Are Rich People Better Than You? Why Everything We Think We Know About Good Economics Might Be Backward, With Nick Hanauer

The Money with Katie Show

Money with Katie

Self-improvement, Education, Business, Investing, How To

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2022

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It turns out Americans have been asking the wrong question: It's not, “What’s the difference between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,’” but rather…“How did those in the 0.1% end up having it all?” To paraphrase my guest, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer (https://nickhanauer.com/), “How do [rich people like me] manage to grab an ever-increasing piece of the pie? Is it because rich people are smarter than we were 30 years ago? Is it that we’re working harder than we once did? Are we taller? Better-looking? Sadly, no. It all comes down to one thing: economics.” My thesis? Capitalism is the economic system that creates wealth, and good economic policy is what ensures that all that wealth doesn’t accrue to a very small group of people. Learn more about our sponsor, Vin Social: http://vinsocialvip.com/. Transcripts can be found at https://www.podpage.com/money-with-katie-show/. — Mentioned in the Episode Nick Hanaeur's TED Talk "The Dirty Secret of Capitalism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3KE_H27bs Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson's The Winner-Take-All Economy: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class: https://politicalscience.yale.edu/publications/winner-take-all-politics-how-washington-made-rich-richer-and-turned-its-back-middle Jared Bernstein & Karen Kornbluh's paper “Running Faster to Stay in Place: The Growth of Family Work Hours and Incomes": https://www.upi.com/Business_News/2004/07/20/Workers-put-in-more-hours-just-to-keep-up/79691090369058/ Reaganomics, FDR, & deregulation: https://origins.osu.edu/history-news/time-end-deregulation?language_content_entity=en "Reaganomics Killed America's Middle Class" from Salon: https://www.salon.com/2014/04/19/reaganomics_killed_americas_middle_class_partner/ Marginal tax rates in 2022: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets CEO pay 300x the average worker: https://aflcio.org/paywatch Reagan quotes via the Reagan Foundation: https://www.reaganfoundation.org/ronald-reagan/reagan-quotes-speeches "The Myth of the Welfare Queen" from The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/154404/myth-welfare-queen The Commodity Futures Modernization Act & the 2008 financial crisis: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/723/ The 2000-2001 California electricity crisis: https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/report/R_103CWR.pdf "Voodoo economics": https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/voodooeconomics.asp US GDP & tax revenue in the 1980s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP Wealth inequality & GDP growth from OECD: https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-growth.htm Federal debt under Reagan: https://mises.org/library/sad-legacy-ronald-reagan-0 Revolve's Gestalt University: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/resolves-gestalt-university/id1463123745?i=1000510150469 RAND Corporation on wealth transfers: https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html "The Prosperity Gospel, Explained" from Vox: https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/1/15951874/prosperity-gospel-explained-why-joel-osteen-believes-prayer-can-make-you-rich-trump "Amazon Denies Workers Pee in Bottles. Here Are the Pee Bottles" from Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7amyn/amazon-denies-workers-pee-in-bottles-here-are-the-pee-bottles Nick Hanauer in The New Republic, "Biden's Plan to Tax Rich People Like Me is the Best Way to Grow the Economy": https://newrepublic.com/article/163852/tax-rich-people-grow-economy — Follow Along at Money with Katie: https://moneywithkatie.com/ Follow Money with Katie! - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moneywithkatie/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/moneywithkatie Subscribe to Morning Brew - Sign up for free today: https://bit.ly/morningbrewyt Follow The Brew! - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morningbrew/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/MorningBrew - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@morningbrew Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.7	Something bizarre has happened in the United States economy since the 1980s.
0:06.5	The economy has grown by leaps and bounds, but the gains of the growth have been rather
0:12.8	sticky. That is, they are stuck at the top. The rich have gotten, well, a lot richer,
0:20.0	but the majority of Americans have not. In fact, when one controls for hours worked and the influx
0:25.9	of women in the American workforce over the last few decades, household income for the earners
0:30.7	at the bottom of the income distribution have actually gone down in real terms.
0:36.2	In some ways, it's not a mystery of the halves versus the have-nots. It's how do those people
0:42.4	have it all? I'm going to interview a billionaire who is now a civic activist working on this
0:48.3	very problem to find out. Welcome back to The Money with Katie Show Rich Fam and not just
0:58.8	any episode of The Money with Katie Show, but an episode I have been looking forward to four months.
1:04.8	My guest today is billionaire civic activist Nick Hanauer, who I can only lovingly refer to as a
1:11.8	0.1% defector, valiantly betraying his cohort of similarly mega-wealthy people to call bullshit
1:20.0	on the system that enables their wealth.
1:28.9	I originally stumbled across him thanks to a listener, shout out Dan, who sent me his 2019
1:34.8	TED Talk entitled The Dirty Secret of Capitalism. Dan predicted, accurately, that I would love Nick's work
1:42.8	after listening to my two-part series, Millennials, Money, and the bizarre American fever dream,
1:48.1	in which I attempted to make sense of the financial situation that the majority of Millennials
1:52.7	find themselves in. Finding Nick Hanauer and his work felt like receiving the answer to the question
1:59.5	I have been asking of nobody in particular for years. Nick says that the reality of economics
2:06.5	and most people's daily lives is simply who gets what and why. He points out that part of the reason
2:12.7	things keep getting worse is because we are trying to fix our economic problems. For example,
2:19.2	slowing economic growth, rising government debt and inflation, wealth and equality,
	...

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