday came from Angus Deaton and Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They found that what they called emotional well-being — defined as "the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience, the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant" — rises with income, but only to a point. And that point turns out to be about $75,000 a year.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tathra on Friday April 17 2015, @04:51AM
the $70k/year is what everyone who works for his company will now make at minimum. that is the newsworthy part.
meanwhile, the ceo of mcdonalds just got a 69% raise [wsj.com] up to $1.1-fucking-million/year and its former ceo is raking in $3-fucking-million/year in "consulting fees", while the workers have to get welfare just to be able to survive.
(Score: 1) by Pherenikos on Friday April 17 2015, @06:03AM
Considering McDonalds has >1 million employees, if the CEO can improve their productivity by >1 dollar a year they will have earned their salary and then some. For the Gravity Payments, even with the new salary, considering their ~200 employees this corresponds to a value improvement of $350 per employee year.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday April 17 2015, @06:28AM
So what happens when he destroys their productivity?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @06:35AM
He gets a raise of course, just like the last CEO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @08:59AM
Maybe, but if you take the poorest lowest payed Mcdonalds staff and put him in place of the CEO, what would the difference be for that productivity raise?
If you pay someone much more than normal salaries, they should be able to perform much better than others. Just because the function in the company means you have more influence over how much money it makes, doesn't necessarily mean you are any good at it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @12:29PM
Not quite. There's a floor of 0 dollars in the CEO's salary. An instrument like that is worth more than one without such floor.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @06:38AM
Oddly enough minimum-wage earners are also paid in units of fucking-dollars. Just not the good kind.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @01:58PM
while the workers have to get welfare just to be able to survive
Mcdonalds is not MEANT to be a job for life. Well maybe if you become a manager. It is a stepping stone job.
It is 'the starter job' where you learn things you need for other jobs
1) be polite even when everyone else is a dick and yelling they can buy and sell you
2) show up on time
3) dont be smelly
4) clean your work area
5) fast food is a rat shithole to work for, you do not want to come back here
If you consider a job slinging burgers the rest of your life as a career you have bigger problems. As that job is about 10-15 years from full automation.
It must have changed from when I was younger. There were always that one or two guys who hung on for years. But mostly it was teenagers saving up to buy a car or have some spending for gas for the bought car.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Friday April 17 2015, @04:47PM
it sounds good in theory, but in practice there's often not a "next step" job available, especially when you're making slave wages and can't afford a car which means your work prospects are limited to anything within walking or bicycling distance. there's also the fact that the minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage, and you're basically saying that its their own damn fault that there's no better jobs available and that they're starving and living in poverty. only sociopaths blame the victim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2015, @05:57PM
there's also the fact that the minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage
Now, now. Sarah Palin said if the minimum wage was lowered to $2 per hour it would end unemployment in this country. Seriously, she said that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Friday April 17 2015, @07:04PM
supply-side economics doesn't work. [americanprogress.org] the only way to spur the economy is to increase demand, which requires people having disposable income. reducing people's spending power, through inflation (wage stagnation) or pay cuts (reducing or abolishing minimum wage), reduces demand, to which the supply side must respond with a reduction in production, ie layoffs, to prevent from hemorrhaging money. increasing the minimum wage back to a living wage, where it used to be, would spur the economy [bloomberg.com] by increasing demand and would also help reduce the ridiculous amount the US subsidizes companies that refuse to pay a living wage despite making billions in profit ever year.