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. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
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. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
Government does create prosperity and growth by creating the conditions that allow both entrepreneurs and their customers to thrive; balancing the power of capitalists like me and workers isn’t bad for capitalism – it’s essential to it. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
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. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
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. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Tech innovation is something societies have to pursue as vigorously as they can. We have to innovate civically and socially at the same rate; otherwise, you create unfortunate disruptions, and that’s where you have people opposing technological innovations. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I have a 15-year-old boy, and we are about to give him car keys, which seems like an act of insanity when you know what you know about 15-year-old boy behavior. But in 2018, we’ll have self-driving cars, and it will be so much better. My son may be the last generation of kids who learns to drive. Nick Hanauer Read Quote
