Nick Hanauer on MSNBC Discussing Inequality

To listen to him speak, you wouldn't think that Nick Hanauer was a wealthy venture capitalist—or a rich snob or an uppity elitist in the top 0.01%—because he sounds too much like a decent and fair and empathetic human being—just a regular guy.

In 2012, I posted a speech (and video) he gave at TED University; and in 2011 I posted an interview he did on Fox News with Neil Cavuto (which now has had over 94,000 visits).

Yesterday (on Thursday, February 13, 2014) Nick Hanauer was a guest on MSNBC's "All in with Chris Hayes" discussing inequality and the attitudes of the wealthiest people in America.

It was fascinating bit of insight he gave us about those at the very tippy-top of the income ladder. Here are some excerpts and the full video below:

"Ultimately, this is not about money—it's about status, privileges and power. For a subset of these people, the most important thing in the world is status, privilege and power. They have sacrificed everything for it. This is my world—I know a lot of these folks—and a lot of these folks are border-line sociopathic people, and they don't care about other people."

Mister Hanauer goes on to explain that if someone in the top 0.01% believes they are a job creator, and if they accept the efficient market hypothesis—the idea that markets are perfectly efficient—then the rich deserve to be rich, and the poor deserve to be poor. So they deny that the working class are the true wealth creators, because to believe otherwise—to challenge them—would threaten their core belief in that they deserve all their status, privileges and power.