(quotes from Nick Hanauer, billionaire, 2/8/15 in theatlantic.com)
"Profits once flowed to higher wages or increased investment. Now, they
enrich a small number of shareholders [super-rich shareholders]."
"..economic power has shifted from workers to owners over the
past 40 years..."
"A 3.6 trillion budget shortfall has left... public infrastructure in disrepair."
"Federal spending on...research and development has plummeted 40%..."
"...public university tuition, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled
in the past 30 years."
"Where did all the money go?"
"...much of it went to stock buybacks -- more than 6.9 trillion dollars
went to stock buybacks since 2004 [alone]."
"In the past, this money flowed through the broader economy in the
form of higher wages, and plant and equipment investment..."
"But, today these buybacks drain trillions of dollars of windfall profits
out of the real economy [the American people's economy] and into
a paper-asset bubble, inflating share prices [of the super-rich], while
producing nothing of tangible value [to the American Peoples lives,
well-being, incomes, future and infrastructure]."
[It should be added that the above chunk of the demise of US democracy is
occurring in China, India, Western Europe, Brazil-- anywhere that an
upper 1% are stealthily, illegitimately, taking money from Earth's evolved
natural resources--the Earth's lands, waters, other
natural resources, and from Earth's masses of diverse peoples.--
L.S. Heatherly]
Creative commons
Showing posts with label Nick hanauer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nick hanauer. Show all posts
Mar 16, 2015
Jul 29, 2014
Billionaire, Nick Hanauer on Plutocracy
(quotes from a Paul Solomon interview, PBS News Hour, 7-28-14)
Nick Hanauer, billionaire, venture capitalist:
"A fundamental law of capitalism is, if workers don't have enough
money[, businesses, [then] don't have enough customers... "
"the average age of fast food workers is 28 years-old, earning poverty
wages; and tax payers have to make up the difference-- in the form of
more food stamps, medicaid and rent assistance."
"Ceo pay went up 1000% in the last 20 years [or something like that (30 yrs)],
and worker pay went up 5.7 %."
"this ridiculous idea that a worker on Wallstreet, securitizing imaginary assets,
or doing high-frequency trading, is worth 1000 times more than an
educator teaching our children, a worker growing our food, or workers
throwing themselves in harms way, [this huge gap in the valuation of
workers in poverty and super-rich workers] is nonsense.!"
Hanauer calls his view "middle-out" as oppsed to "trickle down" or
"bottom up" et.al. economics.
"We have run a 30-year experiment in what happens to an economy
when you structure it to benefit the few, at the expense of the many.
And I would argue that for most people that experiment hasn't gone
very well....
"Its simply nuts that we have allowed this [Plutocracy] to happen.!"
What a relief, what balm, to hear Hanauer and a small minority of
degreed experts come around to what Yours Truly has been thinking
for over 40 years!
L.S. Heatherly 2014 Creative Commons
Nick Hanauer, billionaire, venture capitalist:
"A fundamental law of capitalism is, if workers don't have enough
money[, businesses, [then] don't have enough customers... "
"the average age of fast food workers is 28 years-old, earning poverty
wages; and tax payers have to make up the difference-- in the form of
more food stamps, medicaid and rent assistance."
"Ceo pay went up 1000% in the last 20 years [or something like that (30 yrs)],
and worker pay went up 5.7 %."
"this ridiculous idea that a worker on Wallstreet, securitizing imaginary assets,
or doing high-frequency trading, is worth 1000 times more than an
educator teaching our children, a worker growing our food, or workers
throwing themselves in harms way, [this huge gap in the valuation of
workers in poverty and super-rich workers] is nonsense.!"
Hanauer calls his view "middle-out" as oppsed to "trickle down" or
"bottom up" et.al. economics.
"We have run a 30-year experiment in what happens to an economy
when you structure it to benefit the few, at the expense of the many.
And I would argue that for most people that experiment hasn't gone
very well....
"Its simply nuts that we have allowed this [Plutocracy] to happen.!"
What a relief, what balm, to hear Hanauer and a small minority of
degreed experts come around to what Yours Truly has been thinking
for over 40 years!
L.S. Heatherly 2014 Creative Commons
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