The Mythification of the Looting Elite
As more and more people talk about how inequality threatens our economic system and just in time for Davos, the January 22-28 edition of the the Economist had a special report on “The Global Elite.” While the edition has been out there for a while, I was struck by the degree to which it seems to be an attempt to mythify the looting going on so as to claim it serves some kind of useful societal function. Here are the sections:
- The few
- More millionaires than Australians: Taking stock of the world’s plutocrats
- Unloading the loaded: Catering for the whims of the rich is big business
- The rise and rise of the cognitive elite: Brains bring even larger rewards
- Not for sale: Cash seldom buys political power. What counts are ideas and the ability to inspire
- The world’s water-coolers: Where the influential people meet and talk
- Crazy-talking boffins: The surest way to wield influence is to invent something useful
- The global campus: The best universities now have worldwide reach
- Tribes still matter: How global leaders tap into disaspora networks
- Asia’s new aristocrats: What Indians and Chinese make of their tycoons
- They work for us: In democracies the elite serve the masses
Of particular interest are some of the key myths propagated by this report. A central theme is that this new global elite got there not by taking from others, but by virtue of their superior intelligence.
The big change over the past century is that elites are increasingly meritocratic and global.
And they got their wealth though their own actions, through work.
How did these people grow rich? Mostly through their own efforts. Only 16% of high-net-worth individuals inherited their stash, according to Capgemini. The most common way to get rich is to start a business: nearly half (47%) of the world’s wealthy people are entrepreneurs. You do not have to be a genius to build a million-dollar business, but it helps if you are intelligent and extremely hard-working.
[snip]
Another 23% of the world’s millionaires got rich through paid work, estimates Capgemini.
The focus here is on people like orthodontists who have built a practice rather than finance execs who have been getting rich off the public teat. And the report provides two reasons why the super rich are good for you. One, because they offer business opportunities, because, “when you are seriously rich it is hard to spend all your money.” And two, because they give their money away. Though, after noting that public spending still dwarfs philanthropy, the report retreats to arguing the elite are good for society just because of the contributions they make to society.
Modern philanthropists are typically self-made, so they are used to getting things done. Rather than simply handing sacks of cash to charities that already exist, they often prefer to build their own institutions, observes Paul Schervish, the director of Boston College’s Centre on Wealth and Philanthropy. The way they measure their success is not by how much they disburse but by the return they earn on their charitable investment, measured in lives saved or improved.
[snip]
By and large, global leaders change the world more by doing their day jobs than in their spare time. Even Mr Gates, who was widely reviled for his business activities, probably did more good by amassing his fortune than he is doing by giving it away. The computer revolution he helped to bring about transformed the way people handle information.
The report goes even further to explain why you shouldn’t be afraid of this purportedly self-made elite getting richer and richer. You don’t need to fear meetings like Davos and Bilderberg because, well, the world is a complicated place and rich people should be able to get together in off-the-record gatherings.
The world is a complicated place, with oceans of new information sloshing around. To run a multinational organisation, it helps if you have a rough idea of what is going on. It also helps to be on first-name terms with other globocrats. So the cosmopolitan elite—international financiers, bureaucrats, charity bosses and thinkers—constantly meet and talk.
And no need to worry about the rich accruing undue political power. You can’t buy political power, it says, and it proves it by pointing to the electoral failures of people like Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and eMeg (while ignoring all the successes save Mike Bloomberg). Its efforts to use the Tea Party (whose ideology the Economist loves) as an example to prove the thesis is even more funny. It admits that Dick Armey’s Freedom Works taught TeaPartiers how to run phone banks.
For example, an organisation called FreedomWorks, founded by Dick Armey, a veteran Republican and former House majority leader, offers tea partiers, many of whom are new to activism, practical tips on such things as setting up phone banks.
But it leaves it at that. And while it mentions the Koch brothers’ funding of Libertarian causes, it makes no mention of the ties between the Kochs and the Tea Party. Ultimately, the story it tells–as its proof that you can’t buy political influence–is that the nice TeaPartiers rose from the grass roots, having spent almost no money.
Mr Santelli called for a Tea Party: an anti-tax protest like the one in Boston that heralded the American revolution. The notion caught on. Tea parties erupted everywhere, attracting millions.The Tea Party movement has a cranky fringe, but its core belief—that the government should tax and spend less—is attractive to many mainstream Americans. The tea partiers’ passion helped Republicans to capture the House of Representatives last November.
What’s shaping politics, the Economist says a year after Citizens United, is not money but ideas.
The strongest force shaping politics is not blood or money but ideas.
Now, I mapped this out not because it’s news (the report is over a week old) or because we haven’t heard these myths before. But I find it interesting that an outlet like the Economist–with its audience of the aspiring elite–feels the need to respond to rising concerns about inequality by trying to wrap up the looters in a myth that they’re the smart, self-made people who not only positively affect the world just by nature of who they are, but also bring business and philanthropy benefits.
This is they myth they’re going to use to justify their pillaging of the world.
Great post. Basically, the Economist has engaged in a classic Ayn Rand framework by which to describe the world. The wealthy are virtuous because they have wealth. And the poor should be appreciative of it.
What is the economists’ unspoken corollary?
If the poor DON’T like this consolidation of wealth in the hands of the few, then those few may “go Galt” and tell the rest of the world to sod off.
Which I keep hoping will happen. I really think the world will become a better place once these gangsters decide to take a hiatus from the economy and leave the 95% of the rest of the world in peace. Thanks for this diary.
Summary: trickle down econ has gone global!!!
…
I didn’t read it, but took quick look: I see no attribution for author, did I miss it? I always want to know who writes stuff like this.
I have noticed, more and more, even the better econ mainstream rags have propoganda pieces front and center, written anonymously or by soulless mouthpieces for this crowd, just putting out poop. WSJ front page, for several months at least, headlines all kinds of inaccurate article titles suggesting a turnaround that’s not happening… often article content doesn’t reflect title at all, even contradicts it. This used to be (eg: pre-Murdoch) contained w/in the domain of their OpEd page.
Seen this more and more on Bloomberg as well, and a number of others.
Often reminds me of that Ralph Reed memo that turned up from Enron emails… where he told them he could get their message placed in major media across the land, that it didn’t matter what they said only that they were heard.
…
I thought the article you (Marcy) did long ago where you dug up major media execs salaries (takings) was a very, very informative observation. Really speaks to this incident (Economist article).
Makes one long for the old days of real talent-spotters.
I wish that Maxine Udall (the pen name of Dr. Alison Snow Jones) was still with us; she might have had some things to say about this.
Just read that article the other day and had the same reaction. Clearly, the magazine is sucking up to its subscribers, who apparently value it for its cheery talking points. The “meritocracy” and “self-made” claims probably brought The Economist a rash of renewals. But, were are the statistics behind those claims?
Had The Economist done a little research, it easily would have turned up the article, “Meritocracy in America: Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend–Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top?” The article begins gloomily: “A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s.” Then, it hits the reader with this statement: “America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.” Wow.
The article cites studies and statistics, including research from Indiana University that “compared the incomes of 2,749 father-and-son pairs from 1979 to 1998.” The study found: “The biggest increase in mobility had been at the top of society, with affluent sons moving upwards more often than their fathers had. They found that only 10% of the adult men born in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter.”
The article also cites an American University and its finding, “A person born into the top fifth is over five times as likely to end up at the top as a person born into the bottom fifth.” It goes on to describe how educational systems and hiring give Americans from the richest families significant advantages in reaching the upper echelons of income and power.
The source of the article: The Economist, Dec 29th 2004 (http://www.economist.com/node/3518560).
Pffb–er, k-k-k-k. Paul Krugman, who isn’t there, comments that:
In other words, the rich and powerful are not terribly well informed.
It’s amazing how well they can function with so much cognitive dissonance.
Nice!
EW,
I would add this comment as an update onto your post.
Krugman, last week, exposed The Economist for the fraud it is. It’s been a fraud for 150 years and running. Don’t forget, Megan McAdled used to write for them. Shows the kind of idiots they hire.
Oh my goodness…Inception has made quite an impression on The Economist.
Leonardo’s quote: “What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.”
(my bold)
The Economist is trying to rewrite all the rules as fast as possible.
And if the elite serve the masses in democracies, then obviously we do not live in a democracy because the elite insisted on an extension of the Bush tax cuts. Thus, we are serving the elite.
In that case they won’t mind Citizens United being overturned. Right?
Citizens United is the modern day Dred Scott vs Sanford. People are property? The undue influence of monied interests of the political process? Jefferson Madison???? Remember those Marlboro Men. They are dead. Leveraged servitude via addiction or monopolies results in the same thing. A loss of liberty or in the case of Marlboro men, death. That’s what money buys! The ability of corporations and their pocketed politicians to perpetuate lies and protect status quo interests. Like slavery! BTW, Comcast,GE,NBC! Bend over! More corporate sodomy!
My goodness, they are so Godlike.
This inspires me to fight with the TP’ers to reduce the deficit.
That will put us back in position to cut taxes on the wealthy some more and eliminate capital gains tax entirely. They deserve only our unending sacrifice. Thank them for me, please, for the discounts on my deep-fried chicken parts and instant waffles.
Adding to the reading list for those who find themselves snowed in today:
Chrystia Freeland’s latest Atlantic piece: The Rise of the New Global Elite
– Though typically more guarded in their choice of words, many American plutocrats suggest, as Khodorkovsky did, that the trials faced by the working and middle classes are generally their own fault. When I asked one of Wall Street’s most successful investment-bank CEOs if he felt guilty for his firm’s role in creating the financial crisis, he told me with evident sincerity that he did not. The real culprit, he explained, was his feckless cousin, who owned three cars and a home he could not afford. One of America’s top hedge-fund managers made a near-identical case to me—though this time the offenders were his in-laws and their subprime mortgage. And a private-equity baron who divides his time between New York and Palm Beach pinned blame for the collapse on a favorite golf caddy in Arizona, who had bought three condos as investment properties at the height of the bubble.
It is this not-our-fault mentality that accounts for the plutocrats’ profound sense of victimization in the Obama era.
– Critiques of the super-elite are becoming more common even at gatherings of the super-elite. At a Wall Street Journal conference in December 2009, Paul Volcker, the legendary former head of the Federal Reserve, argued that Wall Street’s claims of wealth creation were without any real basis. “I wish someone,” he said, “would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth—one shred of evidence.” http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/6/
Did you see the magazine’s editorial about what to do (or not) about inequality?
