What’s been really odd to me lately is companies refusing to pay their workers more even when it hurts their bottom line and stock prices.

Even long term, this is not rational behavior. It is just spite, and a variety of class warfare.

Consider this: The American Trucking Associations has estimated that there was a shortage of 30,000 qualified drivers earlier this year, a number on track to rise to 200,000 over the next decade. Trucking companies are turning down business for want of workers.

Yet the idea that there is a huge shortage of truck drivers flies in the face of a jobless rate of more than 6 percent, not to mention Economics 101. The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn’t enough to meet demand, it’s because the price — in this case, truckers’ wages — is too low. Raise wages, and an ample supply of workers should follow.

But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront.

If businesses were truly rational – and run for profit only – then workers would be paid more as it would also make the business more profits. The evidence shows this clearly.

However, it wasn’t until I was in the business world for a number of years until I realized that profit is not the only story, and often isn’t even the primary narrative. Power matters just as much if not more than profits, despite what you might read elsewhere.

It is not well-known, but GM nearly financially destroyed itself in the 80s to fight unions. It would’ve made far more profits if it had worked with the unions. There are hundreds of examples of this, of course, even though it’s not discussed that much because “profits only” is the simplistic narrative that elides far too much and elucidates far too little.

I’ve personally worked at a company where an entire, very-profitable business unit was eviscerated after a merger so that executives elsewhere did not feel threatened by the more-competent unit.

Tell me what that has to do with profit. Nothing, of course. Like the lack of paying well even when it hurts the bottom line and the stock (thus bonuses, etc.), it’s often about power and its exercise.