I believe in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. The difficulty is defining the term “fair.” Reasonable people can differ as to what “fair” means. Ah, the devil is in the details!
The push for an increased minimum wage has been emphasized recently, particularly in the fast food and retail industries. Advocates of higher wages want to see a $15 minimum wage. To me, $15 for flipping a burger or greeting me at the store with a shopping cart is too much money. It’s a job a high school student could perform. Unfortunately, for many reasons, parents are in those jobs supporting families. But do we increase the minimum wage because we feel sympathy for those persons stuck performing menial labor? One fair person could persuasively argue yes. Another fair person could persuasively argue no.
Personally, I believe that low-paying jobs have great value. I have had plenty of low paying jobs. In my teens I worked as a laborer in the construction industry in the hot Arizona sun at $3 per hour. I also worked my way through college in food service industry earning a meager wage. If nothing else, those jobs convinced me that an education is something I wanted.
But if I had only known what I learned today, perhaps I would have stayed in food services. USA Today did a survey to find out what the top earners at several restaurant and retail businesses. (Read about it here — http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/04/06/how-much-ceos-earn-per-hour/?hootPostID=f61f738179dc3957ec7dcfd13f4800cd) The top burrito (otherwise known as the CEO) at Chipotle’s makes $$13,489 per hour. But that assumes that Mr. Moran works a 40-hour workweek. He is more likely working 60-hour weeks. At that pace, his hourly wage drops to a paltry $8,993.
Mexican food, it turns out, is a better job than baking bread. Panera Bread’s CEO makes only $862 per hour (assuming 60 hours per week). At that rate, it takes poor Mr. Shaich an entire month to earn enough money to pay cash for the median home in the USA. Of course, he probably takes a big hit on taxes so it might be two months before he could buy that house outright.
What is fair? It seems to me that it is something less than $9K per hour. But what do I know? Perhaps Mr. Moran is really, really good at what he does. But is he that good?