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" I have, oddly, two ski houses - trying to sell one. "
Nick Hanauer
Ski
Trying
Houses
Related Quotes:
" Tech innovation is something societies have to pursue as vigorously as they can. We have to innovate civically and socially at the same rate; otherwise, you create unfortunate disruptions, and that's where you have people opposing technological innovations. "
Nick Hanauer
You
Same
People
" During Seattle's successful campaign for a $15 an hour minimum wage, our opponents would sometimes roll their eyes and snort, 'If $15 is so good, why not $50?' It was a straw man argument: Nobody was proposing a $50 minimum wage; it would have been too high, and we said so. "
Nick Hanauer
Argument
Man
Good
" The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around. "
Nick Hanauer
Way
Rich
People
" All human endeavor, all human civilization, is the act of solving collective action problems. Should we put out our own fires, or should we have a fire department? Should we build roads, or should we hack our way through the woods from one factory to another? "
Nick Hanauer
Problems
Fire
Action
" I think the idea that giant profitable corporations should pay their workers enough so that they don't need food stamps - since when is that left-wing? How did that become 'leftie?' That doesn't seem leftie to me. That seems common sense. "
Nick Hanauer
Food
Enough
Common Sense
" The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense. "
Nick Hanauer
Will
Better
Bad
" Business people do two things with their time fundamentally. The first is that they try to create sales, right? Revenue, key to business. But the other thing they devote their time to equally is cost containment. That is to say, how to not create jobs. Because the fewer jobs you can create for the revenue you create, the more profit you make. "
Nick Hanauer
Key
People
You
" We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics thing behind us: this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It's not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the median wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff, do I? "
Nick Hanauer
Economics
Everyone
Better
" You see, we capitalists will never actually ask you to work overtime. I don't even track your hours. I just make it clear that I trust you to get your job done in the time allotted. And then I hand you twice as much work as you can reasonably do in a 40-hour week. "
Nick Hanauer
You
Work
Week
" Greed is a sin because humans are social creatures. And they simply cannot survive without the opposite of greed, which is cooperation. "
Nick Hanauer
Survive
Social
Sin
" No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that. "
Nick Hanauer
Drive
Only
Class
" I come from generations of progressive, atheist Jews. "
Nick Hanauer
Generations
Come
Atheist
" Economics is mostly how humans rationalize who gets what and why. It's how we instantiate our preferences about status, privileges, and power. "
Nick Hanauer
Economics
How
Status
" Once America's CEOs get back to the business of growing their companies rather than growing their share prices, shareholder value will take care of itself, and all Americans will share in the higher wages and other benefits of a renewed era of economic growth. "
Nick Hanauer
Care
Value
Growth
" Diversity is America's most valuable resource. It is what makes us the most innovative nation on Earth. "
Nick Hanauer
Earth
America
Diversity
" I'm not the smartest guy you've ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I'm not technical at all - I can't write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. "
Nick Hanauer
Risk
Think
Tolerance
" There is no earthly reason why Walmart and McDonald's and Walgreens and these other giant, profitable institutions should have one worker in need of public assistance. It's ridiculous. "
Nick Hanauer
Reason
Why
Need
" Prosperity in human society is misunderstood. The difference between a rich and poor society is the number of problems that society solves for its citizens. That means technological innovation is the source of all prosperity, but with every tech innovation, you also get disruption - ultimately, social and civic disruption. "
Nick Hanauer
Society
You
Problems
" I have a 15-year-old boy, and we are about to give him car keys, which seems like an act of insanity when you know what you know about 15-year-old boy behavior. But in 2018, we'll have self-driving cars, and it will be so much better. My son may be the last generation of kids who learns to drive. "
Nick Hanauer
Son
You
Drive
" The person earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 isn't going out to eat at restaurants. They're not taking piano lessons. They're not going to the gym or the yoga studio. They're not sending mom flowers on Mother's day. What good is this person in the economy? If you raise it to $15 an hour, they're doing all of those things. "
Nick Hanauer
Mom
Mother
Gym
" The thing I've learned most about poverty is how expensive it is to be poor. It's super easy to pay rent every month if you earn enough to pay rent and have a decent job. It's super hard to pay rent if you need a coupon from the state and then need to go find an apartment that will accept that coupon and only that coupon. "
Nick Hanauer
Need
You
Poverty
" The higher the unemployment rate, the more leverage I have to 'encourage' you to 'do what it takes' to keep your job. And so you work even more hours, pushing unemployment up and wages down. And that, my friends, is one of the little tricks that keeps you poor and me rich. "
Nick Hanauer
You
Me
Job
" Rising inequality is toxic to growth. High levels of inequality exclude people - both as innovators and customers - diminishing both innovation and demand. "
Nick Hanauer
Inequality
Growth
People
" Most people believe, mistakenly, that wealth in a human society has something to do with money, but that's not true. Money is simply a medium of exchange. Prosperity in a human society is the accumulation of solutions to human problems that we create for ourselves. "
Nick Hanauer
People
Money
Problems
" The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. "
Nick Hanauer
Love
Us
Rich
" In a sufficiently prosperous society where people specialize sufficiently, and where enough of the crappy work is done by machines, all work becomes art. "
Nick Hanauer
Enough
Work
Society
" The theory that if wages go up, employment goes down isn't a physical law like F=MA. It's a moral law, like 'Bedtime is 9:00 P.M.' "
Nick Hanauer
Law
Down
Go
" I make an eight-figure income annually. "
Nick Hanauer
Income
Make
" A lot of people think that persuasion is all about values and aligning values. I largely disagree. I think persuasion generally, and political persuasion more particularly, has much more to do with explaining in new ways and connecting dots in new ways than just invoking emotions and values. "
Nick Hanauer
New
Values
Think
" I think the people who end up being extraordinarily successful - it's been my observation - tend to care enormously about status, particularly business people, right? Because the only point of money, you know, the only reason to have a 300-foot-long boat is because they're bigger than 200-foot-long boats. "
Nick Hanauer
Boat
Think
Business