Dani Rodrik | A Class of Its Own

…today’s super-rich are “moaning moguls,” to use James Surowiecki’s evocative term. Exhibit A for Surowiecki is Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, whose wealth now exceeds $10 billion.

Schwarzman acts as if “he’s beset by a meddlesome, tax-happy government and a whiny, envious populace.” He has suggested that “it might be good to raise income taxes on the poor so they had ‘skin in the game,’ and that proposals to repeal the carried-interest tax loophole – from which he personally benefits – were akin to the German invasion of Poland.” Other examples from Surowiecki: “the venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Kenneth Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot, both compared populist attacks on the wealthy to the Nazis’ attacks on the Jews.”

Surowiecki thinks that the change in attitudes has much to do with globalization. Large American corporations and banks now roam the globe freely, and are no longer so dependent on the US consumer. The health of the American middle class is of little interest to them these days. Moreover, Surowiecki argues, socialism has gone by the wayside, and there is no need to coopt the working class anymore

Yet if corporate moguls think that they no longer need to rely on their national governments, they are making a huge mistake. The reality is that the stability and openness of the markets that produce their wealth have never depended more on government action.…

The irony is that neoliberal globalization is dependent on American neo-imperialism and neocolonialism, which in turn are depending on the US being the only global superpower with the largest military and the will of it leaders to use to support the US financial and business agenda for financial and economic hegemony. Of course, the superrich as also doing their best to privatize this force as much as possible to take it out of the hands of public control and even military justice, making it above the law internationally. Who are the Nazis sociopaths here?

Project Syndicate
A Class of Its Own

Dani Rodrik | Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey
(h/t Brad DeLong)