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Things work out much better if you start out with assuming good will from both parties. With that I mean the employee wants to do a good job and the employer wants to treat his employees well.

I think the employer in this case made a good start by giving the employee a decent salary. It doesn't make much sense to think this is some scheme to swap them out for 'better' employees. Also, don't forget the kind of jobs this will affect. It will mostly be low skilled work. The upside of replacing this type of employee with someone who is a little bit better is just not worth the trouble.

The 'golden handcuffs' argument doesn't make a lot of sense either. Sure, it would be hard to give up a seriously overpaid job. But just think of the opportunities it gives you. You could save up a lot of money to start your own business. You could invest in your own education so you are able to land a higher paid job. That's all probably not even interesting because the company from the article treats its employees really well, so they are probably willing and able to help you with any ambition you might have.

People strongly favor secure income over risk, once they have the income. risk-taking is far greater before the safe option has actually started delivering.

The HN crowd (especially founders) probably skews toward risky, but that's not the general mode of behavior.

And people are pretty good at spending the delta of $70k-$50k/yr, especially on things like mortgages that have a many-year lock-in, or past accumulated debt.

This is a different story from the webtech world where a $100K to $200K (or even $1M+) bump creates financial independence (not just security) in the near term.

For the CEO, success appears to be defined as keeping the minimum wage across the entire pool of job candidates set above $70k. The easiest move is the first shift to raise everyone's existing salaries as this is based on previous staffing behavior. The test will be if they have the discipline to continue hiring as they have previously going forward.

For example, if they were hiring new college grads out of school at $40k, will the continue to do so at the same pace? Will they continue to hire new college grads at all?

I mention this because if they don't, they won't meet the CEO's stated goal -- rather they will slowly shift their workforce to weed out those with market rates below $70k.

The only way to prevent this will be to ask managers to purposefully hire candidates with less experience while simultaneously handing them a larger hiring budget.

> purposefully hire candidates with less experience

that's not required at all. Only the budget is needed.

It just is the situation taken to an extreme. While people should be treated fairly its is not wise to treat all jobs as equal. I am all for his reducing his pay to what he deems proper, whether it 75k, twice that, or five times that. I do think it a bit of a off the cuff stunt to move the whole office to one pay rate.

I would not feel all that impressed with the idea if I were a senior level in my career and earning 75k and suddenly the mail boy makes 75k or the level 2 call taker does

> I would not feel all that impressed with the idea if I were a senior level in my career and earning 75k and suddenly the mail boy makes 75k or the level 2 call taker does

I would understand your feeling if it implied you being somehow less well off, or having less chances of being promoted in the future, etc. But you seem to dislike the idea of other people being better off, period. I don't see what you gain from the mail boy being poorer.

I think this is the way of thinking in capitalism. "I have been working my ass off to become what I am now, I have paid college, and now one with lower try is making as much as me. That's not fair." Also this leads to another hidden thought of "That mail boy is currently getting the money which I should have been making".

Well I can't say thought first one is not justified but the second one is really absurd.

Hard work may give you an edge over other people in the same job role, so seniority way be seen as somewhat correlated with hard work within a position, but across job roles pay is much more dependent on other factors for instance the opportunities provided to you by your wealth, race and sex to name a few. I'm of the opinion that just because someone is paid less, doesn't mean they work less hard, and I don't think it fair to begrudge people their pay for quite possibly just not being born with the same silver spoon.

P.S: Not to imply that wealth, race, and sex don't also hinder you within a job role, but I think that it's probably even more prevalent across them.

Shockingly, hard work gives you an edge over other people even in the same wealth, race, or gender categories as well. So, why lean on those categories as an excuse?

> But you seem to dislike the idea of other people being better off, period. I don't see what you gain from the mail boy being poorer.

Great point.

This seems to be an unfortunate aspect of human nature. Many people seem to exhibit the same kind of attitudes, myself included. It takes mental effort to correctly realign one's own thinking.

Similar attitudes arise around the idea of a Basic Income. The gut reaction of most people is "why would I support the idea of a lazy bum getting free money?". It takes mental effort to shift one's own position on the matter.

