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Dan Price raises minimum wage at his company to $70,000 a year

Then as I said above if it's other people, "who cares?"

This is a web forum where we discuss things. If we do not care what other people say why are we here?

Since the claim was about the conjecture that paying people twice as much will instantly double their capacity then if that's not Price's conjecture and this discussion is about his actions and motivations then what other people surmise doesn't really matter. What matters is what Price has claimed his motivations are. Anything else is simple mental masturbation which feels good otherwise we wouldn't do so much of it here. And I'm not against that per se but when discussing the motivations and conjectures of a particular person then what that person says about is what matters.

And if Price believes paying his clerks twice as much will result in more profit it seems to indicate that he believes they will become 2X+ as productive.

No it doesn't.

Huh? How does paying people twice as much to do a job lead to more profit if they are not 2x+ more productive.

First of all not everyone is getting their pay doubled so there's that.

Let's take this scenario (anybody know how to post a table?):

Revenue|20,000,000|20,000,000|20,000,000
Payroll|5,2000,000|8,470,000|9,400,000
Other Costs|10,000,000|10,000,000|10,000,000
Net Income|4,8000,000|1,530,000|600,000

In the above table for column 1 I assumed 120 employees at an avg pay of 35,000 plus Price's 1,000,000 salary.

In column 2 I doubled the avg pay for the 120 employees to 70,000 and reduced Price's salary by 930,000.

in column 3 I kept the avg pay for the 120 employees at 70,000 and restored 930,000 to Price's salary making it 1,000,000 again.

In column 2 revenue would only need to go up 16% to get back to 4,800,000 in profit.

In column 3 revenue would need to go up 21% to get back to 4,8000,000 in profit.

That is nowhere near a doubling of productivity needed to get back to the original amount of dollar profit.

Of course the arguments against my scenarios above would be that there are some variable costs in the "Other Costs" group and you'd be right but it wouldn't be enough to drastically change the equation and bring it so that 2x productivity would be needed in order to restore profitability.

Another argument against my scenario would be that getting back to the original amount of profit in dollars is not the same as getting to the same level of profit percentage. That is also true but I haven't read anything that says Price is concerned about maintaining the same profit percentage and that he's happy with a lower return in exchange for better compensated employees.

If I have a business processing records and I currently pay someone $10 per hour to process 10 records per hour if I start paying them $20 per hour how many records per hour do they have to process for me to increase my profits?

Unless their cost to you is your only cost for processsing records then it would be less than 2x in order to start increasing your profits. It's simple arithmetic.

I'm particularly curious how not paying them more for the next 3 years helps things along.

I can see, perhaps a silly person attempting to argue from ideologically necessity that if he doubles their pay now this will motivate them to learn to be more productive and at some point in the future they will learn to be 2X+ productive but that argues for paying them more now to start the process not waiting three years to pay them more. What magic is unleashed by waiting 3 years?

Where did you get the idea that the Gravity employees aren't getting more for the next 3 years? What I've read said the raise to $70k is being done over 3 years which implies some form of more money is starting to go to employees now.

Sure he may be giving them little bits of a raise now and nobly enduring the pain that paying his employees less than 70k causes within his soul. But why not the whole thing now?

I do not detect an answer to that question.

Maybe he's relying on the confidence fairy. They know it's coming and so will start working harder/smarter now in anticipation.

So for the next three years he gets the benefit of them working harder while not paying them? How will that go over in the depths of his soul?

You've slipped back to him not paying them any more until three years has gone by so I don't think I need to address that again since that's not what is happening.

And, if these people are slacking so much now that they'll instantly be twice as productive if he dangles the promise of a raise in the future in front of them maybe he needs better workers.

Or you need better assumptions since no one has claimed, other than you and certainly not Price, that his employees are currently slacking.

What is the benefit you allege from waiting the three years to raise their salaries to 70K versus doing it now?

I'm not alleging anything. I'm too busy asking you how you come to your conclusions that aren't based on anything Dan Price has actually said or claimed.

You seem to be alleging Dan Price's employees are currently a bunch of slackers who could be more than twice as productive if they really decided to work hard. I'm not sure why you hate workers so much.

I'm not sure why you are going to such lengths to trash workers so as to defend Dan Price's capacity to earn even more profits.

