I have previously cited Nick Hanauer, the billionaire who has repeatedly pointed out that the belief–embraced by the GOP–that raising the minimum wage depresses job creation is a fallacy. As Hanauer has emphasized, this economic theory has cause and effect backwards: jobs are created by demand. (If you aren’t selling your widgets, you aren’t hiring more people […]
Recently, I posted about the difference between tax cuts and tax reform, and why we need the latter but not the former. That argument was made–far more persuasively than I made it–by billionaire Nick Hanauer, in a recent post to Politico. The Republican tax plan is a scam—a massive and destructive financial giveaway masquerading as pro-growth […]
Among the (many) things that irritate me is the widespread habit of attributing characteristics or behaviors to whole groups of people. I’m not just talking about obviously reprehensible–and racist–broad-brush assertions about African-Americans or Jews or Muslims, etc., but accusations about “businessmen” or “poor people” or the growing animus against “rich folks.” With respect to rich […]
Prejudices against “those people” tend to be the familiar age-old biases based upon race, religion and the like, but other stereotypes abound and can be equally misleading. (In his teens, my middle son looked askance at anyone in the “business class”– he felt they all valued profit over people. When he grew up, he came […]
I’ve been pretty hard on big corporations in several blog posts, and I stand by my criticisms of the behaviors I’ve identified. That said, the Washington Post recently published an interview with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, and it reminded me of the danger of political rhetoric–including my own– that oversimplifies and labels. On […]