{"id":7978,"date":"2018-03-03T13:16:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-03T21:16:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=7978"},"modified":"2018-03-03T13:19:40","modified_gmt":"2018-03-03T21:19:40","slug":"redemption-chris-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2018\/03\/03\/redemption-chris-hughes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Redemption of Chris Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cThis is a big idea and it\u2019s an expensive idea,\u201d said Chris Hughes, a co-chair of the Economic Security Project, \u201cbut I do think that it is in line with the scale of the problem, which is also immense.\u201d<\/span>Credit<\/span>Vincent Tullo for The New York Times<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The Facebook co-founder\u2019s rise was meteoric.
He argues that the same forces that helped him
succeed have made it harder for others. In a new
book, \u201cFair Shot,\u201d he proposes a bold solution.<\/h4>\n
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By\u00a0CONCEPCI\u00d3N DE LE\u00d3N<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>

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Chris Hughes was raised by Lutheran parents in Hickory, N.C., and they taught him, by example, to tithe. Every year, they gave 10 percent of their income to the church and other local charities, and Mr. Hughes carried that tradition into adulthood. But in 2008, when he sold $1 million of his Facebook shares on private markets, and the amount of money he needed to give away increased exponentially, he started thinking more seriously about where his contributions might make the most impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up looking at the price almost down to the penny on everything from a bottle of juice to a can of soda,\u201d he told me in early February, explaining why he wanted to get \u201cthe most value\u201d out of philanthropy. We were sitting in the East Village office of the Economic Security Project, an organization Mr. Hughes co-founded with two other activists, Dorian Warren and Natalie Foster, to fund the work of technologists, academics, policymakers and others exploring the idea of a guaranteed basic income for low- and middle-income Americans.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hughes is one of the co-founders of Facebook, for which he did \u201cthree years\u2019 worth of work for nearly half a billion dollars,\u201d as he puts it, emphasizing the extreme nature of his success. He and Mark Zuckerberg were roommates at Harvard, and early on, Mr. Hughes ran the company\u2019s communications and marketing department. The social network\u2019s colossal success fast-tracked Mr. Hughes\u2019s career. In 2008, he joined Barack Obama\u2019s first presidential campaign to launch and manage My.BarackObama.com, a robust system that organized Obama supporters and was viewed as instrumental to his victory. In 2012, when Facebook went public and The New Republic came up for sale, he bought it, hoping to herald the publication into a digital future and expand its reach. His tumultuous ownership ended in 2016, when he sold the magazine. Later that year, he joined with Mr. Warren and Ms. Foster to form the Economic Security Project.<\/p>\n

In his new book, \u201cFair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn,\u201d out this week, Mr. Hughes, 34, traces his ascent to show how the forces that influenced his and Facebook\u2019s success \u2014 technological advancements, globalization and the rise of private equity firms \u2014 have created a \u201cwinner takes all\u201d economy in which only a small group of people succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that when people enjoy success of many sorts it is oftentimes easy to forget all of the factors that contribute to making that possible,\u201d he said, citing his own upbringing. He grew up in a stable, middle-class family, the only child of a paper salesman and a schoolteacher. As a child, he took advantage of government-run after-school programs and was placed in \u201cgifted\u201d classes. At 14, he searched online for the \u201cbest high school in America,\u201d turning up Phillips Academy, a prestigious private school in Andover, Mass.; Mr. Hughes applied and talked his way into a scholarship. All these factors, he argues, factored into his success even before he landed in a dorm room with Mr. Zuckerberg.<\/p>\n

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Credit<\/span>Sonny Figueroa\/The New York Times<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In \u201cFair Shot,\u201d he offers a solution to balance the scale: a guaranteed income of $500 a month for adults earning less than $50,000, including nontraditional workers like parents and students. His proposal is that such a program be paid for through a tax on the country\u2019s highest earners, those whose annual income is $250,000 or more. His plan would reach 60 million adults and lift 20 million out of poverty overnight, he writes, while providing those in the middle class with more financial stability.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guaranteed income as an idea is so simple that oftentimes people just sort of skip over the power of cash itself,\u201d Mr. Hughes said. \u201cWe think, Oh my God, income inequality \u2014 it\u2019s so incredible, all the stats are so insane, but what can we do about it? It\u2019s got to be education or it\u2019s got to be more job training. It\u2019s got to be a higher minimum wage. I say, \u2018Yes, yes and yes.\u2019\u201d But we need to do more, he insists.<\/p>\n

