Remember Dan Price? Of course not and five years from now, he will be long gone. Why? Because . . . . . . .


 <<<<   Remember Dan Price?  Of course not and five years from now,  he will be long gone.  Why?  Because he decided to run his company on the "fairminded" principles of socialism.  Good bet he has taken his company over the cliff.  Certianly,  he has to change his ways.  Lesson learned   . . . .   all you Capitalist haters. 


Just three months ago, Dan Price was a progressive hero. To much fanfare, Price, CEO of Seattle-based Gravity Payments, announced he was raising the minimum salary for employees of his company to $70,000, and taking a $930,000 pay cut himself to help pay for his new minimum wage. Three months later, the experiment does not go well.

Price has had to rent out his own house to help cover his bills. In addition, the New York Times reports Gravity lost two of its most valuable employees whose departure was “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.”

Most of the company’s profits, $2.2 million last year, were reinvested in the company not to expand or innovate, but to cover the new minimum wage.

Price’s brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas Price, has also filed a lawsuit against the company that it, thanks to the new higher payroll, finds itself having difficulty paying legal fees for.

5 comments:

  1. What a moron. Obviously trickle down does not worked. It is the greed of capitalism that is the problem. Workers in this company who claim to have "earned" their $70,000 paycheck are angry that others were "given" the same wage. In a democratic society, we all should be earning the same wage, not one making thousands more than someone else. We will be voting on this. The owner was right and righteous for making his decision.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am sorry, but I think you just made my case. Greed did play a role, but this "greed" is not the offspring of capitalism, but, rather, the product of the competitive human spirit. Most do not remember Russian's "seven year plan" but the farming/industrial policy plan was all about "share and share alike." After several rounds, the seven year plan failed, and failed precisely because it was pitched against the aspiring human spirit.

      Delete
    2. At least you admit that greed is a problem. The wealth disparity between the rich and the poor has been growing since well before Obama. Apparently you think this is unavoidable and, therefore, acceptable. Sad. Socialism does not accept this premise.

      Delete
    3. Greed is a manifestation of the human condition. It is not systemic to any particular fiscal theory, You think the poor are better off in Europe, or China or Venezuela or Obama's buds in Cuba?

      You write: Socialism does not accept this premise. If you are talking about the premise of unavoidable greed, in socialist societies and dictatorships, only the administrators of a particular nation's wealth have free access to that wealth. I would be surprised if Dan Price does not change his administrative ways. Certainly, he is to be praised for having the right attitude, but competition on a personal level fuels business success, an axiomatic truth whether business to business or employee versus employee. Me? I would not hire Price to run any sort of business. Look what idealism has done for the man. He has put his business in jeopardy, lost several of his best people (it is not fair, btw, to work your butt off and the slob at the next desk winds up earning the same money), and may lose his own home.

      Delete

  2. Solution:

    Blog editor cut the hyper link to this one word comment because it had absolutely nothing to do with a "solution." The reference was about automatic voter registration. As I just wrote, that has nothing to do with the existential failing of pure soicialism. The point of the post is this: socialism does not work when applied to business and business practices.

    ReplyDelete