If your faith leads you to argue that doubling a workers salary leads to more profits what about tripling it?

Would tripling it lead to even more? How about quadrupling it?

Where would you say the magic power of increasing expenses to gain more profits stops?

lol
 
Let's take this scenario (anybody know how to post a table?):

Revenue|20,000,000|20,000,000|20,000,000
Payroll|5,2000,000|8,470,000|9,400,000
Other Costs|10,000,000|10,000,000|10,000,000
Net Income|4,8000,000|1,530,000|600,000

In the above table for column 1 I assumed 120 employees at an avg pay of 35,000 plus Price's 1,000,000 salary.

In column 2 I doubled the avg pay for the 120 employees to 70,000 and reduced Price's salary by 930,000.

in column 3 I kept the avg pay for the 120 employees at 70,000 and restored 930,000 to Price's salary making it 1,000,000 again.

In column 2 revenue would only need to go up 16% to get back to 4,800,000 in profit.

In column 3 revenue would need to go up 21% to get back to 4,8000,000 in profit.

That is nowhere near a doubling of productivity needed to get back to the original amount of dollar profit.

Ah, now we can see your error.

Why would you assume paying record processing clerks more would cause revenue to go up at all?
 
Well, I think it's safe to say $70K minimum wage project is a failure.

I think it's safe to say there is absolutely no way for you to know that at this time.

As I said earlier, $70k is not sustainable and have no economical basis it's a mathematical fact, same way $470k minimum wage is unsustainable.

That's nice, but there is no reason to think it is true in this case, and $70k is a long way from $470k.

Mr. Price can't pay such wages now, and his vague proclamations that he "will" be able to in the future are just that - vague proclamations.

We don't know that he can't pay such wages now. All we know is that he has decided to phase the increases in over the next three years. Feel free to bookmark this thread, and throw it back in my face three years from now if it turns out that you were right.

dismal has a point, all these attempts to put some economical justification for this nonsense make no sense.

And neither do your attempts to second guess Mr. Price, as I am sure he knows more about the economics of his company than you do.
 
For one thing, it is actually happening.

You mean the Dan Price media circus combined with not actually raising people's salaries has caused revenues to go up already?

Not exactly an argument that raising a clerk's wages causes revenues to go up.

Certainly the next 100 people to do it will not get the same media attention as the heroic and noble Dan Price.
 
What about contracted services that Gravity Payments utilizes? Does it have a contracted janitorial company to clean up it's offices? is Dan making sure that such contractor pays its employees $70,000 minimum? Or will Gravity Payments hire it's own janitors as its own employees to make sure they get the minimum amount? If none of these, can't he just avoid his promise by using contractors for many types of services for which he could hire employees, which will allow his companies to save money indirectly though the cheaper services (available at such a low price because the contractors are paid market wages)?
 
What about contracted services that Gravity Payments utilizes? Does it have a contracted janitorial company to clean up it's offices? is Dan making sure that such contractor pays its employees $70,000 minimum? Or will Gravity Payments hire it's own janitors as its own employees to make sure they get the minimum amount? If none of these, can't he just avoid his promise by using contractors for many types of services for which he could hire employees, which will allow his companies to save money indirectly though the cheaper services (available at such a low price because the contractors are paid market wages)?
Unless you have any evidence Mr. Price is currently engaging in such practices or is planning to outsource, none of that is relevant to this discussion. However, to be fair, almost none of the naysayer's or skeptics posts have been relevant to the discussion up to this point.
 
For one thing, it is actually happening.

You mean the Dan Price media circus combined with not actually raising people's salaries has caused revenues to go up already?

I think after at least two corrections on this point that it's safe to say that you're not just misinformed about what's happening but that you're actively trying to lie about what's happening.

What's making you so uptight that you can't even acknowledge simple facts about what Price is doing? It's hard to have a decent conversation with one party refusing to accept simple, non-controversial facts.
 
You mean the Dan Price media circus combined with not actually raising people's salaries has caused revenues to go up already?

I think after at least two corrections on this point that it's safe to say that you're not just misinformed about what's happening but that you're actively trying to lie about what's happening.

