So I saw this article on my Yahoo homepage: ‘Raising wages [doesn’t] kill jobs. It's just a thing rich people say to poor people.’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/unfiltere...184825813.html
I read it and it matched my perspective regarding the shrinking middle class, the burgeoning lower-class and the transfer of America's wealth to the .01%.
I had a feeling that if I looked further that Nick Hanauer might get around to saying that we, the taxpayers in the shrinking middle class, are actually subsidizing profits for McDonald's and others by allowing their lower wages and shoring them up with govt assistance programs.
So I looked and found this TED Talk which Nick Hanauer did. It's about 20 minutes, and I think it is well worth the time spent watching it. I know many of you are staunch trickle-down believers, but I think it would be enlightening for you to listen with an open mind.
https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanau...pt?language=en
The link is to a video with subtitles and has the transcript below if you would rather read. Here are a couple of snippets from the first sev eral minutes, watch it I think it will be worth your time.
So what do I see in our future today, you ask? I see pitchforks, as in angry mobs with pitchforks, because while people like us plutocrats are living beyond the dreams of avarice, the other 99 percent of our fellow citizens are falling farther and farther behind:
* In 1980, the top one percent of Americans shared about eight percent of [income], while the bottom 50 percent of Americans shared 18 percent.
* Thirty years later, today, the top one percent shares over 20 percent of [income], while the bottom 50 percent of Americans share 12 or 13.
* If the trend continues, the top one percent will share over 30 percent of national [income] in another 30 years, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans will share just six.
You see, the problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it's getting worse every day.
If wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks.
I'm not making a moral argument that economic inequality is wrong. What I am arguing is that rising economic inequality is stupid and ultimately self-defeating. Rising inequality doesn't just increase our risks from pitchforks, but it's also terrible for business too..........
.....When Ford famously introduced the $5 day, which was twice the prevailing wage at the time, he didn't just increase the productivity of his factories, he converted exploited autoworkers who were poor into a thriving middle class who could now afford to buy the products that they made.
Ford intuited what we now know is true..............Raising wages increases demand, which increases hiring, which in turn increases wages and demand and profits, and that virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity is precisely what is missing from today's economic recovery.
We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us, this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I? I actually bought two pairs of these pants.....I could have bought 2,000 pairs, but what would I do with them? How many haircuts can I get? How often can I go out to dinner? No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.
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