“Wal-Mart earned $27 billion in profit last
year. They could afford to pay their bottom million workers $10,000 more a
year, raise all of those people out of poverty, cost — save taxpayers billions
of dollars, and still earn $17 billion in profit, right? It’s simply nuts that
we have allowed this to happen. […] You know, this ridiculous idea that a
worker on Wall Street who earns tens of millions of dollars a year securitizing
imaginary assets or doing high-frequency trading is worth 1,000 times as much as
workers who earn tens of thousands of dollars a year educating our children,
growing or serving us our food, throwing themselves into harm’s away to protect
our life or property, that this difference reflects the true value or intrinsic
worth of these jobs is nonsense.” — Nick
Hanauer, Venture Capitalist, on the necessity of a living wage
