Everyone gets dignity before anyone gets rich

CEO compensation of 312 times the median worker's pay looks indecent. I accept such disparities on one condition: every employee in that organization must earn a living wage.

A living wage covers far more than survival: basic necessities, debt repayment, savings, emergency reserves, annual vacation, and meaningful participation in community life.

If all workers can live with financial security, a decent quality of life, and full participation in their community, then extreme executive compensation becomes a secondary concern.

The moral priority

This principle establishes a clear moral hierarchy: the elimination of deprivation takes precedence over the reduction of excess. It reframes our economic debate from endless arguments about "how much is too much" to a concrete, measurable question: Is everyone thriving?

The real harm of economic inequality lies in how often extreme wealth rests on the poverty of working people. When companies generate record profits and executive windfalls while their workers rely on food stamps or sleep in their cars, I see exploitation.

What a living wage actually means

Current "living wage" calculations typically cover only survival basics: rent, food, transportation to work, minimal healthcare. This reduces human beings to economic units: biological machines that need fuel and maintenance to continue producing.

A true living wage must provide:

Financial security

• Coverage of all basic needs (housing, food, healthcare, transportation, childcare)
• Capacity to service existing debts without perpetual struggle
• Ability to build emergency savings
• Meaningful retirement contributions
• Buffer for unexpected expenses

Quality of life

• Annual vacation and genuine rest
• Leisure activities and entertainment
• Occasional dining out and small luxuries
• Hobbies and personal development

Community participation

• Resources to give as well as receive
• Ability to celebrate with others and reciprocate hospitality
• Capacity to support causes and contribute to community organizations
• Time and means for civic engagement
• Participation in cultural and religious life

Without these elements, workers are merely surviving and are unable to be full members of society. The third category is the one most calculations leave out, and it names what the others miss: a worker is a person who gives as well as receives.

Context and calculation

Living wage calculations vary by geography and culture. What constitutes adequate housing in Mumbai differs from Montreal. Community participation in Seoul involves different expectations than in São Paulo. The specific dollar amounts will always be contextual. So are the line items. In Montreal, healthcare comes out of the common pot; in the United States, as things now stand, it comes out of wages, so a living wage here has to cover it.

But the principle holds across contexts: workers should be able to afford housing appropriate to their locale, participate in the community life that surrounds them, and build security within their economic reality. A living wage in rural Indonesia looks different from one in urban Germany, but in both cases it must provide financial security, a decent quality of life, and full participation in the worker's actual community.

The numbers change. The principle doesn't.

Why this position works

It's pragmatic. This principle sets its sights on whether everyone can live well. It's easier to define and measure adequate compensation at the bottom than to determine appropriate limits at the top.

It's moral. It locates the injustice in wealth that requires poverty to exist. A CEO earning $31.2 million while workers earn $100,000 with comprehensive benefits is a different moral case from the same CEO earning $31.2 million while workers earn $25,000 and need government assistance.

It rejects false subsidies. When corporations pay poverty wages, taxpayers subsidize their labor costs through food assistance, Medicaid, housing support, and other programs. This principle demands that profitable enterprises bear the full cost of their workforce: that they pay enough for workers to have a life beyond the next shift.

It preserves dignity. People working full-time should be able to afford both their medication and their groceries, and to attend a friend's wedding or contribute to their faith community. Work should let people take part in life.

Who benefits?

Follow the money. Who actually benefits from poverty wage structures?

Shareholders gain through suppressed labor costs that inflate profit margins and dividends.

Executives benefit directly. Their compensation often ties to profitability metrics improved by keeping wages low, and their relative position depends on the gap between their pay and average worker compensation.

Consumers benefit through lower prices, though they often pay the difference as taxpayers funding assistance programs for underpaid workers.

Taxpayers subsidize profitable corporations by providing food assistance, healthcare, and housing support that wages should cover.

This is a matter of structure. Current wage practices create a system where profits concentrate upward while costs distribute downward. The stated justification is market competition and shareholder value. The actual result is wealth extracted from workers' poverty, with the public covering the difference.

When I hear arguments against living wages, that the market won't bear it or that we can't afford it, I ask myself: who benefits from things staying as they are? Usually someone other than the workers at the center of the concern. Follow the benefit.

The test

In the programs and workshops I develop, clients often ask me to address motivation. When I ask what they mean by motivation, the answer isn't always forthcoming. What rarely enters the discussion is compensation and its effect on the spirit with which people come to work. Perhaps this is because few people in an organization have direct say over what others are paid.

In rooms where leaders wrestle with what fairness actually looks like, I notice certain questions keep surfacing:

• Can the lowest-paid full-time worker afford housing without financial stress?
• Can they save for retirement and emergencies?
• Can they take a vacation without going into debt?
• Can they participate in community life: giving gifts, supporting causes, hosting friends?
• Can they handle unexpected expenses without catastrophe?
• Can they plan for the future?

When I can answer yes to these, the pay at the top stops looking like extraction to me. When the answers lean toward no, the excess looks like exploitation.

Implementation complexity

Applying this principle is hard in large organizations. Supply chains span continents with wildly different cost structures, and one company may pay for the same job in cities with very different costs of living. Contractors and part-time workers blur traditional employment boundaries.

These complications are real. They come up often in my work. To me, the complexity makes the conversation more urgent.

The question is whether organizations are willing to wrestle with that difficulty or use it as justification for avoiding the principle entirely.

The principle is clear. The application is complex. Both can be true.

Before anyone gets rich

The principle is a demand for a floor beneath which no working person should fall. Market rewards for success stay in place above it. It insists that prosperity should not require poverty, that success should not be built on struggle.

We are living between paradigms. The old assumptions, that markets naturally produce fair outcomes and that prosperity requires someone's deprivation, no longer hold up against what people see around them. The new paradigm hasn't fully emerged. We're in transition.

This principle offers one marker for that transition: whatever economic model we build next must honor human dignity as a requirement. Before anyone gets rich, everyone gets dignity.

Earn whatever the market will bear, provided the people whose labor makes that earning possible can live on what they earn. Even when that floor is met, a wide ratio can corrode trust inside an organization.

Pay your workers enough to live, truly live, and the minimum requirement of justice is met. What remains is a matter of decency, trust, and what the organization chooses to reward.

A note on taking positions

I spend most of my time helping leaders think through complex challenges and reach their own conclusions. That's the work: creating conditions for you to develop your own judgment.

I also arrive with positions of my own.

I'm in rooms where these questions are live. I work with leaders who live with compensation decisions made elsewhere, navigating the gap between what they believe and what they can actually do. I see what happens when organizations get this right and what breaks when they don't.

These positions emerge from that practice, from years of facilitation and reflection on what I'm actually seeing. They're tested against organizational complexity as well as philosophical consistency.

I believe my readers and my potential clients need to know where I stand on foundational questions, so you understand what lens I bring when we're thinking together about your challenges. When we're working on compensation strategy or what you owe the people who work for you, you're getting a thinking partner who has thought about these questions and arrived somewhere.

You may disagree with where I land. That's fine. But you should see how I reason through these questions and where I draw the lines.

Because real partnership means I've done my own thinking. Otherwise I'm just a mirror, and you don't need to pay someone to reflect back what you already know.

For now, this is where I've landed on compensation and human dignity. That's the path of thought that brought me here.

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