pan6467

Wrong analogy.

By raising wages you raise people's work ethic. You pay people enough to live on you have loyal workers. Again, I defer to Henry Ford's "Pay your workers enough to afford your product and you have a customer for life."

Look, when I owned my pizza place I paid my workers $7.50/hour in 1995, and those that worked hard (cleaned and what not without being asked) got raises monthly.. Plus they got tips and mileage (25 cents a mile). I kept my prices below the nationals, I used the best products available (usually paying top dollar to the distributor because I only owned 1 shop). And I still made beaucoup profits.

WHY?

Because, my workers knew I valued them, they were part of the "team" . Their friends and families saw a new pride in them and started buying from me. I helped my workers get apartments, gave them advances for their deposits if needed, made sure they made enough to pay the bills and have 1 night out. They paid me back by being loyal, working hard, and helping me increase business by giving me ideas, giving me a good rep and showing pride in the job. My sales increased from roughly $2500 a week when I bought the place to $10,000 weekly in 3 months.

So my business plan worked flawlessly:

- pay more to the workers (who btw got more in tips and mileage because of the business increase)

- use the best quality product

- sell cheaper

- and I donated the entire night's monies to charity every 1st Tuesday of the month.

I was making a very nice salary and had I not gambled it away with my addiction, there is no doubt in my mind, I would have a chain of Partner's Pizzas.

My point is it is ridiculous to claim any CEO is worth millions while paying the worker squat. You don't get company loyalty that way, you don't build a customer base that way and you sure as Hell can't justify it.

I justified my wages because my workers were well paid also and I could sleep at night.

I have watched others pay as little as possible and lose their business even though they had great product, they had lousy service and no employee loyalty.

The problem existing today is people in the upper tax brackets are content to ignore the low wages for fear they may lose something. When in reality, they pay more in taxes because the burden is lopsided and the low wage earners need more and more gov't assistance.

Manufacturing jobs aren't leaving this country by the 1000's because we are more sophisticated and have better oppurtunities, that's f'n neocon BS. They are leaving because the workers can't afford to buy the product. And the CEO's know they can make more money if they pay lower wages in another country.

The problem is we have become to profit driven and we have lost concern about the worker. Instead of moving forward on what our grandfathers built, a nation with the best education, highest standard of living and a country continuously moving forward to better itself.

We have become stagnated, cynical, have an educational system hurting, a standard of living on the decrease, people more in debt than ever and a gap that continues to grow wider and wider between the rich and the poor.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"