Nick Hanauer
Nick Hanauer
Nick Hanaueris an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist living in Shoreline, Washington...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
ideas wages employment
The idea that high wages equals low employment, it's absurd.
real care social
If you care about real change, deep structural change, that involves politics, and all politics is friction. It takes leadership, and the willingness to create that friction, that leads to social change.
feet long boat
The only reason to have a 300-foot-long boat is because they're bigger than 200-foot-long boats.
cutting thinking people
Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.
unemployment minimum-wage littles
But can we please stop insisting that if low-wage workers earn a little bit more, unemployment will skyrocket and the economy will collapse? There is no evidence for it. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.
years people pay
You can go back 150 years and literally find the same people saying the same thing in the same way. "If we have to pay you more, it will be bad for you." And that's because saying that is a much more polite way of saying, "I'm rich, you're poor, and I would prefer to keep it what way."
jobs creating squirrels
When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.
jobs unemployment wages
My message is that the counterclaim - which is that if wages go up, employment will go down - is a scam. It's a con job. It's an intimidation tactic. There is absolutely no evidence anywhere that it's true. On the contrary, where you find high wages you usually find low unemployment.
jobs would-be today
If it was true that lower taxes for the rich and more wealth to the wealthy leat to job creation, today we would be drowning in jobs.
country people effort
I was at the forefront of the effort to pass $15 minimum wage in Seattle, and have been collaborating with the people who are trying to make that happen across the country.
law ideas employment
The fundamental law of capitalism is: when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, and need more workers. The idea that high wages equals low employment, it's absurd.
mom mother flower
The person earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 isn't going out to eat at restaurants. They're not taking piano lessons. They're not going to the gym or the yoga studio. They're not sending mom flowers on Mother's day. What good is this person in the economy? If you raise it to $15 an hour, they're doing all of those things. And all of a sudden, not just business thrives, but small business thrives.
thinking wings ideas
I think the idea that giant profitable corporations should pay their workers enough so that they don't need food stamps - since when is that left wing? How did that become "leftie?" That doesn't seem leftie to me. That seems common sense.
higher keeps leverage pushing tricks wages work
The higher the unemployment rate, the more leverage I have to 'encourage' you to 'do what it takes' to keep your job. And so you work even more hours, pushing unemployment up and wages down. And that, my friends, is one of the little tricks that keeps you poor and me rich.