A friend of mine recently posted this article and after reading it, plus some of the redirected articles embedded within, I am simply floored.
With joy and awe, that is.
Our nation is in crisis mode, and now, more than ever, we need people willing to stand up and say things like “Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.” Nick Hanauer, an ultra-rich capitalist, is the man who wrote that.
Finally, there is someone on the other side of the fence that is getting the right idea and putting it out for the public to see!! Hanauer goes on to talk about how the conversation about raising the federal minimum wage and the declining middle class shouldn’t be about injustice or pity but it should be about regaining what this country stands for: equality. And no, this isn’t a plea for redistributing the wealth but rather one to restore the balance of power.
“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 smart capitalists use to make capitalism stable and sustainable. And no one has a bigger stake in that than zillionaires like us.”
Hanauer discusses trickle-down economics and how ineffective it is for allowing sustainable capitalism growth. The gap between the the upper and lower classes is rising and not shrinking and the policy writers in Washington don’t seem to grasp that workers and consumers are the same people. Higher paid workers have more disposable income to spend which in turn grows businesses. True, some small businesses might suffer at first under the higher overhead of a larger minimum wage, but the end result would be happier, more productive workers that can spend more as consumers.
The article also addresses the constant cry of “supply and demand” and what it really means in real-world economics. A rich man doesn’t need more things than a poor one. They both require the basic necessities. And while the rich man might buy a wider assortment of products but no significant depth in any one category. Do you know where the rest of their money goes after all the purchases and investments? The bank. Same as anyone else’s. And do you know what it does there? Nothing. It sits and perhaps gains interest. But do you know what it’s definitely not doing? It’s not being put back into the economy. They already have all the shirts and pants and pillows and furniture they need.They already bought their car and their vacation home. So the rest of those millions that they earned? They sit, unspent, wasting space.
Read the article embedded at the top of this post. And definitely leave comments or reblog if it speaks to you in any way, positive or negative.
Kat Webber 