I have previously referred to billionaire Nick Hanauer, and his clear-eyed view of what economic evidence tells us. Hanauer has, for example, explained multiple times why raising the minimum wage, not cutting taxes, creates jobs: it’s when people have enough disposable income to buy your widgets that employers hire people to make them. (When Seattle ignored the plutocrats’ warnings and raised its minimum wage, Hanauer’s position was vindicated.)
In 2023, Hanauer and a co-author wrote a book titled “Corporate Bullshit,” intended to help readers identify the “pernicious propaganda” promulgated by the wealthy. The book identified six categories of falsehoods that Hanauer says repeatedly thwart progress on issues ranging from civil rights, to wealth inequality, climate change, voting rights, and gun responsibility.
As Hanauer points out, Americans have a bad habit of giving credence to arguments made by the wealthy and powerful simply because those making the arguments are wealthy and powerful. (It always reminds me of that lyric from Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I Were A Rich Man.” “The most important men in town would come to call on me, asking questions that would cross a Rabbis eyes–and it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong…When you’re rich they think you really know.”)
Recently, on Facebook, Hanauer shared a letter he’d sent to one of the “movers and shakers” who spoke at Davos. Since he publicly shared it, I assume I can share it as well.
Here’s his letter:
I listened closely to your remarks at Davos, and you’re right about the core problem: capitalism is losing public trust because prosperity has left too many people behind. I warned us all about this when I wrote “The Pitchforks Are Coming for Us Plutocrats” back in 2014. You’re also correct that GDP and market caps are terrible proxies for whether an economy is actually working for working people.
But here’s the thing—this isn’t a mystery anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time.
For more than a decade now, I’ve been having conversations—often with people who run large institutions, manage serious capital, and employ thousands—about exactly what to do next.
On Pitchfork Economics and in conversations across the ecosystem, we’ve talked with people like Joseph Stiglitz, Heather Boushey, Mariana Mazzucato, Robert Reich, Todd Tucker, Elizabeth Anderson, Mark Blyth, and many others who have laid out, in plain language, what will actually fix this problem.
They all point to a similar set of solutions:
–Tax extreme wealth and income at levels that reflect their real social cost
– Rebuild antitrust enforcement and curb monopoly power
– Strengthen labor markets and worker bargaining power
– Invest aggressively in public goods that make broad-based prosperity possible
None of this is radical. In fact, it’s how the U.S. built the most prosperous middle class in history. So when you say the answer is more “conversation,” I have to strongly disagree. We’re past the conversation phase. There are many ideas on the table, from every corner of the world. The evidence is overwhelming. And the political backlash you’re worried about is already here precisely because action hasn’t followed conversation.
On behalf of the handful of us zillionaires who have benefited from this system, we don’t need more panels or better messaging. We need the courage to support policies that will redistribute power, not just wealth—and to do so even when it’s uncomfortable or expensive for people like us.
You said that in order to solve inequality, the mountain—meaning Davos—needed to come down to earth. It’s a nice image, but it doesn’t reflect reality. What really needs to happen is the mountain needs to stop extracting from everyone else.
It’s fashionable these days to bash all billionaires, and a large number of them certainly deserve that bashing. But billionaires–like all other groups of people–are not a monolithic category. Just as all Somalis aren’t guilty of fraud in Minneapolis, all Jews do not support Israel’s activities in Gaza, and (possibly) all ICE agents aren’t thugs. We lose our grasp of reality when we fail to recognize the differences within identifiable populations.
Billionaires aren’t all like Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison. There are also people like Nick Hanauer and Abigail Disney. When the people with pitchforks come for the billionaires, as Hanauer has warned, they’ll need to be selective….
Good post this morning. In a consumer has more money to consume, they tend to spend it. DUH!. But the penny-pinching cost accountants want to keep stockholders happy with increasing profits. Not long ago Apple’s stock to a big hit because its profits didn’t grow as quickly or as high as the stockholders wanted them to. And therein lies the problem.
Yes, there are billionaires who actually understand economics and the basics behind growth in a controlled environment. But the greed of the next level in MORE cases drives the “management” to maximize profits at all other costs. Even Henry Ford knew this when he started making cars.
Humans have continually battled the management of greed and hoarding. Those basic, primitive and self-consuming instincts, left to their own devices, will destroy the entity and the population that fails to recognize their weaknesses.