My favorite quote:
Wow, these people really think that American teachers’ unions are one of the three biggest causes of inequality in the whole world (it’s one of only three they mention as legitimate, along with Chinese restrictions on rural mobility and government aid to specific industries).
Yeah, it’s one of the olden moldies: success is the arbiter of merit; wealth and power are the justification for wealth and power. As Frank Knight wrote in The Ethics of Competition:
“It is in terms of power, then, if at all, that competitive economics and the competitive view of life for which it must be largely accountable are to be justified. Whether we are to regard them as justified at all depends on whether we are willing to accept an ethics of power as the basis of our world view.”
Well, I can definitely see the emotional and psychological appeal of the Economist’s article for its readers, and yes, I’m keeping one eye on Davos ‘just because’.
Meanwhile, the ‘global elite’ in terms of economic ‘success’ presumably would include the Mubaraks. And the Ben Ali family of Tunisia. And various assorted dictators who control metal or resource wealth. And Karzai family members. And the bin Saud family. So… remind me again how those folks got wealthy on the strength of their ‘ideas’…?
Meanwhile, it appears that the Economist article didn’t really think through the economic implications of the Open Source movement.
Then there is Steve Jobs, whose vision in making letters appear on screens (and even on touch screens!) has singlehandedly produced more innovation than just about any other human being who ever lived (well, except for that ancient Bringer-of-the-Alphabet, Kadmos) takes a whole dollar a year as salary. That doesn’t seem to fit the Economist model as EW explains it here.
Given the miracle that we appear to be witnessing in Egypt at the moment, post the Tunisian miracle that occurred two weeks ago, the vanity and self-serving ideology of ‘global elites’ does not appear to be working for millions of people.
But at least exposing the ideologies of the global elites is a first step toward revealing its basis in outdated economic Darwinism.
great read, ew. (one typo – sentence beginning “The focus here…” rick = rich)
Thanks
Those kinds of myths will be shredded in a nanosecond when the inevitable “Egyptian situation” goes global. At that point, I wouldn’t want to swap places with a neo-liberal stooge, Economist journalist for all the gold (not) in Fort Knox.
President Obama mentioned in his State of the Union Address that we can educate our way back into prosperity. This is probably true if you assume that the more educated you are, the more money you make. But this assumption is wrong. Making money in America has little to do with how well educated you are. It mostly has to do with how well connected you are, including how good you are at ripping people off and getting away with it. Do a quick background check on all the people that have struck it rich in our rent-seeking society and you’ll have little doubt that I am wrong on this.
I suppose that if we return to a time when our society placed more value on making productive things like cars and other industrial products than on making non-productive things like credit default swaps and other financial products, we’ll see more people striking it rich by being well educated and highly skilled at doing productive work rather than by being well connected and highly skilled at doing unproductive work, particularly unproductive work that’s geared towards ripping people off. But I don’t see any of this happening until we face up to the fact that economic power is shifting to China, not because our workers are less skilled and less educated than their Chinese counterparts, but because our well-connected, rip-off artists from the FIRE economy (i.e., Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) are better than their Chinese counterparts at turning their own country into a safe haven for rent-seeking parasites.
Thanks, great description!
All the landlords I have known think of themselves as somehow earning their money (even after inheriting the house in the first place). It’s disgusting to have watched one pile all her kids into the car to go to the high-end mall, directly after collecting my rent in cash.
Absolutely! Yet you’ll hear conservatives and so-called liberals alike buying into this nonsense that the super-wealthy got that way soley and only through “hard work.” I could go on, but it’s a load of bunk. Sure it’s accurate that a very very tiny percentage got wealthy thru “hard work,” but in the main, they mostly amassed a huger fortune by being crooks of one kind or another. Hard to prove, but let’s look at Meg Whitman of E-Bay, who got loaded mainly because of insider trading via her relationship with the Goldman Sachs. 99% of the time there’s something like that going on in the background, yet citizens of all persuasions and income levels are skittish and loathe to admit to this salient fact. WHY? It’s become so incredibly *obvious,* yet I keep hearing the same mythical platitudes being mouthed constantly with no abatement and apparently – at this point – with no resentment.
Congressmen Ryan,was a welfare queen
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-state-of-the-union-2011-5052105
Interlocking, because EW mentioned Davos, is the Andrew Ross Sorkin column on Davos. I am indeed considering the source. He takes you through how much it costs to get to various levels at Davos. For one person to get in and be invited to the private meetings, it is about $176,000. But he quoted David Rothkopf and Steve Case that the real Davos always seems to be somewhere else than where you are personally. Even for members of the global elite/thought leaders the real secret of power could seem to be somewhere else, with someone else, and finding who has it could take up all of your time.
The last refuge of the global scum. That’s what I keep on contemplating. Eric Prince has already bunked off to an Emirate. But those Emirates are quite delusional and could fall any day. Where’s left? You do wonder if it mightn’t be Saudi Arabia.
Imagine a great big desert compound patrolled by ‘roided, angry, and underpaid Xe fascists, under the baking Saudi sun, filled with ex-MOTU’s and surrounded by a country of starving, furious and fanatical Wahabists. It would be near-poetic, wouldn’t it?
awesome. Could be the scenario of video games.
