Well, Nick Hanauer decided to give a talk about an idea he considered worth spreading: how we've been brainwashed to believe, despite all the massive evidence to the contrary, that taxing the wealthy is what drives unemployment and economic collapse, and that therefore we should actually give the so-called 'job creators' big tax breaks. I think he's exactly right, but for some strange reason that they've been getting into pretzels over the past week, TED made the strange choice not to share Hanauer's talk, and when the story hit the light, it hit the fan...
The rationalization was that it was too politically charged, partisan and controversial, but when you consider previous presentations they've aired, controversial is not something that's ever been a problem for them. Anyway, here is the 'banned' presentation:
And here are The Young Turks discussing this weird turn of events.
What kind of weird world do we live in when stating facts is considered controversial or partisan?
Update: The story seems to be more complicated and overblown than at first appeared (thanks Xavier!). Here is Chris Anderson defending TED's decision not to air the video (and making a distinction between not airing and censoring or banning), and clarifying the issue, as he sees it. It is worth saying, however, that when Anderson claims that the audience wasn't particularly impressed with the presentation, that doesn't sound quite genuine since the video itself shows that a number of audience members did give him a bit of a standing ovation, but whatever.
For what it's worth, my interest in posting the video is about spreading the idea itself rather than with focusing on whether it was banned or censored.
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