Nick Hanauer Quotes

If it was true that lower taxes for the rich and more wealth to the wealthy leat to job creation, today we would be drowning in jobs.

The idea that high wages equals low employment, it's absurd.

The most pro-business thing you can do is to help middle-class people thrive.

The overtime threshold is to the middle class as the minimum wage is to low-wage workers.

Raising the minimum wage a lot across the board would make a big difference. It's not the only thing, but it's an indispensable part of solving the problem.

Raising the overtime threshold - something that is about to happen. This is more complex so not as many people understand it, but it's equally consequential.

Fast food workers are all the governor has power to enact. Your state legislature is held hostage by the same nitwits that hold hostage the federal [government]. People who have confused suffocating collectivism, which is bad, for a necessity to solve collective action problems, which is what all human endeavor is based on.

When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.

Now one person doing the job of one and a half. So as an employer I can get two people to do the work of three, and think about what that does for profits.

But can we please stop insisting that if low-wage workers earn a little bit more, unemployment will skyrocket and the economy will collapse? There is no evidence for it. The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense.

The person earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 isn't going out to eat at restaurants. They're not taking piano lessons. They're not going to the gym or the yoga studio. They're not sending mom flowers on Mother's day. What good is this person in the economy? If you raise it to $15 an hour, they're doing all of those things. And all of a sudden, not just business thrives, but small business thrives.

Raising the minimum wage allows business people to stop thinking about workers simply as costs to be cut and allows you to start thinking about workers as customers to be cultivated.

I was at the forefront of the effort to pass $15 minimum wage in Seattle, and have been collaborating with the people who are trying to make that happen across the country.