One of my favorite CEO's and Democratic contributor, Jim Sinegal founded Costco and continues to run a progressively minded company. With the recent passage of the minimum wage increase in Congress, many people in the corporate world have come out against it, spreading the illogical fear that it will hurt the economy despite reports that show it helps.
He recently sat down with the Washington Post to discuss the issue:
Jim Sinegal, a maverick entrepreneur who founded Costco in 1983 and has resisted Wall Street pressure to cut wages and benefits for his 130,000 employees, said he signed onto the effort because he thinks a higher minimum wage would be good for the nation's economy as well as its workers.
"The more people make, the better lives they're going to have and the better consumers they're going to be," Sinegal said in an interview. "It's going to provide better jobs and better wages."
It really is that simple, the more you pay people the more they will spend. That applies to people who make the minimum wage even more because it is them who have trouble buying essential goods and services that they need so desperately.
Big business as a whole will continually try to say that employers are forced to cut jobs due to rising minimum wages. The truth of the matter is that employers can cut jobs whenever they damned well feel like it. This is just another excuse to keep profits and salaries high at the top, and low at the bottom.
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