What's making you so uptight that you can't even acknowledge simple facts about what Price is doing? It's hard to have a decent conversation with one party refusing to accept simple, non-controversial facts.


Has he started to raise all the wages he agreed to? What has his revenue gone up by? Can you find a way to attribute the raise in wages to the increase productivity? Or was the increased revenue been because of the marketing news that his company has received? As I said, let's what 3 years and see what happens.
 
You mean the Dan Price media circus combined with not actually raising people's salaries has caused revenues to go up already?

I think after at least two corrections on this point that it's safe to say that you're not just misinformed about what's happening but that you're actively trying to lie about what's happening.

What's making you so uptight that you can't even acknowledge simple facts about what Price is doing? It's hard to have a decent conversation with one party refusing to accept simple, non-controversial facts.

I'm sorry what are the simple non-controversial facts here that establish paying clerks more makes revenue go up?

I'm mostly hearing faith based claims this will happen and/or appeals to take Dan Price's word as gospel.
 
Let's take this scenario (anybody know how to post a table?):
click reply, click "go advanced" click the table icon (just under the B-for-bold)
[table="width: 500, class: grid, align: left"]
[tr]
[td]Revenue[/td]
[td]20,000,000[/td]
[td]20,000,000[/td]
[td]20,000,000[/td]
[td]120@35K + 1@1M[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Payroll[/td]
[td]5,2000,000[/td]
[td]8,470,000[/td]
[td]9,400,000[/td]
[td]121@70K[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Other Costs[/td]
[td]10,000,000[/td]
[td]10,000,000[/td]
[td]10,000,000[/td]
[td]120@70K + 1@1M[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Net Income[/td]
[td]4,800,000[/td]
[td]1,530,000[/td]
[td]600,000[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]



In column 2 revenue would only need to go up 16% to get back to 4,800,000 in profit.

In column 3 revenue would need to go up 21% to get back to 4,8000,000 in profit.

There ya go.
 
What about contracted services that Gravity Payments utilizes? Does it have a contracted janitorial company to clean up it's offices? is Dan making sure that such contractor pays its employees $70,000 minimum? Or will Gravity Payments hire it's own janitors as its own employees to make sure they get the minimum amount? If none of these, can't he just avoid his promise by using contractors for many types of services for which he could hire employees, which will allow his companies to save money indirectly though the cheaper services (available at such a low price because the contractors are paid market wages)?
Unless you have any evidence Mr. Price is currently engaging in such practices or is planning to outsource, none of that is relevant to this discussion. However, to be fair, almost none of the naysayer's or skeptics posts have been relevant to the discussion up to this point.

What makes you think that routine business decisions (whether to do something in-house or to outsource) are not being made at Mr. Price's company?
 
I think after at least two corrections on this point that it's safe to say that you're not just misinformed about what's happening but that you're actively trying to lie about what's happening.

What's making you so uptight that you can't even acknowledge simple facts about what Price is doing? It's hard to have a decent conversation with one party refusing to accept simple, non-controversial facts.

I'm sorry what are the simple non-controversial facts here that establish paying clerks more makes revenue go up?

I'm mostly hearing faith based claims this will happen and/or appeals to take Dan Price's word as gospel.

I think you should clarify with paying Price's clerks more, because in general there might be reasons why paying some clerks more might increase revenue and productivity.
 
click reply, click "go advanced" click the table icon (just under the B-for-bold)
[table="width: 500, class: grid, align: left"]
[tr]
[td]Revenue[/td]
[td]20,000,000[/td]
[td]20,000,000[/td]
[td]20,000,000[/td]
[td]120@35K + 1@1M[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Payroll[/td]
[td]5,2000,000[/td]
[td]8,470,000[/td]
[td]9,400,000[/td]
[td]121@70K[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Other Costs[/td]
[td]10,000,000[/td]
[td]10,000,000[/td]
[td]10,000,000[/td]
[td]120@70K + 1@1M[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Net Income[/td]
[td]4,800,000[/td]
[td]1,530,000[/td]
[td]600,000[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]



In column 2 revenue would only need to go up 16% to get back to 4,800,000 in profit.

In column 3 revenue would need to go up 21% to get back to 4,8000,000 in profit.

There ya go.

Thanks!!!
 
click reply, click "go advanced" click the table icon (just under the B-for-bold)


There ya go.





