Nick Hanauer, one of the 1% of the extremely wealthy in the United States, started from humble beginnings selling pillows from his family’s factory in Seattle.
He was successful, and that success allowed him to begin investing in others he believed had a vision that would be successful.
One of those men was Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He invested at the very beginning well before any of them had any idea how successful it would become.
Hanauer started aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion.
It has been a long a successful journey. But his vision for the future is not so rosy – he says he sees pitchforks.
The plutocrats (the 1%) are thriving and 99% are not. The span between the two groups is expanding exponentially. “It is getting worse really, really fast” Hanauer says.
Nick warns us that it is not inequality that is the problem, because that is a part of capitalism, but the way and the speed with which we are expanding this great divide is moving us from a Capitalist to a feudal system.
Hanauer notes, the middle class is shrinking and if policies aren’t changed it will disappear. We are fast approaching pre-revolution days of Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette in France and well know what happened to them.
We must fix and shrink the span. We cannot sustain this kind of inequality, as it will lead to a police state or a revolution. Hanauer tells his fellow “Zillionaires” they are living in a dream world.
We will not know ahead of time when the tipping point is reached and anarchy is upon us.
Nick recommends policies similar to FDR’s during the depression. Raising wages allows more people to purchase more which supports the capital society.
Together with his co-author Eric Liu they are changing the economic conversation using “middle out” economics instead of “trickle down”. We need to recognize that ordinary people are the source of growth & prosperity not the rich guys.
Hanauer has become very controversial as you can imagine …
Original Source: Nick Hanauer Official YouTube Channel
