Have you ever worked for the minimum wage? Welcome to the club…

When you are slaving away at the bottom of the economic ladder, you are no doubt in favor of increasing the minimum wage.

But what if you were a CEO? 

Last week, Costco CEO Craig Jelinek made waves in the financial sector when he spoke out in support of increasing the minimum wage.

His statement was made in response to the President’s State of the Union address, in which he outlined his plan to raise the minimum wage to $9/hour and index it to inflation. Jelinek agreed with the President’s position, and actually proposed an even larger increase to $10.10/hour.  

At the current minimum hourly wage of $7.25, a family of four with one parent working full-time lies considerably below the poverty line. By comparison, the minimum wage in 1968 was $10.57/hr, equating out to about $5,000 more yearly than the current standard.

Let’s face it, an extra five thousand dollars is a nice chunk of change.

So… why would a CEO want to increase the minimum wage? Wouldn’t that cost his company money?

Sure… at first. But in time it helps the company. There would be an increase in economic activity in the area as employees spend their new cash.

As more money is spent in local stores and restaurants, the employees of those businesses will have more money to spend locally other services. And it gets better…

As the local economic activity expands, all sorts of good things happen. Increased sales taxes help state education budgets and there will be more money around for folks to buy goods from the company that upped its minimum wage for workers.

Its an economic concept known as circular flow.

One of the most outspoken advocates for increased wages for workers was capitalist hero Henry Ford, of Ford Automotive fame. Ford paid his workers $5 a day, more than double the standard wage of the time. The increased wage resulted in a much lower turnover rate of employees, leading to less time wasted with on-the-job training and more productivity in general. Ford is reputed to have asserted that any man who was good enough to produce a Ford automobile deserved to own one.

Craig Jelinek, then, can be called the Henry Ford of the 21st century.

“We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to keep our overhead costs low,Instead of minimizing wages, we know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty.”

And, based on the Wall Street Journal-reported $537 million in profit for Costco in Q2 of 2013, it looks like Jelinek’s attitude is a winning one.

Have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of a murderer? 

When Tony Barrett of Seattle committed a mortal crime on Wednesday night, his fist move was to call the local TV station:

“I just killed my wife … I want you to put it on your Facebook.”

According to the station, Barrett said he didn’t have a Facebook page and wanted someone to post the message for him. But instead of granting Barrett’s strange request for a social media confession, the station naturally decided to call the police instead.

After a high-speed chase, state troopers were able to stop Barrett’s car with spike strips. They also had to resort to using a police dog to take Barrett down after he got of his car swinging a crowbar.

Barrett was treated at a hospital for dog bites before being taken to jail for investigation of the murder.

Have any other stories about dumb actions by criminals? Let us know in the comments below.

Advertise here with BSA

We recently published a giveaway of SnackTools VIP memberships to celebrate its newest addition: NotifySnack. Three winners were randomly chosen from the comments on the giveaway post. Read this post to find out if you were one of the lucky winners!

The Winners

Here are the three lucky Six Revisions readers who’ve won themselves a 1-year VIP membership to SnackTools.

• Giorgos K.
• David
• MartyN

I’d like to congratulate the winners of our giveaway!

The winners should have already gotten an email from one of the members of the SnackTools team containing information about how to claim their prize.

About NotifySnack

NotifySnack is a powerful tool designed to create beautiful notification widgets for your website.

NotifySnack is part of SnackTools–a suite of web applications designed to simplify the way you create and publish rich media widgets on the Web.

Related Content

• 10 Important UI Design Considerations for Web Apps
• A Quick Look at Mobile Web Designs
• 12 Excellent Free Tools for Monitoring Your Site’s Uptime
• Related categories: Tools and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

UMBC will host a free two-day workshop April 11-12 for faculty, researchers, and students from all disciplines who are interested in learning how to incorporate high performance computing, advanced data analysis, modeling and simulation and data visualization into their teaching and research.

The workshop will be given by representatives from XSEDE, an NSF-sponsored distributed resource for high performance computing and data storage that is available for UMBC faculty and students to use for their research. The workshop will be held in room 120 of the Meyerhoff Building on the UMBC campus, starting at Noon on Thursday April 11 and ending at 4:00pm on Friday, April 12.

Workshop participants get information on gaining access to XSEDE resources and hands on training one a topics including computational thinking, parallel computing, scientific visualization, research data management, using Unix and adding computational science to curricula. The XSEDE resources are a natural "next step" for applications that have outgrown the cluster computing facilities available at UMBC, such as HPCF and MC2.

While the workshop is free, you must pre-register online — start by creating an account via the SIGN IN link. Registration closes on March 25 and space is limited, so if you are interested, register as soon as possible.

For more information about the workshop and XSEDE, see the workshop flier or contact Andrew Raim (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ), Linda Akli (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) or Prof. Ian Thorpe (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ).