We hear conversations about “Living Wage”. This implies that the employer is responsible for paying enough for the employee to live in their present circumstances. If true, would we pay a man with stay-at-home-wife and four kids more than a single, childless woman? Of course not. “Living wage” has a very different meaning in these two examples.  

Key point: Pay people for the value they add, not for what they need.

Here’s a military example. Does the military, or other parts of government, pay those who serve with large families more than those of the same rank with no families? Don’t be silly. Rank is the placeholder for value in the military.

Expanding on the private business example. Two people; same education, same job skills and the same time on the job in equivalent positions in the same company. One is a man with a non-working wife, a mortgage and money owed on their two cars--and four children who are approaching college age. The other is a single woman with a tropical fish and a paid-for, used car. Do you pay more for to this man than the woman in our example? No, why even ask the question? Their value is the same, but a living wage to the single woman would be completely inadequate, and not meet the definition of a living wage to the man here.

We asked the above question to make the point that you deserve to be paid for the value you add to your employer--not for what you need to live the life you have chosen. For example, minimum wage was not designed to support families. As a starting wage, it was designed for people who live in inexpensive housing with one or more roommates, using coupons at the grocery store, taking cheap transportation. Trust me, I did that for years--part of my learning experience…:).

Delayed gratification and hard work will get you from minimum wage to where you want to be. Remember the rules for getting into the middle class?

Graduate HS

Get a full-time job

Don’t have kids until you marry.

Check out the podcast link to exactly this at “Young, Poor and Angry”

The danger of insisting--to the point that it might even become law--on paying people what they need to deal with the financial responsibilities they have chosen should be obvious. Business and governmental agencies, faced with paying employees far in excess of the value they create, will either go out of business, wind up providing an inferior product or service, or in the case of governmental entities, simply raising taxes.

Remember, the rules for succeeding personally, financially and politically are all the same. And they are all simple to learn and understand. Simple, and hard to do. And exceedingly well worth it.

Today’s simple rules are:

Understand that you deserve to get paid for the value your create, not what you for needs you have and

Delayed gratification; delay your gratification rather than wanting it all now--and passing the bill along to someone else in the name of needing a “living wage” due to your choices.

Hey, anyone follow the Phillies? If you do, are you surprised? Hopeful? Let me know!

Please do contact me. Respond in my Revolution 2.0 blog, email me at [email protected]. And I’m easy to find on iTunes, Google Play and the usual Bat Channels, including Twitter and Facebook.

It is time for our usual parting thought. For us at Revolution 2.0, it is not simply change your thinking, change your life. It is change your thinking, change your actions, change the  world. And if you can do it in love and enjoy the people around you at the same time, all the better. Remember: Knowledge by itself is the booby prize.

Will Luden, writing from my home office at 7,200’ in Colorado Springs.