THE MIDDLE CLASS AS JOB creators is too controversial an idea to broadcast widely, at least that’s the verdict of TED.
There’s one idea, though, that TED’s organizers recently decided was too controversial to spread: the notion that widening income inequality is a bad thing for America, and that as a result, the rich should pay more in taxes.
TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”
Nick Hanauer, one of the important patriotic millionaires willing to tell it.
It blew up on social media, rapidly spreading across the Internets, with inboxes across the political sphere pulsating with indignation over it.
TED actually stands for “technology, education, design.” Not being an expert on TED, what I do know is the political is anathema to them or close to it. Perhaps that’s why TED attempted to censor Hanauer’s talk.
It didn’t work out very well.
Republicans, conservatives and Tea Party people ignore the economic reality every day, with every candidate, with every Paul Ryan austerity policy proposal, and with every tax gift they give the rich.
The TED furor built all day and is now showing on Memeorandum, with more and more posts hitting TED on what liberals, not to be confused with centrist or squishy Democrats, have always known.
Rich people don’t create jobs, middle class consumers create the jobs, so without a robust, thriving middle class the American economy goes bust.
Why would TED invite this man to speak and then censor him?
TED tries to explain to Hanauer what the problem is with is speech:
Which party would that be? The Greens? Do the Socialists still have a party?
Anyway, I view Hanauer’s speech as being a reaction to the trend in economic policy where the issue of demand is almost never considered. It’s as though Henry Ford never existed – few people running American businesses seem to realize that part of the prosperity of their company is due to the fact that their workers, and more importantly their workers’ peers, can afford to buy their products.
Very little about that speech is news to me, BTW, except that squirrels are apparently taking credit for evolution. Most of the rest you can get from Naked Capitalism, Paul Krugman’s and Robert Reich’s blogs (or Dean Baker’s), or about a dozen other economics-oriented sites. The money shot is a 2:20 of the video, with its all-too-familiar contrasting curves for top tax rates and unemployment rates (also page 7 of the slide show). It’s a lesson that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney will ever turn into policy.