A century ago, Henry Ford shocked American industrial culture by raising assembly workers’ wages to an astounding $5/hour.
In doing so, he reduced attrition and absenteeism, as well as expanding the population who could afford his product. In 1916 two brothers, John and Horace Dodge, sued Ford over paltry dividends to shareholders while the company recorded phenomenal profits. Ford lost, then appealed.
The desert sunshine and 80 degree temperatures may seem like a gift in March, but to residents of Phoenix, they are a portent of the triple digit inferno that is July. So, faced with the opportunity to attend a conference in Vancouver, B.C., I seized winter by the coat-tails and flew with a friend to Portland, Oregon for a road-trip up the northwest coast. Vancouver’s rainy cloud-cover animated its glass and steel skyline.
In his popular book Guns, Germs & Steel, geographer Jared Diamond traces the rise of agriculture creating a surplus food supply, which allowed specialization of labor, leading to human civilization. All consequent economic developments, from private property to derivatives, concern this issue of distributing a society’s surplus.
