Name: Dan Price.
Age: 35.
Appearance: Literally like Jesus.
Religious nut, is he? No. Dan Price is the co-founder of Gravity Payments, a credit card processing and financial services company.
Oh, so he’s a baddie? That depends. Does taking a $1m pay cut in order to give every one of your 120 staff a comfortable salary sound like something a baddie would do?
I guess not. Well, that is what Dan Price did. After an argument with an employee who felt he wasn’t being paid his worth, Price went away and studied economic theory to discover how much money the average American needs to be happy.
And how much is that? $70,000 or £54,000.
So what did he do? He started paying everyone a minimum of $70,000. For a third of his employees, this meant doubling their wages.
But wouldn’t all that money just make everyone lazy? Apparently not. Since the announcement, the amount of money that Gravity Payments processes has tripled. The belief is that – now they are not preoccupied with the problem of how to make ends meet – the employees are more focused on their jobs, and happier because they work for a company that recognises their value.
How on earth do you measure happiness? Price has said that more employees are buying homes and starting families as a result of his decision. They are getting fit, too. And kinder; they recently all chipped in to buy Price a new car as a show of gratitude. It all seems like a perfect example of socialism in action.
So are more companies following his lead? Nope. Price thinks that he might have influenced Amazon’s decision to raise its minimum wage, but then again Amazon’s boss is one of the world’s richest men. If he was to share his worth among his 800,000 employees, they would each be on double what Price pays his.
But should more companies follow his lead? Well, that’s another question.
Why? Well, would you want everyone in your company to be well paid?
Yes! My God! But what about the guy who tweets cat gifs all day and steals butter from the office fridge? Should he get the same minimum pay as everyone else?
No, he should obviously earn much less. You see? Isn’t it tricky? There must have been plenty of people at Gravity Payments who had similar reservations, but Dan Price went ahead and did it anyway.
So I see. And look, paradise was on the other side. It just goes to show the amazing things that can happen when everyone is paid fairly.
Do say: “All companies should pay their employees a comfortable amount.”
Don’t say: “But only if that amount is significantly more than I’m currently on.”
• This article was amended on 6 March 2020. $70,000 is the minimum wage received by workers at the company, not the same wage received by all staff as we said in an earlier version.
