I've Had It With You Corporations and What You Don't Pay Your People

A lot has been said and written and posted on Facebook and Twitter and such about the minimum wage and how you can't live off it. You can't.

To hear some people talk, raising the minimum wage would only benefit the pimply teen at the burger joint, and just give him more money to buy dope.

Unfortunately, the average minimum wage worker is not 17, but 35. And more likely to be a woman raising children. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Then these same people freak out about how prices will rise if corporations raise the minimum wage. Oh, my, God, we might have to pay fifteen cents more for that burger.

Or, on the other hand, the CEO and his top minions could take a pay cut. The average CEO's pay - compensation and perks included - is now over 300% more than his lowest paid worker. This is up from 46% in 1983, and down from over 400% during the tech boom in the 90's.

Several reasons have been given for the inequality of pay between CEO's and their lowest paid workers. The demise of unions, the rise of sending jobs overseas, shareholders wanting to retain the best CEO so their profits will stay high, and just plain greed.

None of these individually explain it. The world has gotten extremely complicated in the last 40 years or more, and there are few clear cut answers to society's problems. Sometimes I think those in charge count on that.

If they can keep us confused as to the facts surrounding our pitiful wages, not to mention fighting each other over whether or not we should get a higher minimum wage, they can laugh all the way to the bank.

Shame on them.

Shame on Walmart and other corporations paying their workers so little that they qualify for food stamps.

Some corporations are getting it, finally. The CEO of Costco found that his training costs were greatly reduced if he paid his workers a decent wage. They never left! And Dan Price, the young CEO of Gravity Payments, cut his own salary from one million a year to $70,000 to insure he could pay his people extremely well. His profits are soaring.

I would imagine that theft by employees would go down as well. Imagine that.

Come on, corporations - get smart. If you take care of your people, they will take care of you. So many of your people are already taking care of you. Please don't continue to let them down.