12 ms·

Dan Price says raising min wage to $70k led to baby boom, revenue rise

55 points by xenophonf 5y ago

lowkey_ 5y ago
Most of us here have read this exact story several times over the years, whether it's on LinkedIn, Twitter, or HN. He increases wages after a conversation with an employee, the employees all pitch in to buy him a Tesla out of thankfulness. He's "the $70k min wage guy." This is honestly worth millions in advertising for Gravity Payments (I remember the name!) for this story to somehow keep popping up. The dark side is that he keeps milking this story to look like a good person while he was sued for overpaying himself initially, and was accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife.
- sgift 5y ago
  You can be sued for almost anything. The judge decided for Dan Price on all accounts.
  - pb7 5y ago
    Bill Cosby legally walks free but he still admitted to sexual assault. Court decisions don't change facts.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  One could be a terrible person and yet be completely correct - one does not preclude the other. Hitler was a vegan- was he just misunderstood, or are all vegans closeted antisemites?
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    He was vegetarian, not vegan. So at the least, apparently you misunderstood him. The jury is still out on vegans.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  Correlation doesn't imply causation, but sometimes causation correlates with correlation. Can't tell which one is more relevant in this case.
pb7 5y ago
Can we stop giving this dude a platform? He embezzled millions of dollars from his brother and co-owner, who later sued him, and him taking a pay cut and increasing his employees' pay was nothing short of a settlement. Not even going to go into the domestic abuse allegations. This guy is a certified scumbag.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  I don't know enough about the guy to verify your claims, but my LinkedIn feed is chock full of reposts from this guy. They're all about as philosophically deep as a "live laugh love" wall decoration from Target.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ggambetta 5y ago
    Oh man, YES. This is how I recently discovered the Unfollow button... just couldn't take it anymore. This led to unfollowing almost every recruiter I'm connected to, which led to an immediate and significant increase in the quality of my feed. For example, No more. Stupid posts. Formatted like this. Because someone at some point thought it was cool. It's not. Also no more posts bragging about GeTtInG On ThE PrOpErTy LaDdEr! I don't know, is everyone's LinkedIn experience as miserable as mine was?
    - fweespeech 5y ago
      > I don't know, is everyone's LinkedIn experience as miserable as mine was? I just ignore my feed and rely on it as an address book of people I can contact in my industry / previous places of employment. I don't really want 3000+ phone numbers without the related metadata of where we overlapped.
- jstx1 5y ago
  I didn't know anything about him but my negative opinion was based purely on all the way-too-self-righteous crap from him that I see reshared on reddit and linkedin.
Graziano_M 5y ago
Dan Price is more of an activist than a businessman. Good for him for doing this, but of course it would be very easy to assume that revenue would have risen more without this. Compare his business growth to others in the sector and in the same time period and you'll (probably, I am too lazy to do this) see his growth is below the curve.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Maybe growth shouldn't be the only metric? https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
  - Aunche 5y ago
    Sure, but Gravity Payments has barely grown, while their competitors have since created thousands of $70k+ jobs.
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      > competitors have since created thousands of $70k jobs. $70k jobs aren’t the same as ~$35k jobs paying $70k.
      - Aunche 5y ago
        You're right. The latter job is much more exclusive because it depends on a philanthropic rich guy who decides to donate to his employees rather than to charities.
  - Graziano_M 5y ago
    The point is that he said that the min salary lead to revenue growth. I am saying he had revenue growth despite, not because of.
bpodgursky 5y ago
> Our employees had a 10x boom in terms of the number of babies they were having. We went from having between 0-2 babies born per year among the entire team, to over 65 born or announced over the last six years," he added. I'm 100% a huge fan of direct payments to parents and incentivizing parents to have children, but I do think this undersells the consequence of having a workforce which is moving from their mid-20s to mid-30s. Existing evidence is that getting people to have more children is really, really expensive. I'm sure this did move the needle, just not 10x.
AnotherGoodName 5y ago
Here's something that's telling. In the USA average wealth per adult is one of the highest in the world. This measures the wealth of a persons assets (car, home, etc.) minus their debts. But the median wealth for the USA is much further down the list. The median is the midpoint so it excludes outliers like Bezos. It's common for Americans to boast about how rich they are but the honest truth is my home country Australia has a median wealth that's 3x greater than the USAs. The difference in wealth between the typical USA resident and an Australian resident is the same as the difference between a USA resident and a Chinese resident. Australian adult median wealth (USD $238k) USA adult median wealth (USD $79k) not poor but definitely not at the top. Slighly below Taiwan and South Korea. China adult median wealth (USD $24k) a similar difference. Honestly as an Australian living in the USA it does show. I get rather annoyed when a USA resident boasts about wealth. You have massive loans dickhead. You should have been fighting this problem and instituting 0% tax for the lowest wage earners like Australia did 40 years ago. You should have increased taxes on the rich. You should have increased minimum wage. But you didn't. And now your average American wealth, whilst not yet bad is below countries such as South Korea and Taiwan that have troubling neighbors that justify huge defence budgets. It's below Italy's which has long suffered corruption in politics. It's below Spains despite Spain being the cheap holiday destination for the wealthier European nations. Stop fucking around and fight the fight you should have fought 20 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  I'm also an Australian living in the US; this omits the enormous, multi-decade, apparently recession-proof rise of the Australian real estate market a bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    It doesn't change the median to mean discrepancy though. Australia has a smoother wealth divide and that's purely policy. I was shocked when i found out there's no 0% tax bracket in the USA. All that paperwork to collect tax from those who are struggling. Meanwhile the federal tax caps out at 37% and doesn't even consider very high wage earners. The higher minimum wages in Australia are also clear cut.
giantg2 5y ago
Is a baby boom being considered a positive here? I would think that an increase in consumption from a population increase is not a good thing when living an non-sustainable lifestyle.
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  Dan Price being sketchy aside, yes, people feeling financially comfortable enough to produce babies is a positive thing. It's the most fundamental purpose we have as humans.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    But is it responsible, assuming the concerns around consumption and climate change?
    - rflec028 5y ago
      If you think it's a problem, don't do it yourself.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Is that what you tell people for all problems/actions?
    - lowkey_ 5y ago
      Yes! Human ingenuity will either solve climate change, or it won't, in which case we're either going to die or live a hard existence on another planet. If anything, the more children there are, the higher the odds that those in the next generation will be able to come up with solutions to climate change. This is all putting aside the basic argument that it's our most fundamental purpose. If we stop reproducing, humanity is extinct within a ~hundred years.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        No amount of technical development can keep up with exponential increase in resource usage. Just giving western living standards long term to everyone we have on earth today is a daunting task, adding even more is just insanity. And no, adding more people until everyone has to live a poor destitute life wont make people more creative.
paulpauper 5y ago
A single datapoint,how convincing. Correlation does not imply causation, as it's commonly said.
nkg 5y ago
He is literally one of a kind.