What I would like to see, if I could Genie-blink a new world into being, is an economy that is not based on extraction and exploitation of our natural environment beyond it’s capacity to be sustainable, and that does not exploit people as cogs in a machine. Until we realize our natural world as our own self, and that what we do to it we are doing to ourselves, we will never deal with the fundamental problem of our time, which is the climate crises and social injustice of what Joanna Macy calls “business as usual”.
Our civilization is coming apart. In many ways, I am okay with that, and the sooner the better. What we can do is to imagine and work toward a new way of being that includes respect for the Earth and respect for all the beings who live on her, human and other-than-human.
I wanted to add to the conversation from yesterday, about the hypocrisy of maga/t*ump, especially concerning Mr. Pretti legally carrying a weapon to a protest. I did not notice maga voicing concern about Kyle Rittenhouse wielding an AR15 style rifle at a protest, even though he shot and killed people.
It is simple. What goes round … comes round. You reap what you sow.
Nick writes, “…courage to support policies that will redistribute power…”
That’s delusional. Davos this year was about fear of the little people coming for their wealth and power. They are now in the data collection, surveillance, and protection racket. Nick’s 2014 book was followed by Thomas Piketty, but our country has gotten much worse since then.
Do you think AI is being used to level the playing field?
Of course not!
Bezos paid $75 million for Melania, which made close to $7 million on opening weekend. Then he turned around and fired 33% of the WaPo staff.
Look at how both parties have covered up the Elite accused of pedophilia for three decades. The FBI “monitored” Epstein and his fellow abusers of little girls, but did nothing. If the pedophiles had been the working poor or poor, they would have locked them all up and thrown away the key. Child molesters (ChMos) are looked down on as the most disgusting criminals in all communities. Not among the rich!
Nick Fuentes said that Epstein was “cool” and even made a replica sweater that Epstein wore all the time to sell to his incel groypers. Money buys a lot of protection through mouthpieces.
If you’ve caught Trump’s comments, even in the NY Times, he is threatening to nationalize voting especially in blue states and cities. Bannon wants ICE or police at every precinct. PedoDon is still convinced he lost 2020 because of all the immigrants who voted against him. Musk makes the same claims repeatedly on X. They are laying the groundwork to cheat/steal or cancel the 2026 elections. Even Tulsi Gabbard went to Atlanta this past week.
Nick’s message is way too late as the wealthy oligarchs and Zionists are circling the wagons in 2026.
p.s. In my investigation into Charlie Kirk’s assassination, most all Americans thought TPUSA was a youth movement led by Charlie. However it started, it became a high-tech data-harvesting technique for the cause. Charlie was reaching 3-400 students at a time. Watch closely as Erika pursues filling stadiums to harvest more data for tracking. Things aren’t always what they seem. 😉
Smekens … is this your column … or Sheila’s?
Thank you Norris
Sorry, Todd S., but I like what “Nick” wrote, and I like what Vernon and the others have written thus far.
Even an anti-semite like Henry ford realized that one has to pay staff a living wage, so that they could buy the product.
I’ve had a lifelong interest in economics and blame (part of) the profession for the challenges we face today. There was significant “revolution” in economics 1970s and 1980s, led by Milton Friedman and the Chicago economics department. This led to a split in the profession, sometimes known as Saltwater (e.g., Harvard, Princeton etc.) vs. Freshwater economics (Chicago).
The Freshwater crew largely rejected government “interference” in markets and anything smelling of redistribution. Profits for owners was (is) the only legitimate goal of businesses and anti-trust enforcement, government oversight and unions were inhibitors to progress. Social interventions were pejoratively labeled socialism. This continues today. For example, last weekend in the IBJ, two professors who teach economics in one of our universities, advanced the notion that oligopolies and monopolies were self-correcting and public interventions in consolidated markets were socialism.
This view is self-serving for those who have been successful. It is very hard to correct partly because entry level economics classes almost uniformly study perfectly competitive markets, which are exceedingly rare in real life. We need more of Nick Hanauer and Joe Stiglitz and lot less of the Chicago school.
Dave,
Great post!
