Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.
Nick HanauerRead
The most powerful forces in economics are not numbers or facts. They are prejudices and preferences. No amount of evidence will ever change the degree to which many of the rich and powerful prefer themselves to be richer and more powerful and others poorer and weaker.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Economic power often stems from biases rather than objective facts, leading to inequality.
In this quote, Nick Hanauer emphasizes that the driving forces behind economic decisions are not solely based on hard data or empirical evidence, but are instead influenced by personal prejudices and preferences. He highlights a tendency among the wealthy and powerful to prioritize their own interests, perpetuating systems of inequality regardless of clear evidence that showcases the need for fairness and balance.
Themes
EconomicsInequalityPrejudicePowerPreferences
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on economic policy, one might say, 'As Nick Hanauer pointed out, the motivations behind economic decisions are often driven by biases rather than facts.'
More from Nick Hanauer
All quotes →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.
Nick HanauerRead
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 HanauerRead
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 HanauerRead
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 HanauerRead
If low taxes were the way that people like me created wealth, then we'd be starting our companies in the Congo or Somalia or Afghanistan, but we're not. We come to places where there are lots and lots of customers.
Nick HanauerRead
Similar quotes
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Frederic BastiatRead
The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.
Ben BernankeRead
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Milton FriedmanRead
I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs.
George SorosRead
The economic position is only flourishing on the surface. Germany is in fact dancing on a volcano. If the short-term credits are called in, a large section of our economy would collapse.
Gustav StresemannRead
Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay - that 'someone else' is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers' money.
Margaret ThatcherRead