Remember the guy who raised all of his employee's pay to 70K per year? It's been a huge success

In 2015, the boss of a card payments company (Gravity) in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff - and personally took a pay cut of $1m. Five years later he's still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off.

Since then, Gravity has transformed.

The headcount has doubled and the value of payments that the company processes has gone from $3.8bn a year to $10.2bn.

But there are other metrics that Price is more proud of.

"Before the $70,000 minimum wage, we were having between zero and two babies born per year amongst the team," he says.

"And since the announcement - and it's been only about four-and-a-half years - we've had more than 40 babies."

More than 10% of the company have been able to buy their own home, in one of the US's most expensive cities for renters. Before the figure was less than 1%.

"There was a little bit of concern amongst pontificators out there that people would squander any gains that they would have. And we've really seen the opposite," Price says.

The amount of money that employees are voluntarily putting into their own pension funds has more than doubled and 70% of employees say they've paid off debt.

"We saw, every day, the effects of giving somebody freedom," Price says.

He thinks it is why Gravity is making more money than ever.

50%

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^^GREAT ARTICLE!

This is like the "Small is Beautiful" economics of EF Schumacher where the highest paid person in any company never earns more than 10 times that of the lowest paid. Capitalism wins and the workers do, as well, when greed is taken out of the equation. I love this model!