Well, if you watch Resident Evil 3 (which is both a film and a video game I believe), you’ll find the extended opening scene is eerily similar to what I describe. If oyu substitute zombies for Wahabists that is ;-)
(I have a soft spot for the first 3 Resident Evil films – never been able to explain it really – though nos. 1 and 2 were the best of the crop imo)
The Economist’s article is recyling the same old arguments that have been advanced to justify the European aristocracy. Whenever the Britons have toyed with the idea of abolishing theirs, someone always advances the notion of the need for role models of excellence, a liesure class whose sole occupation is showing others how to live properly (and well).
This posting is coincident with an encounter I had yesterday with a youth on the street who tried to work me for a cigarette. It got me to thinking how the “lower” class people tend to think that the only thing that separates the classes is money, while the “uppers” think it has to do with character. They worship several idols, one of which is “intelligence”, which has been long cherished as being inate.
It’s amusing that everyone calls everyone else “elite”. New word needed.
Ayn Rand collected SS
http://www.patiastephens.com/2010/12/05/ayn-rand-received-social-security-medicare
As Dr. Peter Morici, Economist and Professor of Business at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, mentions here (listen to link below), prosperity has declined in America, not because our workforce is less educated, as Obama implied his State of the Union Address, but because our trade relations with China are rigged, making it easier for American corporations to move jobs to China where they can pay Chinese workers a fraction of what their American counterparts are paid. But as long as Wall Street is making enormous profits by doing this, and as long as Wall Street is Obama’s top paymaster by a long shot, Obama will never mention the truth about why we are losing ground in terms of economic prosperity.
This kind of selling out borders on treason. So if Obama doesn’t stop selling out to American corporations, who have no loyalty to the American economy, and who only take from America without giving anything back to her, we’ll have no other choice but to try Obama for treason!
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2010/12/15/peter-morici/
prosperity has declined in America, not because our workforce is less educated, as Obama implied his State of the Union Address,
======================
it is the well educated older worker being pink slipped,he is vile to suggest the opposite
Isn’t just China. If wages begin going up there then the low-wage producers will find another country such as Bangladesh to make things.
Even Gates did not appear from nowhere:
(from his wiki bio)
He did drop out of Harvard.
That leg up of having well off parents does wonders.
lucky sperm club
Piggybacking on my comment @ 24, the story I read was that Ms Gates was lunching with an IBMer who told her that their new personal computer was ready, but they needed something called an operating system to run it. She said her son knew something about computer software and would ask him. Bill told his mother that there was a small company that had developed a simple program that could work; he contacted the owner and made an offer to buy it. Looking for R&D capital, the owner took the offer. The rest is well known.
In the technical lore of behavioral psychology there is the concept of an opportunity to respond. Here behavior which may or may not be rewarding can only occur if there is, let’s call it, an environmental niche, that supports that activity by allowing it to occur and allowing positive consequences to occur as well. This can very well account for the expression,”the rich get richer”, and why moving in the “right” circles advances those who learn to exploit the opportuities afforded by their circumstances. It seems to me this situation divides politically into those who wish to monopolize such opportunities from those who liberally wish to equalize them.
According to M.ScottPeck M.D.
, most of us view a situation in light of how we are affected by it and only as an afterthought do we stop to consider how it might affect others involved; we do eventually consider the viewpoint of the other.
Not so those who are evil. Theirs is a brand of narcissism so total that they seem to lack this capacity for empathy…. We can see then, that their narcissism makes the evil dangerous not only because it motivates them to scapegoat others, but also because it deprives them of the restraint that results from empathy and respect for others….The evil need victims to sacrifice to their narcissism, their narcissism permits them to ignore the humanity of their victims as well. ..The blindness of the narcissist to others can extend beyond a lack of empathy; narcissists may not “see” others at all.
Dept. of Chillul Hashem:
There is a midrash that Issachar and Zebulun helped each other. Issachar was the one devoted to Torah study and Zebulun was the one devoted to making money. The money that Zebulun made supported Issachar and the study that Issachar did helped Zebulun in his business. The St. Louis Kollel had a program like this which fixed up businessmen who would donate money and Kollel rabbis who would specifically pray/study on their behalf which was written up in some frum magazine that I don’t remember.
From the perspective of someone who has a very invalid mother-in-law and can write a very small check, you can see the utility of someone who can write a very big check, enough for five to ten people with normal incomes, if there is a vital community function like a school to support. But everyone in that scenario knows what the vital community functions are, and there seems to be a halachic priority to take care of your own community first even if the many good things that the Gates Foundation does desperately need money. Stories like the first paragraph emphasize that wealth is a tool and not an end in itself. It comes back to the public interest that government is the space where you know what the vital community functions are and get them funded.
The myth of intelligence. From the 1998 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos – “Masters of markets and captains of commercial empires know as little about the likely movements of the global economy as the waiters serving them plum brandy and cheese fondue.”
And I just have to mention this one – “Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.”
Great post. I read that Economist piece a few days ago, and had much the same reaction: How can they possibly say those things with a straight face, particularly the bit about the wealthy being that way because they’re smarter or more creative than the rest of us serfs. For many if not most of the “global elite” it was a matter of being “smart” enough to pop out in the right hospital bed. Without going into a discussion on tax policy, I don’t have a problem with people who are actually smart and creative and who use that in some way to benefit society to receive above-average rewards, but they should not be allowed to become so wealthy as to buy the government, or to parlay their rewards into enduring generational wealth.