55 points by xenophonf 5y ago

Most of us here have read this exact story several times over the years, whether it's on LinkedIn, Twitter, or HN. He increases wages after a conversation with an employee, the employees all pitch in to buy him a Tesla out of thankfulness. He's "the $70k min wage guy." This is honestly worth millions in advertising for Gravity Payments (I remember the name!) for this story to somehow keep popping up. The dark side is that he keeps milking this story to look like a good person while he was sued for overpaying himself initially, and was accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife.

sgift 5y ago
You can be sued for almost anything. The judge decided for Dan Price on all accounts.
- pb7 5y ago
  Bill Cosby legally walks free but he still admitted to sexual assault. Court decisions don't change facts.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
One could be a terrible person and yet be completely correct - one does not preclude the other. Hitler was a vegan- was he just misunderstood, or are all vegans closeted antisemites?
- drewcoo 5y ago
  He was vegetarian, not vegan. So at the least, apparently you misunderstood him. The jury is still out on vegans.
maccolgan 5y ago
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but sometimes causation correlates with correlation. Can't tell which one is more relevant in this case.

pb7 5y ago

Can we stop giving this dude a platform? He embezzled millions of dollars from his brother and co-owner, who later sued him, and him taking a pay cut and increasing his employees' pay was nothing short of a settlement. Not even going to go into the domestic abuse allegations. This guy is a certified scumbag.

seattle_spring 5y ago
I don't know enough about the guy to verify your claims, but my LinkedIn feed is chock full of reposts from this guy. They're all about as philosophically deep as a "live laugh love" wall decoration from Target.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ggambetta 5y ago
  Oh man, YES. This is how I recently discovered the Unfollow button... just couldn't take it anymore. This led to unfollowing almost every recruiter I'm connected to, which led to an immediate and significant increase in the quality of my feed. For example, No more. Stupid posts. Formatted like this. Because someone at some point thought it was cool. It's not. Also no more posts bragging about GeTtInG On ThE PrOpErTy LaDdEr! I don't know, is everyone's LinkedIn experience as miserable as mine was?
  - fweespeech 5y ago
    > I don't know, is everyone's LinkedIn experience as miserable as mine was? I just ignore my feed and rely on it as an address book of people I can contact in my industry / previous places of employment. I don't really want 3000+ phone numbers without the related metadata of where we overlapped.
jstx1 5y ago
I didn't know anything about him but my negative opinion was based purely on all the way-too-self-righteous crap from him that I see reshared on reddit and linkedin.

