Nicholas Kristof: "The Company That Pays Everyone $70,000.00" - A Progress Report

Dan Price, owner of Gravity Payments, center, visiting a customer with a member of his sales team in Seattle. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Nicholas Kristof: The company that pays everyone $70,000 Do you remember that four years ago a company in Seattle, Gravity Payments, announced that it was going to pay everybody a minimum salary of $70,000 a year? At the time, Rush Limbaugh predicted that the company would collapse, and Fox News called the owner a “lunatic.” I flew to Seattle to find out what had happened at the company — and discovered that employees were now able to buy homes, start families and live better lives, even as the company thrived. Here’s what I found.

One reason for my interest in Gravity is that American capitalism manifestly has some profound problems. One of the most striking examples is the way drug companies helped manufacture (or, more generously, amplify) a pain crisis that they offered the solution to, in the form of prescription opioids. Some 80 percent of people with opioid addictions in the U.S. started with prescription pain killers, and it’s difficult to distinguish ethically between some pharma CEOs and Colombian drug lords. New York State just this week filed a suit alleging that the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma moved assets around to protect them from opioid litigation; the family denies it. Now here’s my column on what happened when a company raised its minimum salary to $70,000 for even the humblest employee. There are some lessons here for other companies. Please read! Remember the Guy Who Gave His Employees a $70K Minimum Wage? What Happened Next? http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/10/remember-guy-who-gave-his-employees-70k.html Couple Donates Half Their Annual Income Because They Have Enough And Others Don't http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/10/couple-donates-half-annual-income.html Pax on both houses: $50,000 May Be the (New) Happiness Tipping ... Pax on both houses: "The Commons" and Happiness    ..