“The pitchforks are coming … for us plutocrats”

[Video added 6/28/14.  The TED organization refused to distribute this TED talk because it was “too controversial” ]

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Nick Hanauer, a billionaire who lives in Seattle, said he got rich mainly by foreseeing 30 years ago how important the Internet was going to become.  What does he foresee now?  Pitchforks—that is, revolution against people in his income class unless income and wealth are more widely distributed.   He wrote in the current issue of Politico:

The fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers.

Which makes middle-class consumers, not rich businesspeople like us, the true job creators. Which means a thriving middle class is the source of American prosperity, not a consequence of it. The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around.  … …

During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo.  CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times.

Yet no company I know of has eliminated its senior managers, or outsourced them to China or automated their jobs. Instead, we now have more CEOs and senior executives than ever before.  So, too, for financial services workers and technology workers.  These folks earn multiples of the median wage, yet we somehow have more and more of them.

The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. … …

The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy.  It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy. … …

Hanauer believes that Seattle’s new $15 an hour minimum wage will be good for the local economy.

Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity in human societies.  But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse. 

It can be managed either to benefit the few in the near term or the many in the long term.  The work of democracies is to bend it to the latter.

That is why investments in the middle class work.   And tax breaks for rich people like us don’t.  

Balancing the power of workers and billionaires by raising the minimum wage isn’t bad for capitalism.  It’s an indispensable tool.

via Nick Hanauer – POLITICO Magazine.

I thank my friend David Damico for the link.

David, by the way, was the person who, nearly five years ago, made me aware that I could start a blog without spending money and without being computer-savvy.   It is thanks to him that I signed up for free hosting service on WordPress.

[6/28/14.  Hat tip for the video to Naked Capitalism.]

Tags: Nick Hanauer