Graziano_M 5y ago

Dan Price is more of an activist than a businessman. Good for him for doing this, but of course it would be very easy to assume that revenue would have risen more without this. Compare his business growth to others in the sector and in the same time period and you'll (probably, I am too lazy to do this) see his growth is below the curve.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Maybe growth shouldn't be the only metric? https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- Aunche 5y ago
  Sure, but Gravity Payments has barely grown, while their competitors have since created thousands of $70k+ jobs.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > competitors have since created thousands of $70k jobs. $70k jobs aren’t the same as ~$35k jobs paying $70k.
    - Aunche 5y ago
      You're right. The latter job is much more exclusive because it depends on a philanthropic rich guy who decides to donate to his employees rather than to charities.
- Graziano_M 5y ago
  The point is that he said that the min salary lead to revenue growth. I am saying he had revenue growth despite, not because of.

bpodgursky 5y ago

> Our employees had a 10x boom in terms of the number of babies they were having. We went from having between 0-2 babies born per year among the entire team, to over 65 born or announced over the last six years," he added. I'm 100% a huge fan of direct payments to parents and incentivizing parents to have children, but I do think this undersells the consequence of having a workforce which is moving from their mid-20s to mid-30s. Existing evidence is that getting people to have more children is really, really expensive. I'm sure this did move the needle, just not 10x.

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

Here's something that's telling. In the USA average wealth per adult is one of the highest in the world. This measures the wealth of a persons assets (car, home, etc.) minus their debts. But the median wealth for the USA is much further down the list. The median is the midpoint so it excludes outliers like Bezos. It's common for Americans to boast about how rich they are but the honest truth is my home country Australia has a median wealth that's 3x greater than the USAs. The difference in wealth between the typical USA resident and an Australian resident is the same as the difference between a USA resident and a Chinese resident. Australian adult median wealth (USD $238k) USA adult median wealth (USD $79k) not poor but definitely not at the top. Slighly below Taiwan and South Korea. China adult median wealth (USD $24k) a similar difference. Honestly as an Australian living in the USA it does show. I get rather annoyed when a USA resident boasts about wealth. You have massive loans dickhead. You should have been fighting this problem and instituting 0% tax for the lowest wage earners like Australia did 40 years ago. You should have increased taxes on the rich. You should have increased minimum wage. But you didn't. And now your average American wealth, whilst not yet bad is below countries such as South Korea and Taiwan that have troubling neighbors that justify huge defence budgets. It's below Italy's which has long suffered corruption in politics. It's below Spains despite Spain being the cheap holiday destination for the wealthier European nations. Stop fucking around and fight the fight you should have fought 20 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

ceejayoz 5y ago
I'm also an Australian living in the US; this omits the enormous, multi-decade, apparently recession-proof rise of the Australian real estate market a bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_property_bubble
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  It doesn't change the median to mean discrepancy though. Australia has a smoother wealth divide and that's purely policy. I was shocked when i found out there's no 0% tax bracket in the USA. All that paperwork to collect tax from those who are struggling. Meanwhile the federal tax caps out at 37% and doesn't even consider very high wage earners. The higher minimum wages in Australia are also clear cut.

giantg2 5y ago

Is a baby boom being considered a positive here? I would think that an increase in consumption from a population increase is not a good thing when living an non-sustainable lifestyle.

lowkey_ 5y ago
Dan Price being sketchy aside, yes, people feeling financially comfortable enough to produce babies is a positive thing. It's the most fundamental purpose we have as humans.
- giantg2 5y ago
  But is it responsible, assuming the concerns around consumption and climate change?
  - rflec028 5y ago
    If you think it's a problem, don't do it yourself.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Is that what you tell people for all problems/actions?
  - lowkey_ 5y ago
    Yes! Human ingenuity will either solve climate change, or it won't, in which case we're either going to die or live a hard existence on another planet. If anything, the more children there are, the higher the odds that those in the next generation will be able to come up with solutions to climate change. This is all putting aside the basic argument that it's our most fundamental purpose. If we stop reproducing, humanity is extinct within a ~hundred years.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      No amount of technical development can keep up with exponential increase in resource usage. Just giving western living standards long term to everyone we have on earth today is a daunting task, adding even more is just insanity. And no, adding more people until everyone has to live a poor destitute life wont make people more creative.

paulpauper 5y ago

A single datapoint,how convincing. Correlation does not imply causation, as it's commonly said.

nkg 5y ago

He is literally one of a kind.