Dan Price still in the news

It’s been a while since CEO of Gravity Payments raised everybody’s wages to the minimum of $70K – what he thought was a living wage for his area. And the company is still around and succeeding, despite all of the naysaying.

There’s been a lot of news lately about the labor employment/unemployment rate from the government, especially since last month was stated as way under from what was expected from the experts. The die hard capitalists and Republicans said that the $300 extra benefits to the unemployment pay was giving workers an excuse to be lazy and not accept jobs. A lot of businesses were saying that they can’t find workers to hire because presumably, the lazy workers were at home sitting on their $300 in extra pay.

Now, we always want a single answer to these economic issues but I think that there are usually multiple factors playing a role, some more than others. So, yes, there are probably some workers who are being lazy and decide to sponge on the government benefits rather than work. But a prominent economist (amongst others) suggests another reason:

I don’t know where the data is coming from.

On the far right of the image, under the purple arrow, is the circle for leisure and hospitality – the waiters and waitresses, the McDonald’s, the theaters, etc. – those with low wages where $300/month in extra pay can make a difference and thus would not want to go back to a job that pays less than the government benefits. This group actually saw a huge upswing in employment.

The ones that saw a decline in employment are found on the left – the professional and business services whose behaviors are not likely to be effected by the $300 in extra benefits due to how little the extra pay relative to their former wages. They are not likely to want to live at a vastly lower wages than they were making before so would not eagerly pick up a low wage job.

There has been a lot over the years – not just recently – about the paucity of good paying jobs that would enable workers to sustainably support themselves and their families, so I tend to think that a portion – not all – of our workforce are not immediately going back to their low wage jobs because they are hoping to find something better. There has been quite a few calls for businesses to raise wages if they want to hire workers. Of course, there will always be some who are lazy (just like there will be always some murderers, some white collar criminals, some corrupt politicians – unless we figure out a way to affect the genetic materials).

Dan Price has some pretty incisive comments on his Twitter about the state of affairs of employees’ wages. Here’s a couple below. The most cutting one, to me, is the one about Jeff Bezos.

The guy is brutal.

One last graphic and this one is about how wages and salaries have been declining since the ’70s. I don’t know where the data comes from but I snipped this from a video.

Happy dreams, people!