Friday, May 25, 2012

Nick Hanauer channels Henry Ford

Henry Ford was the first BIG industrialist who understood AND put into place a high-wage strategy.  Over the past 35 years, we seem to have forgotten one of industrialization's most important principles.  And when Nick Hanauer restated Ford's basic truths, his lecture was first banned by the TED people from appearing on YouTube.  So here it is—see if you don't agree that this is first-rate Fordism.

Here is the much-talked-about TED talk on inequality given by Nick Hanauer.  For more background on this, see this blog post from TED Curator Chris Anderson: http://tedchris.posterous.com

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for posting this Jonathan.

    This is a debate that needs to occur in the world, certainly not just America, not just TED, and not just the Republican party.

    Reason is this underlying economic idea that getting more money into the hands of the rich has poisoned our entire world economy for the exact reasons Nick pointed out--that the 1% can NEVER make up for the spending of the other 99%.

    Nick's speech's perceived flaw that caused TED to ban it, that it was too partisan against the Republican party, is misplaced. It just sadly reflects the marketing stance of each party--
    --Republicans only deserved more attention because it was their major plank in their party platform for the past 30 years.
    --Democrats only are perceived to be less smeared because they are the opposing party having had to face that plank for 30 years.
    --But of course both parties are to blame because both grew to serve the Financial services industry that vastly profited in this 30 year period.

    It is THAT last point which needs to change.

    The Financial Sector has acquired too much money and it unable/unwilling to spend it (staff up, invest it, donate it) back into the economy fast or effectively enough (especially given country borders in our globalized economy).

    Nick's 1% bottleneck applies equally to these few huge master of the universe financial institutions as it does to spending of 99 guys like me compared to 1 Nick.

    Thirty years of mergers and consolidations in the vulture capitalist world have created a hyper-oligarchic world that cannot re-invest efficiently enough to keep the world economy running. It is they who have failed the world.

    This goes beyond partisan, this goes beyond politics, this goes beyond any of man's institutions...this is life in a world of 7 billion people, it is too large for these G8, G20, BRIC, IMF, et al to wisely manage or control.

    It is folly for them to place themselves into this position in the first place. If corporations are now to be people, then the Peter Principle indeed applies.

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