Two ways to make more money

Two ways to make more money in life:

1) Get an education. Work hard. Work your way up the ladder.

2) Vote for a state law that forces employers to pay you more, even if you have done nothing to imporve yourself or your place of business.

This little rant was started by this letter to the editor:

Think people, not pennies

Your recent front-page article on Washington’s impending increase in the minimum wage was absurdly biased, siding solidly with those employers who make their profits out of paying wages as low as legally possible.

You could have written about how the minority of employees who earn only
minimum wage can be grateful to the voters of the state for giving them an annual chance to catch up with the cost of living.

Greedy CEOs of failing corporations rake in huge bonuses, but our lowest-income workers are treated as troublemakers for not wanting to see their meager incomes further damaged by inflation.

I’m tired of articles that treat employees only as costs, and not as people.

Paul Brians
Pullman

What about the greedy small business owners like those at Lobo Computer Services or Green's Cleaners? Those evil people who pinch and gouge their employees' pay to nearly nothing while living in the huge houses and driving a Rolls to work. I know they only opened the business to make billions of dollars off of the back of their employees. Heck, I bet those business owners have never stepped foot into their place of business nor know their employees by name... Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, small business owners put in hundreds of hours a year more than the average worker and they do it because of the love of their business, not because they are making billions of dollars. Arguing that the minimum wage is getting back at the big evil corporations does not address the real concern. That being the small businesses that it hurts.

Mr. Brians, as you complain that people don't treat employees as people, you have done the same to the small business owner. Practice what you preach, my good man.