Who Said That?

"Having an individual who is making 100 or 200 or 300 times more than the average person working on the floor is wrong."

Ralph Nader? Bernie Sanders? Nope. It was Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, speaking to the New York Times. Sinegal has a half-century of retail experience and is making $350,000 a year (plus loads of yummy stock options, of course). That's more than I make, but far less than most CEOs or even the President of the United States.

His company also pays its employees an average of 42 percent more than Wal-Mart's Sam's Club operation. It keeps a tight grip on markups to keep prices low. Pays the lion's share of worker health covergage. And has been criticized by Wall Street for placing the needs of customers and employees ahead of those of stockholders.

Meanwhile, residents and governments alike are increasingly banding together to try to stop Wal-Mart from opening stores in certain communities across the country, citing studies that the retail behemoth can actually suck more dollars out of a community than it puts in.

You won't see Costco handing its employees instructions on how to get food stamps. Yet its stock seems to be doing much better than that of Wal-Mart's these days.

Many of the worker protection initiatives and wage laws I've seen (and supported) seem to have as their goal the kind of environment Costco has produced without government intervention.

So is it possible that offering low prices and taking good care of one's employees actually makes good business sense, or is this just an anomaly? And more importantly, does anyone want to buy 8,000 Q-Tips?