Nick Hanauer: idiot savant.

I've mentioned many times in these pages that when the rich tell you they are going to help you that it has nothing to do with helping you.  You might receive what you believe to be help but it is generally done with them mainly in mind, not you.  This is not a fault of theirs because they did not design their own DNA.  They are just doing what we humans do.  Don't blame an opportunist for being one - he is just expressing his humanity. 

I recently mentioned that the elite were out talking about "income inequality" and I mentioned that the reasons for it had nothing to do with the well being of Mickey D or Wal-Mart workers.  It had to do with the elite worrying about getting strung up by their heels.  Here is a post in which I minced no words on the matter.  I wrote, " Remember, there is a growing awareness about "wealth inequality" right now and it has nothing to do with fairness.  It has to do with the fear that the con men will screw the patsies so badly that it will result in broad civil unrest or worse."   A friend later mentioned to me that it also had a profit motive and so I included this in my theme.  But I have never lost the belief that when the natives get restless, the chiefs get nervous.


Which brings us to an article written by a guy named Nick Hanauer which he addresses to "his fellow zillionaires".  First Nick tells us how rich he is because, of course, that means he knows everything. Congrats Nick.


Then he does a pretty good job of reading the tea leaves regarding civil unrest.  He writes,  "If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when."


Nick I couldn't agree more and have written the same thoughts in this blog many times.  So at least nobody can say the rich people don't "get it".  They do. 

Then Nick goes on and on for 4 pages of crap that he thinks supports his point about how Wal-mart corporation is rich and its workers are all on welfare, blah blah blah.  I don't disagree with the facts but I know where it is headed: moron-ville.

Near the end, Nick does say something that sounds true and has truth in it while being the set up for the big lie:  "Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t shrink government with wishful thinking. The only way to slash government for real is to go back to basic economic principles: You have to reduce the demand for government. If people are getting $15 an hour or more, they don’t need food stamps. They don’t need rent assistance. They don’t need you and me to pay for their medical care. If the consumer middle class is back, buying and shopping, then it stands to reason you won’t need as large a welfare state. And at the same time, revenues from payroll and sales taxes would rise, reducing the deficit."



Well, there it is.  Nestled in a bunch of platitudes about individual sovereignty is the call for everyone to get $15 per hour.  And thus Mr. Nick outs himself as another minimum wage do-gooder.

After all that bait, we finally get the hook: "This is, in other words, an economic approach that can unite left and right. Perhaps that’s one reason the right is beginning, inexorably, to wake up to this reality as well. Even Republicans as diverse as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum recently came out in favor of raising the minimum wage, in defiance of the Republicans in Congress."

To be honest, I sort of like Nick's swagger-tell-it-straight-because-I'm-a-bad-ass kind of attitude.  Not all rich people are scheming bastards and perhaps Nick is just a normal guy who saw himself in the right place at the right time and had the balls to take a risk.  Yeah, maybe he's OK.

OR maybe he owned a fucking bank (like he admitted to), created credit from THIN AIR using a corrupt money supply based on fractional reserve banking and then loaned it out for a piece of the business of Amazon.

And so I would like to respond to Mr. Nick as politely as I can under the circumstances:

Dear Nick,

You do realize that your wealth was created by the use of massive leverage called fractional reserve banking, don't you?  You do realize that average folks, who you want to bless with a $15/hr payoff (bribe?) in order to escape their pitchforks, do not have access to this little scam, don't you?  THIS is the only inequality that matters, Nick!!  Special people, like you, get the ability to conjure up billions of dollars worth of credit which are loaned out to real workers (i.e. not you) who then work to build a business which you get a big part of simply because you had the privilege of being able to create money from thin air on demand.  Does the truth hurt "zillionaires" too?

Nick, raising wages to $15 / hr is the shortest of stopgaps, man.  All it will do is make the price of food and gas rise along with it.  It's not the amount of money you get paid in exchange for your labor, it's what it will buy you.   Government - mandated economics are for the benefit of rich people and they never work for the little guy.  Please ask your zillionaire friends who know something about economics because you clearly do not.  The key is not to create artificial wage levels but to reinstate the purchasing power of the money they already do get by getting rid of fiat currency and fractional reserve banking.  But then that would put people like you out of work, wouldn't it?  You do call that "work", right Nick?

Nick, I hate to tell you man, but as smart as you are in business you are an economic idiot.  Worse yet for a guy like you who thinks he has unending vision, you can't see that you are an idiot in this area.  You actually believe the crap you are writing.  In the off chance that you are ego surfing and you read this, please feel free to reply in the comments (something which I was not able to do in your article).  I will be glad to give you a detailed explanation of where you are going wrong in your thoughts here and will easily back it up with the writings of some of the finest economic minds living today.  Until then, stick to your knitting.  Minimum wage laws just concentrate more power and control into the hands of an already dangerous government.

One more thing Nick: pitchforks are not your problem these days.  I suppose you have already invested in a good suit of body armor, right?   After all a modern revolt would include AR-15s with sniper scopes, not pitchforks.  Not that it's any of my business but I just thought to tell you about this since your ideas about economics are similarly as backward as your fear vision.