Progressive one-percenter Nick Hanauer on PBS NewsHour

[alp227]

From Monday's show:

What’s the best engine to drive the economy? More money for the rich, or better wages for the working class? Economics correspondent Paul Solman explores the debate between those two lines of thought with billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and noted libertarian law professor Richard Epstein.

Transcript is here; links to Hanauer's works cited in this segment:

- The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats (Politico, July/Aug 2014)
- Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators (Bloomberg News, Dec. 2011)

[BootinUp]

1. Great piece. K&R. I think I'll go watch

the extended interview with Hanauer.

[tclambert]

2. Nick Hanauer talks about the real world as it is. Epstein bases his arguments on bizarre assumptions

economists like him love to make. Rich people are big innovators? Other than Gates and Elon Musk, there aren't many. Most of the the very wealthy got wealthy the old-fashioned way--getting born into rich families. Increased regulations in the past few decades have created the income inequality we see? In the age of anti-regulators, lax enforcement, and corporations left to regulate themselves, that statement is ludicrous. Minimum wage workers shouldn't make a higher wage because some of them come in late to work? Irrelevant and self-correcting.

And yet, after making several laughable statements, he says Nick Hanauer doesn't know what he's talking about. Hanauer just makes statements that are demonstrably true with iron logic based on observable facts.

[Larkspur]

3. Richard Epstein would like to see workers make 2 cents an hour!!!

And work 2 jobs!! At what 2 jobs at 2 cents an hour. This guy is drunk on the Tinkle-down kool-aid that is the color of urine. He deserves a army of pitchforks coming after him.

We need a pitchfork army smilie.