Furthermore, as an engineer working in (non-defense) manufacturing (yes there are some of us left), I can tell you a little about how being smart will not necessarily make you rich in today’s “global meritocracy”. Every job contract I have ever signed included a clause assigning ownership of all inventions to the company; so if I invent something that makes the company a million dollars a year, I might get a five hundred dollar bonus, a plaque, and a new assignment. Meanwhile the usual suspects (execs) get big pay raises and stock options.
Maybe we will have a “Tunisia moment”, we certainly need it, but what worries me is the possibility instead that we’ll have a Kristallnacht moment of right-wing populism instead.
Yes, that’s another aspect to this myth of global meritocracy. At one time, having a good education, esp if you were smart enough, did certainly give one an “edge” and a pretty good chance at getting ahead. My dad “made it” after WWII, and he did mostly pull himself up by the bootstraps, but boyohboy what a different world we lived in then.
These days? Not so much. If anyone would’ve gotten ahead & made ton$$ from being smart and well-educated, that would be me… and I mostly paid for my education through several advanced degrees. Mind you, I do “ok,” and I’m not complaining on my behalf. But I’ve worked my butt off all of my life, and I see my money being STOLEN from me… and then I’m lectured by conservatives about what a lazy slacker I am who deserves my fate.
It’s sickening. Having a good education and a solid work ethic can definitely give one an “edge,” but it’s certainly no guarantee.
Plus nowadays with so many jobs off-shored to the third world, many many very hard-working, well educated, thrifty frugal citizens have lost their jobs and are teetering on the brink of poverty (or already there) through absolutely NO fault of their own.
It’s shockingly shameful, though, how the wealthy and middle class conservatives still have the nerve to “lecture” those who are unemployed as if their plight was solely “their fault.” Sickeing and frightening.
Exactly right! Every employer of mine, whether DoD Contract (I had a mercenary predilection in my youth) or non-Defense, required one to sign away the right to any and all of those would be/could be/might be/ quite lucrative patents.
The clause is standard for all technical employees, perhaps all employees, at just about any type of tech operation it seems. I’ve seen it used quite broadly, “Intellectual Property” is more valued as the personal property of those important personages-the corporations.
THE ECONOMIST needs a new proofreader. Directly opposite from the bilge about ‘they deserve it because theyre just smarter than you are’ is a photo of two 20ish bimbos swilling champagne in the back of a lux limo.
OBAMA INC.
http://www.truth-out.org/jim-hightower-obama-inc67200
Thanks for the link to the Hightower article!
Too many citizens buy into the *myth* that the super-wealthy are so rich simply because “they worked *soooooo* hard,” and therefore, they *deserve* to be super-wealthy. And anymore, I’m hearing too many of my trad-Dem friends “excusing” tax cuts for zillionaires on the completely false notion that bc they “worked so hard for their money,” the elites shouldn’t have to “fund” more than their “fair share.”
It’s beyond puke-making to scary how well the myth-making has worked, and given 1der’s commentary about how the Elites, themselves, *enjoy* the myth that the middle and lower class are wholly and only responsible for their “plights,” we are really up shit’s creek without a paddle, for sure.
It would seem, though, it somehow has to get much worse here for this insane process to be reversed. We’re not talking so much about cognitive dissonance as total denial, which, as we know, Denial ain’t just a river in, uh… Egypt!
Such articles in rags like the Economist just point out how the elites have gone global to brainwash humanity on a large scale. Can the center hold? Can such monkeyshines really continue apace with no let-up? History has taught that every over-reaching empire has failed.
our media perpetuates this myth
lookie at entrepreneur Bristol Palin
thanks McNasty
Certainly. The corporate-owned (i.e., owned by the wealthy and powerful who write/create the myths) rightwing media is no longer in the business of presenting FACTS or reality. It’s solely in the business of myth-making, propoganda, brainwashing and jingoism.
The Snowbilly Grifter was actually bought off and inflicted on us all by someone who squatted behind McCain pulling McCain’s marionette strings. Probably the Kochs and Murdoch. They, not so much McCain (albeit he IS complicit and bought off), are the ones who are really responsible for the Media Whore & her Media Whore spawn.
I especially like this bit about The New Philanthopists – ‘The way they measure their success is not by how much they disburse but by the return they earn on their charitable investment, measured in lives saved or improved.’
Or. much more often, by getting themselves or their families on the boards of major artistic and cultural institutions and imposing their tastes (often derived from JETHRO BODINE MONTHLY) on the gallery and museum going public.
Great piece, emptywheel.
I suffered through Chrystia Freeland’s Atlantic piece at another blogger’s insistence that if I didn’t read it, I had no right to speak ot the Oligarchy or Elites. (It’s all based on Chrytia’s new book ‘The Rise of the New Global Elite.) I won’t be buying the book.
Many parts rankled, but her insistence that we need the uber-welathy in so many ways, including: their new race to see who can create the best and biggest philanthropic foundation had me gagging.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/
(pretend you don’t notice that she might want to be one of them…)
I’ve long since come to the conclusion that The Economist is a British publication written for American neoliberals who wish to feel erudite.
heh… good one. I came to a similar conclusion some time ago. I rarely read it (mainly only if it’s lying around some where). I never particularly found it useful or truthful.
