Paul and I enjoy the actual view from our actual corner office.
Most 1 percenters just don’t know what to do with all their filthy lucre. Some rich people collect art. Other rich people collect cars or even houses. But Nick Hanauer, America’s premier self-loathing plutocrat, seems intent on ostentatiously collecting ex-Stranger writers.
So welcome, Paul Constant, to Nicktopia—the land of milk and honey! (No, really: Both milk and honey are available in our office’s well-stocked kitchen, along with a variety of free snacks and beverages.)
If there’s anybody who knows what Paul is going through right now, it’s me, but I can honestly tell him that it gets better. The worst thing about leaving The Stranger is leaving our brilliant and talented co-workers behind. (And our awful/wonderful readers—God I miss Slog.) But as Paul will soon learn, the best thing about leaving The Stranger is just about everything else: more pay, more freedom, more influence, better working conditions, and potentially, a much larger audience.
At first, Paul will be doing pretty much what I was hired to do: read, think, talk, and write about public policy. Mostly income inequality, some guns. Our ambitious charge is nothing less than rewriting our nation’s economic narrative into one that recognizes the primacy of people over money. But over time, we intend to build out a little platform of our own where we can think out loud about a range of issues. So if, say, you lament the loss of Paul’s 2016 election coverage on Slog, don’t despair. You’re not alone. Nick didn’t hire Paul and me to silence us.
And finally, if the timing looks suspicious, I want to be clear that Paul did not leave The Stranger to come to work for Nick. We had no prior discussions. That Paul landed on his feet (and 28 floors up!) so quickly after his abrupt departure from The Stranger is a testament to Paul’s talent and work ethic.
So, yeah. Welcome, Paul. And don’t make me look bad by writing too much too quickly.
Maybe you & Paul can ask Nick Hanaeur why he only pays an avg. of $11/hr at his pillow company, while he hypocritically pushes for a $15 min wage. Hanauer must obviously hate workers and support “poverty wages” if in practice he only pays $11/hr at his own company.
You’re in for it now. Constant will have 250,000 words by tomorrow afternoon.
I love it, Paul living on Amazon profits.
“Our ambitious charge is nothing less than rewriting our nation’s economic narrative into one that recognizes the primacy of people over money.”
Good luck with that. You’re gonna need Hanauer’s millions, Soros’ billions, Piketty’s brilliance, Kshama Sawant, The Stranger’s audience, your audience, and everything else you can muster. Seriously, I wish you guys all the luck in the world, but meantime, everything you see from those windows is money-driven.
@3 What Amazon profits? Amazon is a non-profit.
Everything you need to know about income inequality in one picture: http://www.businessinsider.com.....11-10?op=1 (reading the article is optional)
28 floors in belltown .. ugh
Congrats Paul! The Stranger’s loss is Nick Hanauer’s gain. But the most important question of all… will he still be writing movie reviews?!?! Also… after many months I’m still wondering what exactly Mr. Goldy has been doing while working for Mr. Hanauer. “Read, think, talk, and write about public policy…” Are the products of all this reading, thinking, talking and writing available anywhere for the rest of us to read… or is it all still in-house? Where is this going – a new blog, a new publication, position papers, a think tank? Material/research for talks/speeches, op-eds by Mr. Hanauer? It is all very mysterious.
You guys are so lucky to have scooped Paul up!!! Onward and upward for all of you!!
Huzzah! Congratulations to all concerned! Now let’s get to work preserving what’s left/left of blue collar Seattle!
Of course, while labor has taken the brunt of economic “resizing,” things aren’t so great for small “owners,” either. The guy with a $10,000 nest egg safely socked away in bank CDs is making less than the depressed inflation rate on his money. Small businesses aren’t exactly prospering, for want of both customers and bank credit. (The business sector is borrowing like crazy, but here, we’re talking about giant corporations vacuuming up trillions in cost-free credit to (a) take their own stock off the market, (b) raise dividends, which mostly benefits the big shareholders, and (c) buy out their competitors, which benefits no one, with almost none of this OPM ((other people’s money)) being used to invest in expanding their own businesses or hire more workers.) Sure, you made great returns if you jumped into the stock market at the bottom in 2009, but few people and rabbits did that; most were too scared, so most of those spectacular gains (the S&P is up +270% since then) merely made the obscenely rich even more hideously rich.
