The Self-Destruction of the 1

artappraiser — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:53:47 +0000

The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent
By CHRYSTIA FREELAND, New York Times Sunday Review, October 13/14, 2012

The top 1 percent cannot evade its share of responsibility for the growing gulf in American society

Felix Salmon has a really

EmmaZahn — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:09:39 +0000

In reply to Super-Rich Irony

Felix Salmon has a really good take on the story. His final paragraphs:

Which brings me to the final third of the answer to the question of why America’s billionaires are feeling so victimized: I think that in fact most of them simply don’t. Most billionaires are not financiers — and you don’t see Mark Zuckerberg or Mike Bloomberg or Larry Page kvetching about how Obama hates them. Neither do you see a lot of old money (the Waltons, the Mars family) pouring money into Super PACs. They might be conservative; they’ll almost certainly vote for Romney. But they’re not airing grievances in the way that Chrystia’s financiers are doing. The rhetoric that Chrystia is picking up on started I think with Jamie Dimon, and then spread around his environs; but it’s not particularly contagious outside Wall Street circles.

Financiers are among the most alpha of all billionaires, the most aggressive, the most attuned to the idea that no matter how rich you are, if you’re not making money then you’re losing. And from a purely tactical perspective it makes all the sense in the world for them to go on the offensive against Obama. After all, they might have it good now, but they’d have it even better under Romney, and at the margin the more they move public opinion in their direction — and especially the opinion of the 535 members of the public who sit in Congress — the better off they are.

So my feeling is that the sense of victimization is one part narcissism, one part greed, and one part tactical. It’s not a very pretty sight, and it’s not very easy to feel particularly righteous about. Which is one reason that people like Anthony Scaramucci — an early high-profile Romney supporter — set up echo-chamber dinners where such feelings can be stroked and reinforced. What’s depressing is that the likes of Al Gore and Antonio Villaraigosa are happy to attend those dinners, and provide little if any pushback.

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The Self-Destruction of the 1

Felix Salmon has a really