The Seattle CEO who reaped a publicity bonanza when he boosted the salaries of his employees to a minimum of $70,000 a year says he has fallen on hard times.To paraphrase an old saying: You may not care about reality, but reality cares about you.
Dan Price, 31, tells the New York Times that things have gotten so bad he’s been forced to rent out his house.
Only three months ago Price was generating headlines—and accusations of being a socialist -- when he announced the new salary minimum for all 120 employees at his Gravity Payments credit card processing firm. Price said he was doing it, and slashing his $1 million pay package to pay for it, to address the wealth gap.
“I’m working as hard as I ever worked to make it work,” he told the Times in a video that shows him sitting on a plastic bucket in the garage of his house. “I’m renting out my house right now to try and make ends meet myself.”
The Times article said Price’s decision ended up costing him a few customers and two of his “most valued” employees, who quit after newer employees ended up with bigger salary hikes than older ones.
“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump,” Gravity financial manager Maisey McMaster, 26, told the paper.
She said when she talked to Price about it, he treated her as if she was being selfish and only thinking about herself...
Sunday, August 02, 2015
When Progressive Fantasies Hit Reality
Remember this god of the Left from just a few months ago? He's no longer a god, he's an avatar:
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3 comments:
The article was an interesting read--Price was apparently raised as a strongly conservative-type Fundamentalist Christian (listening regularly to Rush Limbaugh, even). He went to a Christian university in Seattle. And this influence upon his character was what made him decide to try for equality.
Unfortunately, what the Bible means by equality has very little to do with what works in the real world of economics and self-interested people.
He did this for only one reason: an attempt to create demand for his product, based on good will, not quality of product. It was a nice gesture, but any economist will tell you -- if those workers were worth that money, they would have been making it. No surprise here.
You will not attract and keep quality people if you pay slackers the same as key leaders. When you lose your leaders, customer service suffers, sales drop and you suddenly can't afford those $70K salaries anymore. This is why supply and demand works and handouts don't.
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