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" In software, it's easy to understand what people want, and it's hard to build. Internet stuff is super easy to build, but it's hard to know what people want. "
Nick Hanauer
Know
Understand
People
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" Prosperity isn't something that squirts out of rich people. "
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" When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer. "
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" 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. "
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" Amazon didn't create any jobs. Amazon probably destroyed a million jobs in our economy. "
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" I make an eight-figure income annually. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" People want to think of economics as a natural science, like physics, with the comforting reliability of simple-to-understand theories like F=MA. Unfortunately, it isn't. Economics is a social science, and the so-called theories are really social and moral constructs. "
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" Rising inequality is toxic to growth. High levels of inequality exclude people - both as innovators and customers - diminishing both innovation and demand. "
Nick Hanauer
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Growth
People
" 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. "
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" I come from generations of progressive, atheist Jews. "
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Generations
Come
Atheist
" Diversity is America's most valuable resource. It is what makes us the most innovative nation on Earth. "
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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. "
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Risk
Think
Tolerance
" 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. "
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You
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Job
" It is true that rich people can spend more money than middle class people, but there's this upper limit on what we can spend. I drive a very nice car, but it's only one car. I don't own a thousand, even though I earn a thousand times the median wage. I have a few jackets, not a few thousand. "
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Nice
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" 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
" 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 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
" One of the things that I think makes me successful is the way in which I collaborate with others. In my opinion, nothing great is ever the product of one mind. It's always a consequence of some sort of self-critical collaboration. "
Nick Hanauer
Collaboration
Think
Great
" 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. "
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Society
You
Problems
" I'm not the world's best philosopher. But I am one of the world's best strategists. I will put my strategic abilities against anybody on Earth. "
Nick Hanauer
I Am
Will
Best
" I have absolutely no rituals or routines other than I work obsessively and think constantly about my work, to the dismay and discomfort of everyone I employ. And my family. "
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Family
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" 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. "
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Care
Value
Growth
" I have, oddly, two ski houses - trying to sell one. "
Nick Hanauer
Ski
Trying
Houses
" 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. "
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New
Values
Think
" 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.' "
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Law
Down
Go
" 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
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" If Jeff Bezos and I had started Amazon.com in a poverty-stricken corner of Africa, there would have been no job creation because there would be no people to buy the stuff from Amazon.com. The difference here is the American middle class, which is by every measure the most extraordinary economic achievement in the history of the world. "
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World
" The middle class creates us rich people, not the other way around. "
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Way
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" We rich people have been falsely persuaded by our schooling and the affirmation of society, and have convinced ourselves, that we are the main job creators. It's simply not true. "
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True
Society
Rich