Our economy is robust, unemployment is low and worker productivity is high. Sounds like good news. So why is the typical worker, whose productivity has been essential for our record-breaking economic growth, earning less now, adjusting for inflation, than in the 1970s?

The average CEO of a major corporation made $12.4 million dollars last year, which is 475 times the pay for a blue-collar worker, according to Business Week's latest survey. That's way up from 1990, when CEOs made 85 times as much as workers. Why shouldn't everyone contributing to the economic boom also share in the American Dream?

The Boston-based group Responsible Wealth recently released a report titled, "Choosing the High Road: Businesses that Pay a Living Wage and Prosper." Our businesses are featured among others. The report shows that living wages are good for business as well as workers and communities.

The three of us built successful businesses in traditionally low-wage industries. We know that companies can make the sometimes seemingly difficult choice to pay a living wage and prosper.

Founded just two years ago, Urban Works is a profitable employee-owned contract cleaning company, which pays a minimum of $7.90 an hour plus benefits. Employees are productive and morale is high, which has reduced turnover and absenteeism, as well as recruitment expenses, and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Now 17 years old, the White Dog Cafe is a very successful business with 100 employees. Although the restaurant industry has a reputation for paying low wages and running people into the ground, the White Dog Cafe pays a minimum of $8 an hour within three months, plus benefits, including a 401(k) retirement plan. With higher pay and benefits and lower turnover, the staff is more experienced and committed to their work, which is key to the restaurant's success.

Idyll, Ltd., a specialty travel business, also pays employees a living wage, as well as providing health insurance and a 401(k) plan with a 50 percent match by the company. With profit margins above the industry norm, Idyll, Ltd. has found that it makes good business sense to pay decent wages and good benefits to sustain a productive and dedicated group of employees.

All our businesses pay well above the federal minimum wage. We know that today's minimum wage shortchanges workers and undermines the long-term health of businesses, communities and the economy. The federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour adds up to only $10,712 a year for full-time work, a figure that is grossly inadequate and fundamentally unfair. It does not provide the minimum needed for housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and other necessities. In a growing national living-wage movement, over 40 cities and counties - from Baltimore to Los Angeles - are requiring businesses that receive government contracts and subsidies to pay a living wage (usually around $8 an hour) based on the real costs of living in that community.

A low minimum wage makes it harder to resist the seeming competitive pressures to pay low wages but, as our businesses show, higher wages can help build more profitable businesses even in traditionally low-wage industries.

Studies of past raises in the minimum wage have discredited the oft-heard argument that minimum wage increases lead to higher unemployment. Studies have shown that higher wages have real business advantages, such as attracting more qualified employees who need less supervision, higher morale, lower turnover and absenteeism and increased productivity.

As Jeffrey Pfeffer, a leading management expert at Stanford Graduate School of Business, observed, there is wisdom in "building profits by taking care of people."

This is as true for small businesses as it is for large businesses. As "Choosing the High Road" puts it, "Given a choice of how to please shareholders and maintain profitability over the longer term, why wouldn't a CEO choose the route that leaves all stakeholders, including the workers, feeling more satisfied?"

There is no reason, in today's hot economy, why anyone should be left out in the cold.

Tim Styer is CEO of Urban Works; Judy Wicks is the owner of The White Dog Cafe, and Hal Taussig is the CEO of Idyll, Ltd.

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