You could raise the price of, say, a bottle of ketchup to $1.03 instead of $1, and no one would know. Raising prices just 3% per product would add 50% to your pretax income. Why not do it? It's like heroin: You do a little and you want a little bit more. Raising prices is the easy way.

We've always been in favor of improved wages for workers. When you have a strong middle class, they want to buy more stuff at Costco.

Obscene salaries send the wrong message through a company. The message is that all brilliance emanates from the top; that the worker on the floor of the store or the factory is insignificant.

When employees are happy, they are your very best ambassadors.

Our attitude has always been that if you hire good people and provide good wages and good jobs and more than that - if you provide careers - that good things will happen to your company. I think we can say that that has been proved by the quality of people that we have and how they have built our organization.

If somehow a proclamation were made that C.E.O.'s could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.

I think the biggest single thing that causes difficulty in the business world is the short-term view. We become obsessed with it. But it forces bad decisions.