Since Occupy Wall Street and the coining of the term ‘The 1%” to Piketty, the debate about wealth inequality has gone mainstream.
It’s getting some powerful allies, including some of the rich themselves. One of them is Nick Hanauer who was an early investor in Amazon and a billionaire. He writes in Politico how he sees pitchforks in the future and how raising the minimum wage is one of the solutions:
Please, please stop insisting that if we pay low-wage workers more, unemployment will skyrocket and it will destroy the economy. It’s utter nonsense. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy.
It’s hard to say which way this will go at the moment. Obama is trying to push responsibility down the states and attacking it that way because nationally it’s impossible to get through Congress. From there it will depend on how it works.
The risk is that companies respond by speeding up automation (which is coming anyway) and that crushes employment.
