Living wages

Did you know that you can still pay employees a livable wage and make a decent profit?  Many of us may be familiar with the Costco story, and how they're treating their employees well, and doing very well as a business. WinCoFoods is a discount supermarket in the western United States that is employee owned and generating enough in revenues that many of their workers now have retirement plans with company stock worth over a million dollars.  What a wonderful contrast to Walmart, where instead of sharing the profits with employees, the Walton family, who owns much of Walmart, has wealth equal to the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.  The Waltons take in $8.6 million a day in dividends, while many of their workers struggle mightily to make ends meet. In fact, it is reported in a Forbes article that  Walmart employees cost the tax payers an estimated $6.2 billion in public assistance.

You can read more about the WinCo Foods company in a Forbes article, Millionaire Grocery Clerks: The amazing WinCo Foods story.

Vast income disparity in United States

Did you know that in the USA the average CEO makes a whopping 380 times what the average worker makes?  Unbelievable isn't it?  Want to see just how radically the wealth income is skewed check out the following video, Wealth Inequality in America.  The top one percent have 40% of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 80% only has 7% between them.

Occupy Wall Street Rally

I'm pleased to see that my favorite shopping place, Costco, is backing a rise in minimum wage, Rejecting industry dogma, Costco backs calls to lift minimum wage. I would challenge anyone to visit a Wal-Mart or Sam's Club, and then a Costco and compare the mental/emotional states of the workers. I'm always impressed with the positive attitudes of the people I've met who work at Costco.  Quite to the contrary, I've noticed many employees of other large corporate stores seem to be considerably less cheerful or even helpful.

Paying a livable salary is actually good for business, take it from Costco's chief executive Craig Jelinek,  “Instead of minimizing wages, we know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty.”  I also find it also makes for a far superior shopping experience.

Poverty is not an accident.  Like slavery and apartheid, it is 

man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.  

-Nelson Mandela