"Socialist" Pay Structure downs Seattle Company
http://www.businessinsider.com/dan-price-gravity-payments-employees-leave-2015-7
I'm not sure what this douche was thinking. "Let's give everyone equal pay regardless of skill, experience, and time involved." It's that kind of naivete that frustrates me. Stupid liberals trying to be different for difference sake.
Why would anyone with a college degree who is highly skilled worked for someone who pays, for example, a high school drop-out the same amount of money as they pay them? If it was me I'd tell the boss to go phuck himself and go find somebody to work for who would appreciate my skills and pay me what I deserve which would be much more than some kid who just came from a job flipping burgers or some other garbage job.
Originally posted by Star428
Why would anyone with a college degree who is highly skilled worked for someone who pays, for example, a high school drop-out the same amount of money as they pay them? If it was me I'd tell the boss to go phuck himself and go find somebody to work for who would appreciate my skills and pay me what I deserve which would be much more than some kid who just came from a job flipping burgers or some other garbage job.
Pretty soon we won't even be able to recognize our country as the same one our founding fathers fought for and won the independence of. If that old bag Hillary gets elected it'll get even worse. She'll make Obama look like an amateur in Socialism. Hell, some democrats (like Bernie Sanders) even admit that they're socialists. As if that's something to actually be proud of or something. LOL. At least they're honest about it (being socialists) though. Unlike Hillary and Obama.
Be careful. I agree his decision lacked foresight. But macroeconomics are vastly different than anything on an individual-company level. The number of variables involved are astronomically higher.
I'm a Friedman-ian free market adherent. Proof. So this isn't a defense of socialism. But this is me saying that this story says nothing about the viability of socialism, or lack thereof.
...
On the story itself, the approach was rather hamfisted. Take Costco. It pays its employees a lot, comparatively speaking. After a year doing ANYTHING there, you make something like $19/hr., give or take. That may be a lot or a little to you personally, but it's a great wage for the industry. And the underlying thought process is the same; they're legitimately trying to give back some corporate profits to some of the lowest paid employees. A single adult can't live on the wage of, say, some of its competitors (usually ~$10 indefinitely, unless promoted), much less one with debts or children. So it has done a ton for Costco's corporate culture and employee morale and retention rate.
But look at how it was handled compared to Gravity. Gravity's change was sudden and total, and incredibly public. He lacked the infrastructure to handle the change, and the data to predict and account for increased costs of business. Basically, he bit off more than he could chew. Meanwhile, Costco, in a more traditional corporate structure, has the national infrastructure to continue making a profit without generating too much attention or angering key employees that threaten the business's stability.
So I see Gravity's failure as more an indictment of his research (or lack thereof) into the machinations of pay scales and how it affects a company, and also his execution of the concept. Less sweeping, but still significant, raises would have likely worked. And he undoubtedly made it harder on himself by calling such attention to it. Not all publicity, as it turns out, is a good thing, as evidenced by his business-owning peers turning on him for upstaging them, and higher ranking employees turning rank for devaluing their jobs compared to entry-level positions. His heart was in the right place, but his execution was tragically flawed.
Originally posted by Star428
Why would anyone with a college degree who is highly skilled worked for someone who pays, for example, a high school drop-out the same amount of money as they pay them? If it was me I'd tell the boss to go phuck himself and go find somebody to work for who would appreciate my skills and pay me what I deserve which would be much more than some kid who just came from a job flipping burgers or some other garbage job.
This is one of the problems he encountered at Gravity, yes. But there's a slight strawman here, bc I highly doubt anyone was hired at Gravity with less than a bachelor's degree in a relevant field. The educational contrast between new hires and management is almost assuredly not as stark as you're making it out to be. I agree paying everyone the same is an issue, though, regardless of education level.
Originally posted by Omega Vision
Yes, let's look at one extreme outlier where people are getting paid too much and ignore the much more common phenomena of people getting paid slave wages. I'm sure the first is a much more pressing socioeconomic problem. 😐
Oh yes, everyone making the same for different skill levels and then getting pissed is an outlier, NOT the norm. Lol
I'm a Friedman-ian free market adherent
Originally posted by Digi
Cool, but I'd love to see an acknowledgement of my other points, because I think it's unfair to use this story as a sweeping political or economic statement.
The only point I'm making is paying everyone the same salary regardless of skills, experience, or amount of work put in, is idiotic on any level.
Originally posted by Star428
Why would anyone with a college degree who is highly skilled worked for someone who pays, for example, a high school drop-out the same amount of money as they pay them? If it was me I'd tell the boss to go phuck himself and go find somebody to work for who would appreciate my skills and pay me what I deserve which would be much more than some kid who just came from a job flipping burgers or some other garbage job.
Not for the first time- could you please stop with the bad language?
Originally posted by ArtificialGlory
This isn't socialism
I know he put "Socialist" in quotes, but the title is quite misleading. What he describes isn't actually socialism, and pretending like there isn't room for individual achievement in a socialist system is hilarious.
Originally posted by Star428
Pretty soon we won't even be able to recognize our country as the same one our founding fathers fought for and won the independence of. If that old bag Hillary gets elected it'll get even worse. She'll make Obama look like an amateur in Socialism. Hell, some democrats (like Bernie Sanders) even admit that they're socialists. As if that's something to actually be proud of or something. LOL. At least they're honest about it (being socialists) though. Unlike Hillary and Obama.
Socialism isn't a dirty word.
The title is also misleading by saying 'downs', as if the company has folded. The company's only real trouble right now, in fact, is an unrelated lawsuit. In terms of sheer business, the long-term outlook for the company has improved due to publicity
Meanwhile, the problem with issuing the statement "paying everyone the same salary regardless of skills, experience, or amount of work put in is idiotic " is twofold:
1. It's so obvious that everyone would agree with it
2. It's not what's happening here.
This company is not paying everyone the same- the company has drastically improved its minimum wage offer. There is an argument that they've not raised the intermediate wages enough in balance, but to try and make this 'company pays everyone the same regardless' is misleading.
The biggest issue with this plan is mentioned by one of those who left- the principle here may have merit but it's no good as an isolated case. Because no-one else is doing the same thing, trying to get promoted to a different company probably means taking a pay cut, and in a broad sense that's not viable for an economy. There has to be decent incentive to get promoted in the economy as a whole, not just in the company you are in.
I know he put "Socialist" in quotes, but the title is quite misleading. What he describes isn't actually socialism, and pretending like there isn't room for individual achievement in a socialist system is hilarious.
If we find something that works better
The title is also misleading by saying 'downs', as if the company has folded. The company's only real trouble right now, in fact, is an unrelated lawsuit. In terms of sheer business, the long-term outlook for the company has improved due to publicity
1. It's so obvious that everyone would agree with it
Like Ush said, this is a very misleading title, the bigger article that business insider copied from is this New York Time piece http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-with-backlash-against-the-raise-that-roared.html?_r=0 which is much more nuanced and discusses both the pros and cons of the situation, as well as positive and negative reactions towards it.
The company, btw, almost doubled its monthly sign ups, so it's actually far from being in trouble because of this action (although an unrelated lawsuit seems to be an issue).
At any rate, this has absolutely nothing to do with socialism, the very opposite really, this businessman wants to run his own business in a way to provide a good (perhaps even great) minimum wage for his employees, because he sees advantages from it, and believes in the good old American conservative mantra of a honest day's pay for a honest day's work...