Apropos the minimum wage debate that should hit the General Assembly next session, I found this quote in the Winston-Salem Journal. In response to Joe Coletti’s factual statement that a mandatory increase in the minimum wage would result in more unemployment,
“Nobody ever says that about the CEO’s salary, and all the advantages of CEOs, when their salaries go up,” said the Rev. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
That’s true, no one ever complains that a higher salary for a CEO will increase unemployment for CEO’s. But there’s a huge difference between what a CEO does, what he’s in charge of, what he’s accountable for, than the responsibility of a minimum wage worker in any one of those categories.
A CEO is held almost directly responsible for the success or failure of a company. Paying him more for a good job (a raise that is not mandated by the state, but set by the company’s Board of Directors) is a benefit given after performance evaluations. I’m not addressing here the meme of corporate corruption that results from a too-liberal tying of the CEO to the benefits of a successful company. I’m only talking about the link between the value of the individual worker to the overall company. And no one can say that the McDonald’s girl is worth as much to her company as Steve Ballmer is to his.
