Oops! A Rich Venture Capitalist Lets the Cat Out of the Bag...

...or, why you whores to the 1% are Emperors with no clothes.

Nick Hanauer, founder of Second Avenue Partners as well as other successful butt-loads of money making companies made this speech recently at a TED conference. Oddly enough, TED initially declined to post this on their web site as they have done with EVERY other address ever made at their conferences. TED President, Chris Anderson stated that TED tries “to steer clear of talks that are bound to descend into the same dismal partisan head-butting people” and that Hanauer “framed the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan.” However, Hanauer eventually shamed Anderson into putting the video of the talk up so, Anderson says, "viewers could decide for themselves." Hmmmm, now there's a novel concept for you: personal choice and decision making (especially when confronted with a well reasoned view that goes against conventional "wisdom"). Very unbusinesslike. But, the question, "Where does sales volume come from?" gets answered here. The truth hurts, especially when it tears the scab off of "what we all know."

Hanauer's alleged "dismal partisan head-butting" mentions either party only once, at the beginning and doesn't exactly pimp up the Democratic Party: “If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down. This idea is an article of faith for Republicans, is seldom challenged by Democrats, and has indeed shaped much of the economic landscape. But sometimes the ideas we’re certain are true are dead wrong.”

I suppose Hanauer, though ultra rich and successful in the same sector as Mitt the Twitt, is at a disadvantage and should be forgiven for straying from Classic Republican Orthodoxy: he's from the Pacific Northwest and lives in Seattle. Naturally, if he was from Tejas he would have been robbed at an early age of both the capacity to reason and be creative, resulting in yet another TPunk philosophy spouting dullard.

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI

Of course, the usual list of rejects, er, suspects will come on here with their lightweight, attempted revisionist rantings. But, even they can add in single digits so their venom, bluster and tap dancing around the facts will ONCE AGAIN, come up short and as vapid as usual. Well, maybe each of them will go out and buy 3,000 cars, washers and dryers, houses as well as other assorted things every year to help bolster their case. Let's see....hmmmm, I'd say, given the nature of the TPunk weasels regularly posting, this result will be HIGHLY UNLIKELY.

Actually, he's not too far wrong. He misidentifies what we have now as capitalism, which it is not. We have crony capitalism, which is very close to fascism. The Super Rich take their money, and pretty much let it sit and stagnate. In a capitalist system, that excess money would be used to innovate and create new and better products. That isn't happening right now.

I disagree with the idea that we should give more to government, because government will not "invest" in projects that benefit all. They transfer money to their cronies in the banking and corporate system, or use it to create dependency in order to garner votes.

But he's right about the middle class being screwed. Dead right. However, the best thing would be for government to live within its means, and quit spending so much.

Close, but no cigar (again, dammit) COsFb. But, you are VERY close with the Crony Capitalism, nee' fascism when the government power structure is heavily involved with the plutocrats (see the Robber Barons of the late 19th and early 20th century - they caused their share of depressions, too).

But (there's always a but), let's see, what would you call:

The Hoover Dam?
The Tennessee Valley Authority?
Rural Electrification Associations?
The Remodelling and Refurbishing of Thousands of Public Buildings?
Thousands of US Highway Rest Stops?
Miles and Miles of Telephone Lines (even if they were party lines at the time)
Thousands of Miles of Paved Roads?
Construction of Thousands of Post Offices?

There's a longer list and there is now a very long list of fu*ked-up bridges and other public structures.....these things sure would sell a lot of construction materials that are not being bought by homebuilders and strip mall developers and employ lots of tradespeople who aren't building houses. Not a panacea, but also NOT "not an investment." Hell, some of the people that would be put to work might actually BUY something.

Let's hear it again about how government doesn't "invest." I would say, however, that a selfish, unimaginative electorate might try to push for officeholders that don't.

Just give me the percentages of the budget that those items took up. Those things were never the problem, and many of them occurred long ago. Back when the country could have been considered free. What does government "invest" in now? We've already seen the fiasco of the stimulus bill. It ain't the same anymore, RaggedyAndy.

An investment is an investment, regardless of when it was made - and some of them from the 1930s are paying dividends to this very day (like Glass-Stegal would be). 75% of the non-interstate highways we drive on west of the Mississippi were built then. Hell, you live in Kansas, your state's highway system before WPA and CCC consisted of remodelled, gravelled cow trails. Read the part again about bridges and other public structures (does "schools" ring a bell?)......

Arrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!

You might want to print the last sentence of my previous post on your bathroom mirror.

What was the national debt when those "investments" were made? What was their percentage in the budget? All I'm saying is that it's a different picture now. We waste too much money to do beneficial things like that anymore. A lot of what you mentioned are good things, but that's not what government does these days, and they won't start again if the rich are taxed more (which I don't care about, tax them all you want). Instead, we will throw money at Wall Street and defense contractors or other major corporations, extend a few benefits to get votes, and line up cushy jobs for ourselves when we leave Congress.

It's not like it used to be. I wish it was.

The "national debt" has absolutely nothing to do with this. The continued cutting of revenue for the government will NEVER erase that debt, regardless of how it is done - less revenue is less revenue. FDR's response to those harping about deficit spending was, "we only owe it to ourselves." Now, of course, it would be to the Chinese, but they will never try to collect since we'd refuse to pay if we couldn't or didn't want to. And, no, we wouldn't do it out in "Public," so no one would really know about the hardball. Trust me, if it comes down to defaulting or raising taxes - guess what's going up? Almost all economists say that a new round of long term (30yr) Treasuries would, right now, go like hotcakes all over the world. The current Sec of the Treasury is hell bent on doing all of the financing using short term instruments.

But, as I said in the OP, trying to move the discussion either off topic or to a very narrow area is a favorite tactic of those who don't want to face the facts. In this case the fact that supply side economics is bullsh*t and has never worked well, if at all. That's what you are up to and this was my last effort at humoring you.

You don't even understand your own post. And here I thought we were getting somewhere.

heh heh heh, we just aren't going where you would like to go, that's all.

Since you aren't lawyering anymore, why don't you go to work at the local hardware store, ice cream parlor or somewhere where you can learn something about how the economy of buying and selling goods and services actually works. There's bound to be an ACE, Braum's or DQ or two around Wichita. You might try selling real estate- bwahahahahaha!!!

Sh*t, that would mean coming in contact with the great unwashed on their turf. Sorry, my bad.

The simple fact is, RaggedyAndy, is that the conversation veered from your narrow parameters and got into areas you don't understand. I apologize for that.

While I agree with Hanauer in part, his solution won't work. Taxing the rich will not solve the problem. Go ahead and tax them, but the problems will remain.

Congress will not "invest" like they used to. We don't have the caliber of legislature that we had back then. We also have a debt problem that Hanauer ignores. The national debt is an enormous drag on the middle class.

But you turn this into whatever you want. Knock yourself out.

Well, boo-hoo-hoo, COsFb. You can only just throw your hands up in dismay and run the white flag up the pole? I'd suggest that you get the hell out of the way then.

Yet, you are perfectly willing to post thousands of threads plucked at seemingly random from the internet. To what end? Do you just want to sit back in scorn because things aren't going to suit you?

I'm not getting into an arguement about minutae regarding percentages of spending back then as oposed to now because - take this down - IT DOESN'T MATTER. Hanauer's idea is that lots of people with money to spend is what actually drives the economy, not a very few.

Yet, you are perfectly willing to post thousands of threads plucked at seemingly random from the internet. To what end? Originally Posted by Randy4Candy

To what end? For fun. To watch people like you go berserk whenever you are caught posting nonsense. You don't even understand what your guy is saying. I gotta tell ya, that's funny.



I guess we'll just have to agree to be disagreeable.

Hey we are saving the Ozone by not wearing cloth on our bodies. We are the greenest of the green. See my leaf?

COsFb, you are the biggest poster child for what you are decrying in another thread you started. You cranked up that little effort at self-pity during the time you were attempting to talk HERE about everything but the topic of this thread. Obviously, you understand that I understand what my guy is saying - you just can't refute any of it (see your first post on this thread) - so you started up a self-pity-party. Feeling better, now?

As another Randy would say, "WATCH THE DAMN GAME, er, LINK!"

Can I drive one of your 3,000 cars? I'd like to use one on Wednesdays. Please, please, pretty-please? With a turd on top of it.

Thanks, Glenna, an intelluctually honest TPunkette at last.

CandyassRandy, Can you explain more on how Texas sucks and you are taking advantage of us?