So the essence of what The Economist is trying to say is
"Golly gee gawrsh, but Master sure is benevolent! Shame on you for not being happy to obey!"
“It seems to me this situation divides politically into those who wish to monopolize such opportunities from those who liberally wish to equalize them.”
http://soundingcircle.com/newslog2.php/__show_article/_a000195-000205.htm
“”Most Americans don’t know it but Thomas Jefferson, along with James Madison worked assiduously to have an 11th Amendment included into our nation’s original Bill of Rights. This proposed Amendment would have prohibited “monopolies in commerce.” The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of “serving the public good.” Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of “artificial persons.” This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would NOT; and indeed could NOT possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations.”
“Jefferson and Madison were so insistent upon this amendment because the American Revolution was in substantial degree a revolt against the domination of colonial economic and political life by the greatest multinational corporation of its age: the British East India Company. After all who do you think owned the tea which Sam Adams and friends dumped overboard in Boston Harbor? Who was responsible for the taxes on commodities and restrictions on trade by the American colonists? It was the British East India Company, of course. In the end the amendment was not adopted because a majority in the first Congress believed that already existing state laws governing corporations were adequate for constraining corporate power. Jefferson worried about the growing influence of corporate power until his dying day in 1826. Even the more conservative founder John Adams came to harbor deep misgivings about unchecked corporate power.”
I wonder why? Any bets on who opposed the 11th Amendment? Deja Vu?
Nip the frame in the bud and cast one that reflects some basis in facts.
nonsense – even Forbes when it did its richest (pick a number) it noted that every damn one became rich via having $20 million trust fund payments every few years – like Trump – or having a high power lawyer mom that had lunches and dinners with the head of IBM as she got son Bill Gates establish – forcing him to drop a quick profit get a sports car purchase of a CP/M OS code to resell to IBM, but to demand royalty income for that code and IBM’s support to expand his little 3 person buddy firm then doing a version of basic and a (very good – best I used at the time) assembler for the 8086/8088 chip into the size of support needed by IBM.
There are a lot of smart folks that get ahead – Gates lack of programing smarts was offset by brilliant marketing and corporate thievery via take and defend in court until little guy has no more money to keep court case going – then buy little guy. But the “smart winners” are a small subset of the “smart and worked hard” group that mostly saw their future outsourced to India and China.
heh… funny you should mention that tidbit of info about Gates. A friend last night – trad Dem voter – was whining almightily to me about how Gates “worked so hard” and “made it all on his own.” I tried to disabuse her of that notion to no avail.
Then she started in on the: but US wealthy are “so good” about denoting “huge amounts of money” to “humanitarian causes,” so that made it just fine & jim-dandy with her that they got giant tax cuts.
I asked her what “humanitarian cause” was going to fix our roads and/or pay her salary as a school teacher.
I had to stop there because she was starting to get very very frustrated and very angry with me for not agreeing with her propoganda.
Some days I feel like we are sooooo screwed bc too many citizens drink the Kool Aid and dance happy Snoopy dances that the obscenely wealthy are out there ripping us off.
who’s got the cash to pull off one of the largest California CRE deals in years? why, JPMorgan of course!
Thanks. Good to expose this stuff. I suppose this is part and parcel of cultural hegemony whereby various social classes taken on the cultural and economic beliefs of the ruling classes. The article isn’t so much an exposure of newly found elites, but simply a polemic and summary of beliefs now in circulation among many classes in the US at least.
For about the last 30-40 years a whole network of book and magazine publishers, all business schools, consultants, HR departments, the mass media, schools at all levels, etc. have pushed the ideas within the article at one level or another.
I think the central aspect is the idea that only a small group of people create value and the conditions for wealth. Therefore, they should get the rewards of the generated wealth.
Of course the other necessary belief is that all other labor is minimial and does not contribute to the generation of value and wealth, and therfore does not deserve much or any of the wealth. This is why reflexively those imbuded with these ideas from top-to-bottom bash unions. The essential idea of a union is that labor contributes to the generation of wealth, and should be rewarded for it.
The class war continues.
So much for “forever crushing” an Aristocracy folks!
Did they per chance plagiarize Stanley and Danko “The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy”?
You know, this issue of “being smart making you rich”.
I’ll give you another take. I suspect that if I really wanted to, given my level of education, quite unique experience, the fact I speak 3 languages fluently, and several more besides and so on, if I really chose to, I could make a lot of money.
And I know damn well why I haven’t. I recognise that what I would be doing to make that money would be personally demeaning, devoid of dignity, morality or constructive purpose, and would mean associating with corporations and their officers whom I regard as major criminals, making me an accessory to serious crimes.
Too much education and intelligence is, I suspect, financially disadvantageous. I am sure I am not alone in this feeling.
You don’t need to be all that smart to become rich if you lack scruples.
yes, my point exactly .
“Only 16% of high-net-worth individuals inherited their stash”
What percent inherited their class and ethnic status?
What is their definition of “entrepreneurs” as it relates to starting a business and productivity?
“it helps if you are intelligent and extremely hard-working” My favorite myth of all when it comes to meritocracy: The Protestant Work Ethic.
Best punchline: “they give their money away.”
