Dan Price is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gravity Payments, a credit card processing and financial services company. In 2015, the company made headlines all over the world when Price announced that his employees would receive a minimum salary of $70,000.

To finance this move, Dan cut his own $1.1M pay by 90%. At the time, this decision received a lot of criticism but 6 years later, the company is thriving and Price said it has made him happier and a better boss.

Meet Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, who just celebrated 6 years of having cut his own pay by a million dollars to increase his employees’ wages

Image credits: danpriceseattle

When Price made the announcement to his 120-member staff, inviting NBC News and The New York Times to cover it, he caused a huge stir. A movement even. There were 500 million interactions on social media and NBC’s video has become the most shared in network history. Also, Gravity Payments was flooded with stories from thankful workers elsewhere who suddenly got raises from converted bosses.

But most importantly, Price had poured so much gas into the debate on how much should workers be paid, it continues to rage across the corporate landscape all over the world.

Recently, he turned to Twitter to explain what inspired him to make this bold move

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

So far, Price stands out from the crowd like a white crow. A report by the Economic Policy Institute states that the average CEO pay is 271 times the nearly $58,000 annual average pay of the typical American worker.

Even though some argue that CEO pay is based on experience and high demands that come with the role, the study finds that’s actually not the case.

“CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay, not because they are more productive or have special talent or have more education,” the report says. “Exorbitant CEO pay means that the fruits of economic growth are not going to ordinary workers, since the higher CEO pay does not reflect correspondingly higher output.”

For comparison, in 1978, CEO earnings were roughly 30 times the typical worker’s salary.

In the UK, the bosses of FTSE 100 companies now earn 117 times the salary of their average worker.

Gravity Payments is thriving

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

Image credits: DanPriceSeattle

At first, Price hoped for widespread, structural change. But it didn’t happen.

“Boy, was I wrong,” he says. “I’ve really failed in that regard. And it’s changed my perspective on things because I really believed that through the actions that I did and that other people could do, that we could turn the tide on runaway income inequality.”

But maybe that’s not the end of it?

As a thank you, Dan’s employees bought him a new Tesla

Image credits: danpriceseattle

Image credits: danpriceseattle

The CEO constantly revises his company’s salary policy

Image credits: danpriceseattle

And people are applauding him for it

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