Jay GreesonThe United States has one of the largest gaps in the world between the top and the bottom of the pay scale.
Top-ranking business and industry executives make more than 300 times that of employees on the lowest rung of the pay ladder.
Regardless of the number of commas in your paycheck, there's an interesting groundswell of salary adjustment happening around the nation.
First, that this trend is happening in the private sector within various genres of businesses makes it an interesting proposition. If this had its genesis in Washington, D.C., with another federal program forced on small-business owners, the outcry would be deafening.
And it would be warranted.
A federal increase in minimum wage simply would be the most widespread unfunded mandate that potentially could cripple business and double or even triple unemployment.
Since mega-companies from behemoths such as McDonald's and Wal-Mart down to a Seattle online company that pledged to raise every employee to a $70,000 annual salary are looking at increasing the minimum wage on their own terms, the experiment will be closely followed.
The most notable groundswell was within the Seattle-area food industry. Collectively, minimum wages were boosted to $11 an hour two weeks ago. The plan is to go to $15 an hour within three years for companies with more than 500 employees and to make the leap in five years for those with less than 500 workers.
It's a bold step, and one that could be a challenge for an industry that normally operates near a 4-percent profit margin.
"The intent is very straightforward, with the start in food industry but the hope to extend that minimum wage to other businesses, " said Dr. Bruce Hutchinson, a UTC economics professor. "A lot of people are watching this as a test case, and I'm not sure all the people involved have thought it through very well."
It's a fair lament, considering the rise in salaries will surely mean higher prices, layoffs or a combination of both.
And that's part of the roll-of-the-dice this represents.
Will it lead to more laid-off food-industry workers or prices that soar to levels that business suffers? Could an increase in the minimum wage be enough to entice a growing number of folks who are dependent on government support to go back to work?
Those answers are to come, but there's one hurdle Hutchinson sees that does not seem as easily cleared.
"What about the people already making $11 an hour? Do they get a raise, too?" Hutchinson asked rhetorically. "If you only raise the minimum, then you devalue everyone else's work."
Lifting from the bottom is wise in moving boxes, but is it prudent in leveling the pay discrepancies? It certainly could fracture the structure - of the workplace and the industry - to elevate the bottom without adjusting the mid-levels. It could be just another curveball to an already stressed and distressed middle class in the long term.
We will get another sample of information across town in Seattle, which apparently has become the country's economics petri dish. Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, an online credit card payment company, told his employees that during the next three years he will raise every employee's salary to at least $70,000. He's doing it out of his own pocket and profit margin.
That's a lofty price for Price - the average salary at Gravity Payments is $48,000 and more than 70 will get raises and roughly 30 will more than double their salaries, according to The New York Times. The rewards for the risk seem clear.
Employee retention, motivation and contentment are clearly addressed. Whether Price can balance the books with his benevolent gesture is yet to be seen, as is the outcome of the raised minimum wage.
"It's something that may take three to four years to figure out," Hutchinson said, "because there is a wage scale in most every business."
And every business will surely be watching.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343. Follow him on Twitter at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com. His "Right to the Point" column appears on A2 on Monday, Thursday and Saturday, and his sports columns run Tuesday and Friday. Read his online column "The 5-at-10" weekdays starting at 10 a.m. at timesfreepress.com.