The elite myth here is blatantly sociopathic: “I did everything myself through my own hard work and intelligence and without the help of anyone else. Additionally, prosperity flows to others via my altruistic benevolence.” On the one hand, we have selfish, hyper-individualized isolation. On the other a collective good flowing from the practitioners of this method. We are expected to believe that contradictory construction? What sort of elites place primary moral value on those things to which a dollar sign can be attached?
Thanks! Good topic.
Here’s another one for the drool cup crowd:
Democrats’ Estate Tax Plan Trips Next Secretariat: Amity Shlaes
Apparently, the estate tax almost prevented secretariat from winning the triple crown. The horror… the horror.
TBH, I know the contributions made by Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford but for the life of me I cannot think of a single good thing associated with John Paulson’s 2 Billion a year in “earnings”.
“when you are seriously rich it is hard to spend all your money.” And two, because they give their money away.”
Explain tax havens, union busting and outsourcing.
Another thing our neo-liberal lackey friend might want to explain is “Gresham’s dynamic”. Assuming our neo-liberal lackey friend can get his tongue out of the behind of his plutocrat overlord long enough to learn what that is.
EW,
Great post and some great comments as well.
I comment to ask if others have noticed this kind of elite praise / humanizing happening in entertainment as well.
Starting with shows like Extreme Makeover where rich / famous people help out some poor schlep with a housing crisis while making tons of cash for themselves and the broadcaster, to the recent Undercover Boss and the upcoming show where rich people go out and pretend to be poor and then give away “their” money. Even The Donald’s show seemed geared toward trying to get people to desire a place in his world rather than despise it.
I am sure there are other examples past and future. My point is there seems to be a whole new industry in entertainment geared toward making elites seem human or caring.
Anyone else seeing this? Comments?
Ah, yes….
It’s actually the whole media industry, including clowns like “Let’s just all get along now, Jon Stewart”. What a fucking prick and shill that man is.
Yah, Stewart has appointed himself the Miss Manners of the 1st Amendment. He has taken on himself to be the arbiter of the proper way to express oneself. Of course, over the years I found when somebody tells you HOW to say something, they pretty much end up telling you WHAT to say. For exmaple, Stewart declared it divisive for liberals to say that Bush is a war criminal. Say what? No can say it and be right in Stewart’s rule book.
But what the Stewart’s Rally About Nothing was that the two of the largest rallies were put on by cable news entertainers. They both completely overshadowed the rather large One Nation rally.
I have begun to suspect that Stewart’s rally was about ratings and media dominance against Beck and others, which is why Stewart took no positions except to basically shut down the left becasue you know we are no different than the right wing lunatics.
Stewart is a regime-enabler. Stewart is pro-status quo. His sinecures depend upon it. Stewart is beneath contempt.
.
Yah, and in additon I think the point is to show that the rich are also the only force that can save the lower classes. A common theme among many right wingers is that the rich are necessary for our daily bread. They are the ones who make society run. Without them, the wee people could not exist. If there is to be good, it will not happen through organized action, good laws, regulations, etc, but through some higher power with the class structure.
You know, this is what really bothered me about my local commerical lib talk radio station. The local guy exhorts the wee people to get organized, but when something good happens via a signed law, regulation, he makes no mention of the wee people; instead, it is ALL due to the graciousness of President Obama–thank you sir for making it happen. Why bother, things will only get better if something is handed down to us.
More I think of this, this is a very right wing Christian overlay on this (my ex-inlaws were evangelicals). They constantly had these made up stories and homilies about how some pure-at-heart Christian innocent needed something, and lo-and-behold, some powerful intercessor would appear and make things right. The innocent would win the god-saves-you-lottery.
” A common theme among many right wingers is that the rich are necessary for our daily bread. They are the ones who make society run. Without them, the wee people could not exist. If there is to be good, it will not happen through organized action, good laws, regulations, etc, but through some higher power with the class structure.”
There does seem to be a general convergence of deference to power and money, authoritarian devotion (and the flip side that is self-deprecation), hyper-individualism, Christianity (an essentially authoritarian and dictatorial belief system–I Am says “Thou shalt not” to original sinners), and conservativism in US culture. “Them bosses need all the help they can get.”
Indeed. Blessed are the poor, the meek, and the pure of heart for they shall inherit the winning lottery ticket (or Win The Future, as the case may be).
If you can’t buy political power, what does that say about the intelligence and spending habits of hard working elites who cough up millions to fund politicians?
“This is they myth they’re going to use to justify their pillaging of the world.” And assuage their apparent insecurity. Why else print such a reassuring summation of the myth and articles of faith for the True Believers? Confidence and conviction need no such support.
Reuters is reporting a small explosion at a hotel near where the financial elite are meeting. I find this incident suspect. It reminds me of some of the stories we have read about the FBI infiltrating groups and then inciting them to plant bombs.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE70Q1FU20110127
They’d love another martyr. The wounded congresswoman isn’t enough, and she wasn’t wounded for the “right” reasons. They need to lose someone (they’ll choose the fat kid they always bullied at prep school who was never really “in their club”) to the “class war” to justify their moral outrage and fascist crackdown.
The strongest force shaping politics is not blood or money but ideas.
Yeah. And the “idea” is the more money I have the more I can shape politics, right Mr. Koch?
cf.
Shorter Economist: If you’re so smart, how come you aren’t rich?
In other words, The Economist is arguing that con artists and organized criminals serve a social function.