The Economic Security Project\u2019s office is part university library, part tech start-up, with dark leather and wood furniture alongside a white meeting pod near the entrance. It seems to reflect Mr. Hughes\u2019s sensibilities \u2014 his admiration for old, established institutions and his embrace of digital technology. When I arrive for our interview, Mr. Hughes greets me warmly, and we sit in what appears to be the office\u2019s only conference room, enclosed by a glass wall. His Southern accent is barely detectable, and in conversation, he is measured and cautious, laying out his argument with his hands, becoming riled only when I bring up the tax bill (\u201cthe most perplexing and infuriating move\u201d) and the fact that some might view their success as completely self-generated (\u201cthat\u2019s just flat wrong\u201d).<\/p>\n

Before he started the Economic Security Project, Mr. Hughes had been working on the issue of the guaranteed income internationally through GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that, as the name suggests, operates a cash transfer program that puts money into the hands of those who need it. Mr. Hughes was inspired by the organization\u2019s ideals, and he started to wonder whether a similar model could work domestically.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no real organization in the United States focused on exploring how a guaranteed income might work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But rather than go in \u201cguns blazing,\u201d he explained, \u201cwe said: \u2018This is a promising idea. Let\u2019s bring together a network of people to think about this collaboratively and see where it goes.\u2019\u201d The Economic Security Project was originally conceived as a temporary, two-year initiative, but has since been extended to 2020.<\/p>\n

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Chris Hughes at the Economic Security Project office in Manhattan.<\/span>\u00a0Credit<\/span>Vincent Tullo for The New York Times<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Mr. Hughes\u2019s cautiousness is a direct result of his experience at The New Republic. Despite his intention to \u201cmake it a publication that millions of people would adore and really value,\u201d the result was not so idyllic. He invested $25 million, moved the magazine to a slick new office and hired top talent from other publications. By late 2014, his investment was not paying off, and he brought in Guy Vidra, a former Yahoo executive, to be the C.E.O., hoping he might be able to make The New Republic a digital media company. Mr. Vidra and Mr. Hughes decided to replace Franklin Foer, the editor at the time, but the news reached Mr. Foer first, and he resigned, prompting mass resignations across the publication. What followed was a media maelstrom, and a little over a year later, unable to turn the publication\u2019s profits around, Mr. Hughes sold the magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris was pretty anxious about where things were headed,\u201d Mr. Foer said on a recent call, adding: \u201cThere were lots of larger forces remaking journalism, and because of Chris\u2019s biography and because of some of the ham-fisted ways in which he handled things, he kind of fell into a morality play. It was pretty easy to cast the story as a parable about journalism, and I think that helps explain the heat of the coverage that fell on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In retrospect, Mr. Hughes said he regretted his approach at The New Republic. \u201cI went in with very big-picture kinds of goals and went too far too fast,\u201d he said, before I could ask. \u201cNow, I work on this big-picture, similarly idealistic kind of idea of a world where everyone has some basic financial security through cash, but I don\u2019t think we necessarily need to start off by giving $1,000 to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plausibility of his idea is a matter of debate. Branko Milanovic, a leading scholar on income inequality, and Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, both believe the plan is unrealistic given the partisan divisions of the current political climate. Mr. Baker also noted that policy changes to restructure the economy, such as weaker patent and copyright laws and public funding for generic medication, were a more urgent need. The Stanford professor and economist Nicholas Bloom brought up the potential for fraud, adding that government enforcement would be difficult.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hughes is aware that his proposal is far-reaching. \u201cThis is a big idea and it\u2019s an expensive idea, but I do think that it is in line with the scale of the problem, which is also immense,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Hughes said his own windfall gave him the mental space to think about and pursue his goals, and now, he feels a responsibility to pay it forward. When I ask him where this impulse comes from, his face softens. \u201cFrom my parents.\u201d His father wanted him to be successful, he explained, but \u201cthere was also a sense that you don\u2019t do better at the expense of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giving people cash, in Mr. Hughes\u2019s view, is not only the most effective way to tackle inequality today, it is also the most humane: \u201cIt\u2019s truly a belief that people can be trusted and deserve the opportunity to design their lives, to chase their own dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n