Nick Hanauer: The dirty secret of capitalism -- and a new way forward
Nick Hanauer has become an important voice in the raging debate on inequality — and his provocative argument is aimed at his fellow plutocrats. Full bio
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of dollars in market value,
I'm in the top .01 percent of all earners.
to share the secrets of our success,
have never been richer.
of the economic pie every year?
than we were 30 years ago?
than we once did?
in which the economics profession
a little bit of a problem.
or raise wages for workers.
would be a terrible mistake,
always kills economic growth,
21 trillion dollars richer
have grown 900 billion dollars poorer,
that has largely repeated itself
struggle to get by
in about 40 years,
that the only reasonable response
of austerity and globalization
what we need to do.
as the dismal science,
because as much as it is taught today,
of the dazzling mathematics.
of academics and practitioners
economic theory is dangerously wrong
of rising inequality
of decades of bad economic theory.
that made me so rich isn't just wrong,
that creates economic growth,
that promotes the public good,
that produces our prosperity,
that is neither just nor inclusive
of social cooperation
a modern society to thrive.
that it's become painfully obvious
that undergird neoliberal economic theory
through some of those mistaken assumptions
suggests prosperity actually comes from.
assumption number one is
an efficient equilibrium system,
in the economy, like wages, goes up,
like jobs, must go down.
our nation's first 15 dollar minimum wage,
over their precious equilibrium.
of labor," they warned,
will lose their jobs.
doesn't kill jobs, it creates them;
required to pay restaurant workers enough
can afford to eat in restaurants,
is always equal to its value,
that if you earn 50,000 dollars a year
a thousand times as much value as you.
50 million dollars a year
who has run dozens of businesses:
the power to negotiate,
have become less productive
have become more powerful.
in power between capital and labor
became essentially
and by far the most pernicious,
as something called "homo economicus,"
that we are all perfectly selfish,
and relentlessly self-maximizing.
for your entire life,
nice for somebody else,
was maximizing your own utility?
on a grenade to defend fellow soldiers,
their narrow self-interest?
moral intuition,
of neoliberal economics,
prosperity in it,
acts of selfishness
into prosperity and the common good.
selfish maximizers,
is the cause of our prosperity.
would be to slow economic growth
of neoliberal economics,
which has produced economic policies
in the top one percent
of growth over the last 40 years.
describes human beings
permission to be our best selves,
that this new economics
imagined or invented.
are being developed and refined
new research in economics,
and other disciplines.
does not yet have its own textbook
comes from goes something like this.
is an evolutionary system
and increasing amounts of consumer demand.
by which we solve human problems,
through which the market selects
we become more prosperous.
of social and economic cooperation
the more highly specialized products
is correct, of course,
in how markets work,
between highly cooperative groups --
competition between networks of firms,
a successful business knows
by including the talents of everyone
than just a bunch of selfish jerks.
more prosperous
just five rules of thumb.
are not jungles, they're gardens,
social technology ever invented
or democratic regulation,
more problems than they solve.
is both wrong and backwards.
in market economies.
is not merely to enrich shareholders.
in contemporary economic life
the only purpose of the corporation
of all stakeholders:
doesn't make you a capitalist,
upon cooperation at scale as ours,
as it is for society.
as unchangeable natural law,
and constructed narratives
and more sustainable economy,
I'm sure you get this question a lot.
with the economic system,
and join the 99 percent?
why don't you pay more,
why don't you pay more?"
a hundred thousand times better --
to build narratives and to pass laws
all the other rich people
that we cooked up
we'll find some takers for you.
Moderator: Thank you very much.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Nick Hanauer - Venture capitalist, authorNick Hanauer has become an important voice in the raging debate on inequality — and his provocative argument is aimed at his fellow plutocrats.
Why you should listen
Nick Hanauer has founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries, with a pretty notable record of success. As a few highlights, he cofounded a company called aQuantive that sold to Microsoft for $6.4 billion, and was the first non-family investor in Amazon.
Meanwhile Hanauer, a “proud and unapologetic capitalist,” has also been looking closely at society’s growing inequality gap, and the consequences it holds for our shared destiny — and the ultimate fate of our democracies. In 2007, he and civic activist Eric Liu co-wrote the book The True Patriot, an examination of progressive patriotism. This was followed by 2011’s The Gardens of Democracy, also with Liu, a vision for “growing” good citizens.
In 2013, Hanauer published a commentary in Bloomberg BusinessWeek proposing a $15 minimum wage (a suggestion that Seattle acted on this year). Early in 2014, he and Eric Beinhocker published "Capitalism, Redefined." In the summer of 2014, Hanauer published a much-shared essay in Politico that suggests, if societal inequality is allowed to grow unchecked, modern societies could start looking an awful lot like pre-Revolutionary France.
He is working on a new book, due out in 2015.
Nick Hanauer | Speaker | TED.com