One of the most trenchant questions in public policy today is: Why is this happening? First of all, while this may sound strange, there are plenty of critics of inequality on the right — probably because America’s political right is filled with people who are struggling like everyone else and merely dream of being one-percenters someday. They like to blame government, and especially Fed, policy — which they assert has artificially inflated asset values. But if that’s the case, it’s hard to identify a valid complaint, because the fact my stocks or house increase in putative value doesn’t make you poorer. Of course, that type of wealth is a chimera until someone actually buys my stocks or house with actual money, and given that paper and monetary wealth is concentrating at the top, if that transaction makes someone else poorer, the victim is far more likely to be a wealthy person than some $10-an-hour wage slave. In fact, ripping those people off is the whole point of flipping stocks; when I commit legal larceny in that manner, I’m stealing from the rich. I’m not saying the righties are wrong about government facilitating wealth concentration. Clearly, that’s happening, and nowhere is it more plainly visible than in tax policy, where the rich are coddled with ridiculously lenient taxation of capital returns, while middle-class wage earners are bashed with retail taxes. It’s next-to-impossible to accumulate capital from after-tax wages.
But Piketty argues there’s more to wealth concentration that the co-opting of government policy by the rich to write tax and other laws, and set spending priorities, in their own favor — and he’s almost certainly right. Piketty’s now-famous formula r > g, where “r” is the rate of return on capital and “g” is growth in wages, posits that capital’s share of an economy’s output increases over time. If true, and Piketty presents hundreds of pages of data to back it up, this guarantees that the richer will keep getting richer and the working classes will keep falling farther behind, until some social upheaval occurs to rebalance the ship. History argues that such upheavals are inevitable if societies don’t find other, more constructive, ways to rein in the monster of r > g. Hence, the case for various redistribution schemes, which the more enlightened among the rich (e.g., Buffett) comprehend are in their own interest, if only so that the rich do not become the food-of-last-resort of starving masses. Here is where the right goes off the rails; they’re against any redistribution, in any amount, at any time, for any reason — even redistribution necessary to stave off disaster.
Rising inequality is a fact. The statistics are indisputable: Real wages have been falling since 1970, and the share of GDP allocated to corporate profits has double in recent years from a postwar average of 6% to 11% now. Meanwhile, job security and many of the traditional perks of postwar employment — pensions, employer-paid health care, etc. — are vanishing. Workers clearly are getting a raw deal in the New Economy. Much of this has to do with the deliberate and calculated destruction of unions. The unions created America’s middle class; and without unions, we must expect a smaller middle class.
In the recent debates over raising the minimum wage, the bedrock argument of “free market” proponents who opposed increasing the minimum wage was that the market pays workers what they’re “worth.” If the premise of this argument is wrong, then the entire argument falls apart. And the premise IS wrong, because wages are determined by the relative bargaining power of employer and worker, which in the absence of strong unions nearly always is lopsided in favor of employers, and the intrinsic “worth” to a business of a worker’s efforts and labor have little or nothing to do with it. My work may be “worth” $50 an hour, in terms of the economic value it creates, but if my employer can get away with paying me $15, $10, or $7.25 an hour, he will. It is this imbalance of bargaining power that justifies government intervention, because since the dawn of time, one of government’s primary roles and responsibilities has been protecting the weak from the strong.
And the contention that a modicum of government regulation of markets will destroy the economy and relegate us all to a caveman-like existence in a zero-growth economy is sheer nonsense. These are the ravings of dogmatic ideologues who are deliberately blind to the actualities of the world around them. There has never been a time, since the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, when European settlers on this continent and their progeny have not lived under economic regulation. The colonies were barely established when weights and measures laws went into effect — the first type of economic regulation in the New World. (Well, perhaps not the first; arguably, the legalization of slavery was the first.) Many more economic regulations followed; and none of them kept the steam engine from being invented, the railroads from being built, our farms from feeding half the world, or prevented the accumulation of vast fortunes. To the extent government interference in markets restrains capitalism’s inherent self-destructive tendencies, like a flywheel or governor that keeps an engine from revving until it blows itself up, economic regulation makes us all — including those at the top — richer, not poorer, by maximizing the economy’s productive capabilities.
To the extent that our current maladies are a product of policy gone astray, there’s a useful and constructive role for people of clear vision to play in the task of the righting the policy ship. Labeling people who want jobs that allow them to make a decent living as “takers” won’t get the task done. Nor will further extension of the policies that got us where we are. Reaganism, trickle-down, and government of, by, and for the rich have had their day. We tried those approaches, and they failed. We know what works. To recover some semblance of a normal life for most Americans, the key and most essential task is to overcome the tsunami of ignorance in which our public discourse is drowning.
“Picketty” and “brilliance” are words that belong together.
Congrats to Paul, and Goldy too. Have fun up there guys! Glad to see you landed ok so quickly Paul. Perhaps HA is the new Slog? One can hope.
enjoy the view while fighting for justice.
@5. Hanauer’s millions came from the feather business. His hundreds of millions came from being one of the earliest investors in Amazon. You must not have gotten an invitation to get in with the early money. I know it sucks, I didn’t get one either.
