Politics & Power Quote by James Sinegal

Sinegal isn’t romanticizing “initiative” so much as putting a price tag on it. The line is a CEO’s diagnosis of morale as an economic input: when workers believe the game is rigged, they stop investing effort, loyalty, and imagination. “Destroy” is blunt on purpose. It frames inequality not as an abstract moral failing but as a practical act of sabotage against the engine that businesses and politicians constantly claim to worship: hard work.

The rhetorical move hinges on “if they don’t feel.” He’s talking about perception as much as policy. Wages, benefits, predictable schedules, and respect on the job aren’t just material supports; they’re signals that opportunity is real. Take those away and the “American Dream” becomes a marketing slogan used to extract labor, not a plausible bargain. “Fighting chance” is doing heavy lifting here: it admits the struggle while insisting the struggle has to be winnable. That’s a subtle rebuke to the bootstraps mythology that treats suffering as proof of virtue and failure as personal weakness.

Context matters because Sinegal’s credibility comes from being the Costco cofounder, a businessman known for higher pay and benefits in an industry built on labor minimization. He’s not speaking as a union organizer; he’s making a capitalist argument for dignity. The subtext is a warning: starve workers of upside and you don’t just get resentment. You get a workforce that stops believing, and a country that starts noticing the dream was never evenly distributed.