CEO who took $1m pay cut to raise staff salaries says business has tripled

A Seattle-based tech entrepreneur who took a million-dollar paycut in order to facilitate his employees being given a $70k minimum salary has revealed that his business has "tripled" as a result.

Dan Price, of financial services company Gravity Payments cut his own salary by 90% in order to raise the minimum salary for his employees. The move, as well as undoubtedly leading to a better quality of life for his staff, has lead to further success for the company, Price said in a now-viral Twitter thread.

"When I started a $70k minimum wage for my company in 2015, Rush Limbaugh said: "I hope this company is a case study in MBA programs on how socialism does not work, because it's gonna fail" Since then our company tripled & we're a successful case study at Harvard Business School." Price wrote.

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"Since my company started a $70k min wage in 2015: *Our business tripled *Staff who own homes grew 10x *401(k) contributions doubled *70% of employees paid off debt *Staff having kids soared 10x *Turnover dropped in half *76% of staff are engaged at work, 2x the national average" he continued.

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In a follow up tweet a couple of days later, Price mused on the takeaways from his story.

"Lots people are saying this proves capitalism and the free market work I think it's the opposite People point to me as a novelty. I stand out for a reason: Virtually no one followed suit Relying on benevolent CEOs is a recipe for exploitation of workers".

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And in a later message posted to Twitter, Price wrote, "I started a $70,000 minimum wage for my small business 5.5 years ago. Every day since, I've gotten angry messages from people saying some workers don't "deserve" that wage. It's sad that we've been trained to put others down instead of questioning the system that keeps us down."

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He told BBC Money in February:

"People are starving or being laid off or being taken advantage of, so that somebody can have a penthouse at the top of a tower in New York with gold chairs.

"We're glorifying greed all the time as a society, in our culture. And, you know, the Forbes list is the worst example - 'Bill Gates has passed Jeff Bezos as the richest man.' Who cares!?"