Thanks!!!


You would also have to figure the added costs that go up with the proportion of the salary too, so it's slightly higher because other costs like SS payments, so 17% and 22% or a little more. I think you are underestimating how hard it is to increase revenues by nearly 20%.
 
I think after at least two corrections on this point that it's safe to say that you're not just misinformed about what's happening but that you're actively trying to lie about what's happening.

What's making you so uptight that you can't even acknowledge simple facts about what Price is doing? It's hard to have a decent conversation with one party refusing to accept simple, non-controversial facts.

I'm sorry what are the simple non-controversial facts here that establish paying clerks more makes revenue go up?

The part where you keep insisting there are no raises for 3 years.
 
I'm sorry what are the simple non-controversial facts here that establish paying clerks more makes revenue go up?

I'm mostly hearing faith based claims this will happen and/or appeals to take Dan Price's word as gospel.

I think you should clarify with paying Price's clerks more, because in general there might be reasons why paying some clerks more might increase revenue and productivity.

I wouldn't argue that paying more for clerks couldn't increase the productivity of clerks, but I think much of the effect would be getting better people and his plan is to pay the same people more.

I would argue that paying a clerk 2X means the clerk will produce 2X+ is an absurdity. Slightly less absurd than arguing paying a clerk 3X will result in 3X plus productivity.

And if you have a lot of slacking clerks working at less than 50% of their capacity I would also argue that whatever productivity gains may be available can probably be better achieved through targeted incentives and/or firing the least productive clerks than by doubling everyone's salary and hoping they work harder.

Why anyone would expect paying clerks more to increase revenue is a mystery to me. The best I could come up with is something like their error rate would go down and customers would be more likely to be retained. I don't know why we would blindly assume the amount of revenue gained this way would offset the additional cost, or that the most efficient way to reduce the error rate is to double everyone's salary as opposed to some sort of incentive plan directly targeted at reducing error rate and/or firing clerks with an unacceptable error rate.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm sorry what are the simple non-controversial facts here that establish paying clerks more makes revenue go up?

The part where you keep insisting there are no raises for 3 years.

Where did I do that?
 
Thanks!!!

You would also have to figure the added costs that go up with the proportion of the salary too, so it's slightly higher because other costs like SS payments, so 17% and 22% or a little more. I think you are underestimating how hard it is to increase revenues by nearly 20%.

Maybe . . . but 20% is not 200% which was my point against dismal's claims that there'd need to be a corresponding doubling of productivity which despite his more recent protestations has to mean a doubling of the work to be done which means a doubling of the revenue being generated. Because if staffing levels remain the same then it's impossible for the same amount of staff to be twice as productive if the amount of work needing to be done stays the same.
 
I'm sorry what are the simple non-controversial facts here that establish paying clerks more makes revenue go up?

The part where you keep insisting there are no raises for 3 years.

Where did I do that?

You did it here:

If the conjecture is that paying a records processing clerk twice as much instantly makes them more than twice as productive at processing records what does the waiting three years accomplish?

If you wait 3 years all you get is 3 fewer years of this awesome 2X+ productivity. And 3 fewer years of the even more spectacular profits that productivity would generate. Not to mention there's 3 more years for the inequality of it all to eat at Dan Prices gut.

Here:

Is the conjecture that paying a records processing clerk twice as much instantly makes them more than twice as productive at processing records?

As I understand it, yes, as impossibly simplistic as it seems people are arguing that.

What are you saying the conjecture actually is?

I'm particularly curious how not paying them more for the next 3 years helps things along.

I can see, perhaps a silly person attempting to argue from ideologically necessity that if he doubles their pay now this will motivate them to learn to be more productive and at some point in the future they will learn to be 2X+ productive but that argues for paying them more now to start the process not waiting three years to pay them more. What magic is unleashed by waiting 3 years?

After this post I had hopes we were done with the whole "no raises for 3 years" thing:

Where did Price give that conjecture as you understand it? If it's other people and not Price then who cares?

There are certainly people in the thread that have claimed it. And if Price believes paying his clerks twice as much will result in more profit it seems to indicate that he believes they will become 2X+ as productive.

I'm particularly curious how not paying them more for the next 3 years helps things along.

I can see, perhaps a silly person attempting to argue from ideologically necessity that if he doubles their pay now this will motivate them to learn to be more productive and at some point in the future they will learn to be 2X+ productive but that argues for paying them more now to start the process not waiting three years to pay them more. What magic is unleashed by waiting 3 years?

Where did you get the idea that the Gravity employees aren't getting more for the next 3 years? What I've read said the raise to $70k is being done over 3 years which implies some form of more money is starting to go to employees now.


Sure he may be giving them little bits of a raise now and nobly enduring the pain that paying his employees less than 70k causes within his soul. But why not the whole thing now?

I do not detect an answer to that question.

What is the benefit you allege from waiting the three years to raise their salaries to 70K versus doing it now?

But then you went right back to it here:

Then as I said above if it's other people, "who cares?"

This is a web forum where we discuss things. If we do not care what other people say why are we here?

And if Price believes paying his clerks twice as much will result in more profit it seems to indicate that he believes they will become 2X+ as productive.

No it doesn't.

Huh? How does paying people twice as much to do a job lead to more profit if they are not 2x+ more productive.

If I have a business processing records and I currently pay someone $10 per hour to process 10 records per hour if I start paying them $20 per hour how many records per hour do they have to process for me to increase my profits?

I'm particularly curious how not paying them more for the next 3 years helps things along.

I can see, perhaps a silly person attempting to argue from ideologically necessity that if he doubles their pay now this will motivate them to learn to be more productive and at some point in the future they will learn to be 2X+ productive but that argues for paying them more now to start the process not waiting three years to pay them more. What magic is unleashed by waiting 3 years?

Where did you get the idea that the Gravity employees aren't getting more for the next 3 years? What I've read said the raise to $70k is being done over 3 years which implies some form of more money is starting to go to employees now.

Sure he may be giving them little bits of a raise now and nobly enduring the pain that paying his employees less than 70k causes within his soul. But why not the whole thing now?

I do not detect an answer to that question.

Maybe he's relying on the confidence fairy. They know it's coming and so will start working harder/smarter now in anticipation.

So for the next three years he gets the benefit of them working harder while not paying them? How will that go over in the depths of his soul?

And, if these people are slacking so much now that they'll instantly be twice as productive if he dangles the promise of a raise in the future in front of them maybe he needs better workers.


What is the benefit you allege from waiting the three years to raise their salaries to 70K versus doing it now?

I'm not alleging anything. I'm too busy asking you how you come to your conclusions that aren't based on anything Dan Price has actually said or claimed.

You seem to be alleging Dan Price's employees are currently a bunch of slackers who could be more than twice as productive if they really decided to work hard. I'm not sure why you hate workers so much.

I'm not sure why you are going to such lengths to trash workers so as to defend Dan Price's capacity to earn even more profits.

If your faith leads you to argue that doubling a workers salary leads to more profits what about tripling it?

Would tripling it lead to even more? How about quadrupling it?

Where would you say the magic power of increasing expenses to gain more profits stops?

And here:

For one thing, it is actually happening.

You mean the Dan Price media circus combined with not actually raising people's salaries has caused revenues to go up already?

Not exactly an argument that raising a clerk's wages causes revenues to go up.

Certainly the next 100 people to do it will not get the same media attention as the heroic and noble Dan Price.

hth
 
You would also have to figure the added costs that go up with the proportion of the salary too, so it's slightly higher because other costs like SS payments, so 17% and 22% or a little more. I think you are underestimating how hard it is to increase revenues by nearly 20%.

Maybe . . . but 20% is not 200% which was my point against dismal's claims that there'd need to be a corresponding doubling of productivity which despite his more recent protestations has to mean a doubling of the work to be done which means a doubling of the revenue being generated. Because if staffing levels remain the same then it's impossible for the same amount of staff to be twice as productive if the amount of work needing to be done stays the same.

Assuming magic unicorns do not come and increase the revenue, there needs to be a more than a doubling of productivity to increase profit by paying someone double.

I will grant you that if magic unicorns come and increase the revenue enough you can pay people double and have the same profit.

But unless it's the paying people double that causes the magic unicorns to come you still don't have an argument that increasing the salaries causes profits to go up.
 
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