It's interesting that (in America at least) a lot of people who are not wealthy fight to keep taxes low for the wealthy because they assume they might be wealthy someday. Yet fewer people fight for entitlements for lazy bums despite the fact that becoming a lazy bum is a much more realizable aspiration.

"Temporarily embarrassed millionaries"

It's not about what position you personally are more likely to end up in. It's about the incentives it creates.

You are assuming motives to other people.

So let me make my assumption: the people are not fighting to keep taxes low for the wealthy because they assume they might be (extremely) wealthy someday. That possibility is so very small. They are fighting to keep taxes low for the wealthy because they assume that this helps the society to develop its economy and technology, become wealthier and collect a higher tax revenue, as opposed to higher tax percentages.

You know, the government cannot consume percentages, it consumes money.

Over 20 years ago, in the midst of a huge recession and collapse of tax base, my country dropped the marginal tax rate for high earners of capital gains from 65 % to 25 %. What followed was a substantial rise in tax revenue. It doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen in one year. Conjunctures impact it. But when you are at the falling slope of Laffer curve, it would be good to do something about it.

I think that is exactly the negative attitude that they are trying to reduce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.#Game_theo...

The logic is a mess here.

A) Nobody is mad that a mail boy makes $75k. They are mad that they carry more of a workload than a mail boy but are rewarded with identical compensation.

B) It bolsters stagnation. $75k is great pay for mail room work. I should buy a bigger house, more TV's, enjoy this life. Never shall I be bothered with professional growth again!

C) Mail room workers don't generate or assist in $75k of revenue for the company, they generate or mitigate costs of drastically less. Therefore we are now working for a company that is forced to needlessly pass the costs on to our customers.

All this crazy pay is fun if you are in a tech bubble or in a single city in California where everyone can be this 'innovative' but the fact is, most people aren't able to contribute to a cause to the tune of $75k/yr.

Your logic right also be a tad messy. A company like that probably doesn't have a "mail boy" or anything very similar. The lowest paying jobs are probably customer support and office manager which are always inexplicably low-paying jobs.

Well, Ford didn't do too badly.

As for what if someone better shows up, well if you were swapping out staff every time someone you thought was better showed up, irrespective of money, you would kill off your business. Stability is more important than chasing some vision of perfection if you are wanting to get stuff done.

That's a good point. Part of me is trained to think about this like an economist (the subject of one of my bachelor's), but in the end I really hope that human compassion triumphs and this proves to be a win-win. I'm routing for Mr. Price.

Ford wasn't doing it to be nice. Ford was trying to cut turnover as that was costing him loads.

And likely getting better quality, harder workers in the process.

Even economists have to take into account transaction costs. Hiring someone new is often a fairly costly transaction.

I frequently worry that the measurement of success is shrinking from how a community prospers to how well an individual prospers. As low-wage workers commute from distant communities and we become isolated in our own worlds of gated communities and like-minded netizens, there's little incentive to improve our surroundings.

It's tough to quantify the happiness and peace of mind that I get from experiencing a well cared-for community.

Ford was more or less forced to do it due to technological advantage he developed (assembly line) and increase in amount of training an efficient worker would have to go through.

There are businesses that survive on innovative processes (and highly trained workers to follow those processes) and those that survive on dumbed-down any-idiot-should-be-able-to-follow-this processes. In some industries you get an edge by choosing the former, in some you have to choose the latter.

> a better man

You mean person.

Here's the part of the quote you ignored. Notice he says person twice.

> What happens if a better man for the job shows up? At such a market premium, the business could reasonably hire the slightly better person and terminate the other person, but then this is hardly "compassionate."

Quoting one thing is not ignoring another.

The problem is you were claiming discrimination where none existed. In that, yes, you were ignoring the other.

I implied it, but didn't claim it. Using the word "man" in a sentence where the subject is also referred to as "person" is at least a copy editing mistake.

Also, you have no idea if he was discriminating. I don't think he was, since I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But you don't know either.

The point is: people should be conscious of the words they use. Accidentally or not.

This probably just comes down to your considering political correctness to be important and my considering political correctness to be overblown.