Congratulations Paul!
As of right now, this post has more comments than anything on Slog this morning, and probably for the entire weekend.
@14 I pass on lots of stocks that other people make money from. I generally don’t believe in owning companies that don’t make a profit. I don’t own Apple, either. I do own Coca Cola (my largest individual holding), Verizon (a close second), AT&T, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Boeing, McDonalds, Starbucks, and Gilead, among others. Presently, my capital is spread across 38 stocks, with no more than 5% in any one stock as a general rule. With the market now closed (at 1 pm Seattle time), I made about $1,000 today, which beats working for $15 an hour. I’m not a one-percenter (my nest egg is in the $400 – $500k range), just a middle-class rabbit that wants to make more than 1% on his savings, and after 40 years of working doesn’t feel like getting out of bad, fighting through commuter traffic, putting up with bad bosses, and dealing with office politics anymore. I’ve paid my dues, and now it’s my turn to be a fat, lazy overstuffed capitalist. I’m not going to turn into a Republican, though, not even when my net worth reaches seven figures sometime within the next year or two. No matter how much unearned and untaxed manna the capitalist gods shower on me, I will always remain a vigorous advocate for the working classes and economic fair play.
Awesome! Congratulations to Paul. Really glad you landed on your feet so quickly (and well!), but missing you like crazy on Slog.
This story has a happy ending!
@16 Well, we need an open thread; the last open thread is half a dozen threads down. There’s news today. Democratic firebrand Barbara Mikulski, 78, announced she won’t seek re-election, which creates a possible opportunity for Republicans to pick up a Senate seat in Maryland, which elected a GOP governor last fall, in 2016. Also, a federal judge has blocked Nebraska’s same-sex marriage ban,knocking over another domino in the right’s dying war against marriage equality. And Forbes came out with its 2015 list of the world’s richest billionaires; this year, the Koch brothers rank sixth (their wealth, combined, if held by one person would easily make that person #1).
Paul’s hiring is a coincidence; it’s not a collection till a third ex is hired. What’s Vienna doing these days?
Roger Rabbit @ 20,
What the fuck are you talking about? Four of the last six posts are open threads. (Note: This one isn’t.)
@11 great post
“One of government’s primary roles and responsibilities has been protecting the weak from the strong.”
So sad that Stranger Slog has become unrecognizable, but so happy to come here for news, views, and you’s–Goldy and Paul.
@4
Still waiting for my George Soros check. Has anyone gotten theirs yet?
I’m confused. Are you guys paid to write for a publication? A website? Which one? What’s your job title? Are you like courtiers or something?
@26 Yes!
Actually, I help Nick with speeches, op-eds, internal documents, etc. No secret there. We are also planning to put up a blog of sorts, where Paul, I , and others will contribute content. Patience.
@22 Just checking to see if you’re awake.
Nick Hanauer has million dollar homes, a private jet, and yet only pays an avg of $11/hr at the pillow company he owns, meaning many of his employees are paid less than the $11/hr avg. Which apparently is fine since Goldy would rather demonize local businesses as “anti-worker”, when these local businesses in fact have more progressive practices than ultra-wealthy Hanauer who pays “poverty wages” at his own company. Hypocritical much.
@29 Also, I help Hanauer advocate for raising taxes on the wealthy, and yet he doesn’t pay more taxes than he owes. I am the worst person in the world!
@30 Nope just a hypocrite, much like Hanauer is not even paying $11/hr while advocating others pay $15/hr. Birds of a feather, and paying more taxes than owed isn’t quite the same as paying poverty sub $11/hr wages is it?
Funny how all rich people are evil until Goldstein and Pauley need jobs. Then, it’s “how do you like your cock sucked, Mr. Warbucks?”
@32 spot on
@32&33…
If those jealous assholes had talent and/or intellect, maybe they’d get great jobs too.
I will admit that I’m a little worried. This all seems very “Stepford”. Hanauer might be a sinister genius. Take the clearest voices in Seattle local politics, lock them in a beautiful glass castle, ply them with honey packets. Then continue your business-centric agenda.
For example, will we be hearing more of Goldy’s brilliant perspective on public education in Seattle. Or will that now be covered by LEV……….!
And Paul, will he be relegated to sandwiches – until he falls over from a heart attack, face down in a pile of honey packets?
Well, hopefully everything will work out for the best….if Mr. Hanauer is serious about reversing the tax break hemorrhages more power to him.
I’m glad Goldy and Paul had a soft place to land, but ideally they’d be writing on their own, not as ghostwriters.
It seems that every week, Slog/Stranger veers toward being all-Savage, all the time, which is not an improvement.