We should not begrudge anyone for becoming wealthy by creating wealth, but begrudge those who become wealthy by gaming the system. That includes using government to create unfair advantages that stymie competition and shift costs (defeating environmental protections shifts costs, for example), or to create public burdens that fill gravy trains for the politically connected. For example, war for war’s sake (like in Iraq) that benefits the military-industrial complex.
The point of free enterprise economics is that serving the public good–not corruption–should be rewarded.
One of my favorites:
It only subsidizes its abuse. I guess the Economist had to fire its American and African and Asian and Latin American correspondents, and hasn’t followed even the UK’s recent parliamentary crisis over MP’s abusing the public coffers through wildly overcharging for their “expenses”.
The claim is as far off the mark as denying that control of the media in a democracy is political power.
Ya, that was a hoot.
Like a fat defense contractor suckling on the public teat, many of today’s wealthy are attempting to buy friendly governments, like the mob in Havana, by defining themselves as the fulcrum without which business or government can’t operate.
The most direct refutation of that myth comes from “LA Confidential”. Officer Bud White, while beating up a thoroughly corrupt DA in his office bathroom for obstructing justice in a multiple murder, drugs and police corruption investigation:
The point is not to “take out” the wealthy as if they were a Tunisian or Egyptian dictator, but to remind them as assertively as is constructive that they live in, on and off a wider society to which they owe their security, productivity and lineage, and not a few friends.
“ten more lawyers will take your place tomorrow”
Looking at the myth (and the insecure angst behind it) in the Economist article from this perspective, perhaps what we are seeing here is the same socioeconomic and personal anxiety that we more typically see in the working and middle classes of modern industrial societies as those on assembly lines or in office cubicles worry about being made irrelevant by some new technology, discovery or industrial/financial whim of fate? Maybe the “elites” too saying, “I am not replaceable, I am not a cog, I am not an animal, I am a human being–and I like potatoes!”
I think they are saying we’re winning – and we want more. They are attempting to consolidate their gains by convincing the rest of us that they aren’t the devil, their gains are a function of god’s natural law, and are not open to question, let alone taxation or legal changes that would make them harder to pass down from generation to generation. It’s a kind of gluttony, not just greed.
Sadly, we’ve been there before. Victorian Britain and the American Gilded Age were rife with examples, and ruthless dismissals of the rights of the poor and middle class. Progressives made historic gains from 1900-80. The rich want to claw them back, and then some.
I suspect that is the case as well. But it never hurts to speculate. :)
Late driveby:
Thanks, EW, for a great article; Fox will probably be repeating the Economist myths as gospel truth for the next two years.
Thanks,
Bob in AZ
Of course it doesn’t — it only leases it until a richer offer arrives. Cash can almost always be counted on to buy judicial favoritism, however.
As part of continued US policy… BushCo >> BO, to overlook and “forgive” massive financial industry malfeasance, from this morning’s (Fri, 1/28/11) Bloomberg:
Citigroup Ignored 2005 Bond Warning After Shedding `Handcuffs’
(my bold)
I would just point out this should not be news. Also point out Citi was in good company up/down WS in this same practice, colluded/aided/abetted by Greenspan’s “who could see it coming”, by a media hyping the bubble just as Marcy’s Economist link on this post, not to mention bankers/investment managers across the land who poured their (eg: our) assets into these crap mortgage bonds either…
a) riding the bubble in ignorance (eg. financial managers ignoring market in which they “invested”)
b) understood imminent collapse of these things, and rode the bubble anyway
2nd one (another real hoot)…
Mozilo Predicted U.S. Housing Collapse as Fed Overlooked Risk
I presume most of readers here know who Mozilo is, what he did, and extraordinary contribution his shop made… in multiple ways, throughout the bubble, to bubble’s imminent collapse. Also of note is that his fine was +/- 1/2 his “takings” through the looting period. Also that he “admitted no wrong” while paying the fine.
I’d also point out that this crook, not an economist BTW… rather a corrupt “business man” cut from mold of those Marcy’s article described… this hack saw the whole thing coming while FED(s), to this day, say they didn’t. Personally, based on previous behavior during/post these regularly scheduled lootings, I’d bet what they were talking about behind closed doors was, based on certainty of this collapse, how they would message it to public so they could milk said public, prime ’em for next bubble, etc. etc. rinse & repeat.
That all this goes w/virtually no jail time, that the looting was on a scale that nearly bankrupted the planet, that this was fully aided and abetted by BushCo top to bottom, that taxpayers funded their “bailout”…
And now, w/all that on a near incomprehensible scale, we have elected a new congress dedicated to not only aiding and abetting that crowd more fully, but placing the burden for “austerity” on those (mostly middle class) who got picked clean in this scam… while also now promoting, along w/Mr. Audacity of Hope, the notions that we have to cut back on “entitlements” in order to make it through the storm.
Somehow forgotten, the “storm” was created by the same bunch that ‘da prez is now fully partnering with to lead us into a new found prosperity.
Why this simple to understand picture is not presented to US public… really, ever… well, that’s the continuation of “compassionate conservatism” trickle down (or maybe “trickle through”).
Maybe in 10/20/30 years, we’ll get a “truth comission” to look back, issue an “apology” to the sheeple, and perhaps elicit a watered down rant on USA TODAY OpED page…