On March 25, 2015, speaks about economic inequality on the BBC:
Aspiration without legitimate opportunity creates anger, resentment and violence, the multi-millionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has told BBC HARDtalk.
Mr Hanauer added that he believes an increase in wealth inequality could lead to social unrest in the United States.
I wonder what motivates these super-rich advocates for abating economic inequality.. They, including Nick Hanauer, cannot believe in genuine equality of economic power. without recognizing that their own freedom and power come from their OWNERSHIP of productive capital assets. Are they blind to what makes 99 percent of non-owning world citizens so victimized and powerless by systemic barriers to equal ownership opportunities? Wake up!
Hanauer acknowledges that corporate profits in the U.S. are at all-time highs, which they rightly conclude is increasing income inequality.
Let’s face it, if the top 10 percent of American families own 90 percent of the stocks, then they will take a greater share of those corporate profits and there’s less wealth for the rest of society.
Americans should be demanding REAL solutions to economic inequality. But, sadly, the problem is Americans have been so ill-educated that all they are likely to understand, based on their ONLY experience is “create jobs that pay a living wage.”
This is NOT the solution to economic inequality.
The REAL solution is to lift all legal barriers to universal capital ownership access by every child, woman, and man as a fundamental right of citizenship and the basis of personal liberty and empowerment. The goal should be to enable every child, woman, and man to become an owner of ever-advancing labor-displacing technologies, new and sustainable energy systems, new rentable space, new enterprises, new infrastructure assets, and productive land and natural resources as a growing and independent source of their future incomes, without the requirement of past savings or any reduction in wages or benefits.
The conventional thinking is the result of being stuck, as is the entire playing field of advocates for change, in one-factor thinking––that is, the labor worker, and they, who have gained their wealth through capital ownership, are oblivious to the most powerful and increasingly productive factor––non-human physical capital (the land, structures, tools, machines and robotics, computerization, etc.) that is responsible for 90 percent of the production of the products and services needed and wanted by society.
Hanger should be demanding that the politicians running for the office of President focus on broadening personal ownership of capital asset formation simultaneously with financing the growth of the economy, instead of allowing the continued concentration of capital ownership. Hanger and these politicians now in representative office or seeking such should grasp this idea instantly, because, after all, their millionaire wealth is the result of their OWNING productive capital assets.
What they should really being doing, including Hanauer and his advocate friend Robert Reich and other academics, leading up to and in the 2016 presidential election year, is leading a national discussion on the topic of the importance of capital ownership and how we can expand the base of private capital ownership simultaneously with the creation of new physical capital formation, with the aim of building long-term financial security for all Americans through accumulating a viable capital estate.
