A millionaire housing developer has apologized for remarks calling for “pain in the economy” and a dramatic increase in unemployment in his home country of Australia. “[W]e need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” Tim Gurner said in remarks that drew widespread condemnation, arguing that this would drive “arrogance” out of the employment market.
“At the AFR Property Summit this week I made some remarks about unemployment and productivity in Australia that I deeply regret and were wrong,” Gurner said in an apology statement. He went on to say that there are “clearly important conversations to have” about the economy, but that his comments “were deeply insensitive.”
”Deeply insensitive” is one way to put it, but at least he didn’t try to claim he was misunderstood or taken out of context. Then again, any single line taken out of Gurner’s comments is very direct and clear. There is no context that could save it—but it’s important to note that this is not just one blowhard crapping on workers. It’s a statement about how rich people understand the proper economic order.
Here is an extended excerpt of his comments:
People have decided they really didn’t want to work so much anymore through COVID and that has had a massive issue on productivity. You know, [tradespeople] have definitely pulled back on productivity. They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.
We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50 percent, in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. I mean, there is a, there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around.
So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurting the economy, which is what the whole global, you know, the world is trying to do, that governments are trying to increase unemployment to get that to some sort of normality. And we’re seeing it, I think every employer now is seeing it. I mean, there is definitely massive layoffs going off. People might not be talking about it, but people are definitely laying people off, and we’re starting to see less arrogance in the employment market, and that has to continue.
This isn’t the first time Gurner has drawn attention for his contempt for working people. If you’ve ever joked about millennials spending too much money on avocado toast, you have him to thank, although he was not kidding when he said that avocado-toast expenditures were to blame for young adults not being able to buy homes. Gurner is also not alone in these views.
Sen. Mitt Romney is among the most ethical and not-extreme members of the Republican Party today, but remember his 2012 presidential run, during which he claimed that there are 47% of people who are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” The 47% referred to people who don’t pay income tax—largely because they don’t have enough income to do so—and Romney claimed that these people would universally vote for then-President Barack Obama because of their government-dependent, victim mentality.
The years following Romney’s comments featured more extremely wealthy men expressing deep rage at the idea that soaring economic inequality is bad. In 2014, billionaire Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone said messaging against inequality was a problem. “Because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy,” he told Politico. And Langone wasn’t alone as a rich guy comparing progressives to Nazis that year, either, with venture capitalist Tom Perkins warning, “Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?”
Rich people really don’t like it when the peons suggest that maybe the gap between the top 1% and everyone else shouldn’t continue growing. They really don’t like it when the peons demand to be paid enough to live on.
We’re seeing that in action right now as the United Auto Workers negotiates with the Big Three auto manufacturers.
The companies’ refusal to meet the workers’ demands—for higher pay, an end to tiered employment, the restoration of benefits the workers sacrificed when the industry was struggling, and less mandatory overtime—has taken the union to the brink of a strike. Because the numbers in that tweet are what the top executives want to see.
Similarly, as entertainment industry unions strike, studio executives have unleashed a series of comments showing that they are looking to put the little people in their place: under the boot of employers. “There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger, a man being paid tens of millions of dollars a year as Writers Guild of America members were forced on strike because the studios refused to agree to a proposal that would cost Disney just $75 million a year, less than 0.1% of its revenue.
But Gurner’s comments go beyond that. His economic analysis is very much in line with high-level policymakers. When he talked about governments trying to increase unemployment, he was making an accurate observation. Last spring, Sen. Elizabeth Warren questioned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over increased interest rates:
Senator Warren: In December the feds released its protections on the state of the economy under your monetary policy plan. According to the Fed's own report, if you continue raising interest rates, as you plan, unemployment will be 4.6% by the end of the year—more than a full point higher than it is today. Chair Powell, if you hit your projections, do you know how many people who are currently working, going about their lives, will lose their jobs?
Fed Chair Jereme Powell: I don’t, I don’t have that number in front of me. I will say, it’s not–
Senator Warren: It’s just a math problem.
Chair Powell: it’s not an intended consequence.
Senator Warren: Well, but it is, and it’s in your report, and that would be about two million people who would lose their jobs. People who are working right now making their mortgages. So Chair Powell, if you could speak directly to the two million hard-working people who have decent jobs today, who you're planning to get fired over the next year, what would you say to them? How would you explain your view that they need to lose their jobs?
Powell’s answer was essentially “but inflation,” to which Warren responded by asking, “Since the end of World War II, there have been 12 times in which the unemployment rate has increased by one percentage point within one year, exactly what you're aiming to do right now. How many of those times did the U.S. economy avoid falling into a recession?” Powell tried to claim that “it’s not as black and white,” but Warren was right there with the answer: zero.
Gurner’s talk about how “We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around” and about “arrogance,” along with his call for a 40%-50% increase in unemployment in Australia, drew attention because he actually came out and said it. But as he correctly noted, global economic policy is in many ways in line with his analysis—because global economic policy is very often tailored to the wishes of rich people like him.