Banned TED Talk from Seattle native Nick Hanauer on the Truth about Job Creation

Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g

Via Business Insider: "As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don't actually create jobs. The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject. National Journal reports today that TED officials decided not to put Hanauer's March 1 speech up online after deeming his remarks "too politically controversial" for the site..."

Now here is a talk that in a short five or so minutes brings up a very important point about jobs that should be taken into consideration in order to support business the way it should be, and the way it needs to be, in order to keep our economy stable and allow it to flourish. What we have happening currently, is the opposite, where more and more businesses struggle to get by, and more and more fail altogether, pushed out by larger corporations dominating the market which leads to less jobs, and the jobs that are created are lower paying, with the employees being understaffed and overworked.

The result of this is that more and more of the general population who are the bulk of consumers in our nation, are being paid less, and thus have much less to spend into our businesses. And if we as consumers are spending less, businesses are selling less, which means they’re making less profit, and less and less able to stay afloat.

Is this any way to treat our businesses, which are what keep the wheels of our economy turning, and providing us with the necessities of life? Because where will this cycle end? We’re at the point where small businesses just can’t compete with the larger corporations, and even corporations have to constantly compete amongst one another for the cheapest prices, because individuals can afford less and less. And if the company makes less and less profit, they’re going to want to pay their employees less and less. The employees who are our consumers will then be able to afford less and less. How far can this vicious cycle go?

Shouldn’t we take better care of the businesses we depend on? Take for example grocery stores, one of the lowest paying jobs you can get. What would you do without a grocery store? The next time you are on your way to the store with your list of foods and items you are going to purchase just imagine what you would do if the store wasn’t there. Business is important and we must realize that that means that we have to effectively support ourselves as consumers (with proper incomes) so that we can in turn support our businesses, creating a self-sustaining cycle that supports life.

This means we need to embrace the fact that all the parts of what makes a business successful are equally important; that without consumers to purchase goods and services, there is no business. So, as Nick Hanauer pointed out in his talk, there really is no such thing as one person creating jobs, because in an economy ‘no man is an island’, and there is certainly no business, and thus no jobs, without consumers.

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Unemployment Up in Kitsap County - A Local Problem or is it Systemic?

Is Unemployment A Local Problem or is it Systemic?

Often there's a tendency to view unemployment as a local issue, meaning that we never really take a step back, to look at the entirety of the system and consider it's functioning as a whole. We look at individual areas and make comparisons between them as to who has made more jobs, who's doing better, who's doing worse. Yet never really seeing the big picture, of how it's all interconnected.

Within this, it's really hard to make heads or tails of the situation - is it getting better? Is it getting worse? For example, the Kitsap Sun reports that unemployment in Kitsap County has risen, with now 444 more individuals unemployed in June than in May. Read the full article here:
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2013/jul/23/unemployment-in-kitsap-county-up-in-june/?partner=RSS#axzz2Zv22Uygu

While another article from the Kitsap Sun, finds that jobs have risen in Washington state overall. See full article here: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2013/jul/17/wash-gains-9800-jobs-in-june/#axzz2Zv22Uygu

It’s really easy to get lost in the statistics, and forget the simplicity of everyone needs a job, or needs to be supported if they’re not able to find a job. From that perspective, ‘gains’ and ‘losses’ are really irrelevant, because the bottom line is everyone needs to be supported.

Our physical day to day needs don’t wait for us to find a job, our bills don’t wait for us to find a job, our injuries and conditions which require treatment don’t wait for us to get a job. We need a constant and consistent support which just isn’t effectively in place currently, so that if you don’t find a job, it can be a life and death situation, you could lose your home, or have to forgo important healthcare and find ways to live with health conditions that effect one’s quality of living.

Since there is no effective system in place, what happens is a kind of ‘fend for yourself’ ‘each one for his own’ situation, where this exists at the individual level, where it’s ‘on you’ to find a job to support yourself, regardless of whether or not there are actually enough jobs that pay enough to make a dignified living. And we will even take it personally when we can’t find a successful job, which is really a job that pays enough, as if it is something wrong with us as an individual, but when there aren’t enough effective jobs, and everyone doesn’t have the same access to afford an education to get the necessary skills and training and degrees to get placed into the better jobs that are available, it’s really not personal, it’s built into the very system. 

And, as the saying goes, “as above, so below” – we have the same thing happening at the local government level, and the state government level, all the way up to the ‘top’ at the country level – where we will tend to look at the issues we face such as unemployment and will compare one country to another, or one state to another, or one county to another, in how each one is dealing with the situation of, for example, unemployment, but never really taking a step back to look at – but why does unemployment really even exist in the first place? Or why is it such a problem that leads to individuals losing their quality of living, when we have all the resources in the world to ensure that no one has to lose their quality of living. We even have systems in place such as welfare, but it’s not really effective.

So what happens when we focus on things from within a local perspective, is our focus is within our particular area, with its resources and companies and demographics, and we try to solve the problem of unemployment from within that. Yet why this isn’t effective is the economy of a locality is not actually limited to itself. We all actually share the same economy – it’s like a bunch of ‘little economies’ that are all part of one total economy, yet each economy thinking and acting as if it is separate. 

The result of this is that we never actually look at the foundation of our system which is the law structure, as all business conforms to the law. The law is thus what ‘set the stage’ for how we operate, at all levels of government, down to the individual level as well. Which would imply that if we want to really get to the heart of issues, such as unemployment, we’ve got to take a look at the very law system itself, to see what is not effective within it, that it is not directing us to effectively make enough jobs and to provide effective support for those who haven’t found a job, so that when we hear unemployment numbers, you don’t have to think about all the people that means that can’t afford to live properly, as you wouldn’t want to be one of those statistics.

This is also why so many businesses just don’t make it, which results in further job losses, because if people aren’t effectively employed, they can’t buy goods and services, which means that businesses don’t make enough to stay afloat. It’s a vicious cycle. But it’s even easy to miss this when we aren’t considering the bigger picture, if we are in an area that is doing well for instance, we might think everything is ok, for now, but miss the bigger picture of how everywhere overall things aren’t improving, and that since all our economies are interconnected, that does not bode well for anyone, even if their economy is stable for the moment. Because an individual economy doesn’t exist by itself – no man is an island, and even an island isn’t an island, from that perspective – our economies are all intertwined and dependent on each other, and therefore we need to consider the bigger picture and ensuring that all economies are stable and effective. 

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