The Kochs invested a fortune over decades in over 150 university economics departments to ensure that “market-driven capitalism” is taught to young students. Look at the endowments, too. Who controls the universities today? 😉
if America hasnt caught on, the billionaires,per se, are the reasons why we have inequality,over the people. the security of everyday life has been flattened,shortened and poisoned. we lived thru Amercas best time,s. and today after tech decided we should be teathered with a tracking device,they have decided we dont care. (can you say privacy?)manipulated lies conned and basically put us into debt via credit. all implemented to roll on after reagans big anti social agenda. the government allowed big tech grants to fuluil their dreams of the world wide,er web. weve become again better at everything,except being self reliant,and voting as the majority. this capitalist society has become the slave to big money and a con game they invented for gain. the elected mass of jellyfish in congress amount to a take over fueled by wealth and greed,because they can. the fact is main street allowed this thru banks and credit that backed us into a corner. as the dominos fell,wages took the hit,and then decisions by our law makers to unravel the worlds balance between wars and self reliance. the tech industry has taken our minds and made them follow the path of cheap words and insults into our enslavement to the rich. the fact is, no one mentions the actual net worth of thi$.the $tock market has a number.its around 54 Trillion dollars. and everyday we see points. its time we see numbers. solid facts to the hoard they demand to control. the names of who,controls this.the working class made those profits and filled other pockets,like bezos and suckerburg. if you dont have easy to digest facts for the common man,you will never get the working class aware of how much of the momey we earned to make them billionaires(and how many billionaires)and how much better our own individual lives would be with greed control and a taxation to make America better. instead we have the major con games by those ,lets face it, in the stock market and dont give a shit as long as i got mine. thats how greed today works..when you can not make a living wage and decide how you want and when to retire,i find no reason to support peoples dreams who demand others submit to poverty. theres plenty of money in this ecomony,its just locked away for a few to decide who lives and dies.
Jacobin: Otto Barenberg
“US labor unions can take a page from Swedens Meidner Plan.”
and ya wonder why no one from Sweden wants to come to America.
History shows that those who are sociopaths in their business dealings have almost always come up against those they have exploited to the point where the exploited have nothing left to lose. When that happens, often violently, things collapse, reorganize and the cycle begins again. Unfortunately, sociopaths arise in each new cycle driven by lust for wealth and power.
Our grand experiment was supposed the allow an even playing field for all, well all landowning white males anyway. As more players have gained power to enter the game, the rulers have moved the goals to their advantage, as always.
Reading our history closely reveals how violent those cyclical changes have always been, often even at the local level. It seems we are approaching another tipping point in the cycles. The entitled powerful want to retain the power that they have often stolen by one means or another now to face the mudsills who support the infrastructure through their blood and sweat, demanding at least a minimum means of not just surviving but thriving.
“White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America” by Nancy Isenberg recounts how we got here, and likely where we are going now. It is a class war with all that “war” implies.
RESIST.
The more billionaires that continue crawling out from under their rocks and creep from under the woodwork, the less working people have as middle-income people become low-income people and low-income people become our poverty level population. What is keeping those “good billionaires” from raising the minimum wage in their increasingly large and numbers of businesses? A million dollars rarely even raises an eyebrow today as America is producing more and more billionaires who support the now billionaire president-in-waiting to reach the “T” level before his supporters.
We are losing more than money; we are losing rights along with income and healthcare as well as being safe from violence no matter where we are as we watch the increasing atrocities in Trump’s chosen ICE victim cities. The First Amendment is fast disappearing as he sends out more Executive Orders increasing the violence to end freedom of speech, our free press and the right to assemble to petition this failing Government for a redress of grievances while the freedom FROM their chosen religious beliefs becomes our laws. The Second Amendment has been the far right’s chosen way to rule via being armed with weaponry which they are now trying to prevent American citizens from legally arming themselves with.
It does get down to money, always money, but what good is more money when you aren’t free to speak, to gather to voice complaints or free to be safe on streets or in our homes, businesses or churches and now our court houses are used to grab those immigrants following our laws to register to become or to remain legal.
We used to know our millionaires and how they became millionaires; we buy their products or not but where in hell did all of these billionaires come from…other than Elon Musk? The white immigrants from Musk’s South Africa are being welcomed with open Trump and MAGA arms while immigrant working adults and small children born here are being rounded up and deported, if not physically assaulted or shot, and Trump’s second immigrant wife sits safely within what is left of our White House. Probably watching her documentary movie on the huge screen moved from the destroyed East Wing where movies used to be shown and vital meetings held.
We down here, peering through the weeds at grassroots level, have already lost our grasp on reality as we struggle to grasp what nation we are living in today; it changes for the worse each morning when we wake up to find we didn’t awake from a nightmare but from the reality of Fascism being welcomed to come to roost in American.