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The Rise of the New Global Elite
The Atlantic: (excerpt)
Before the recession, it was relatively easy to ignore this concentration of wealth among an elite few. The wondrous inventions of the modern economyGoogle, Amazon, the iPhonebroadly improved the lives of middle-class consumers, even as they made a tiny subset of entrepreneurs hugely wealthy. And the less-wondrous inventionsparticularly the explosion of subprime credithelped mask the rise of income inequality for many of those whose earnings were stagnant.
But the financial crisis and its long, dismal aftermath have changed all that. A multibillion-dollar bailout and Wall Streets swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to widerand not unreasonablefears that we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble.
Through my work as a business journalist, Ive spent the better part of the past decade shadowing the new super-rich: attending the same exclusive conferences in Europe; conducting interviews over cappuccinos on Marthas Vineyard or in Silicon Valley meeting rooms; observing high-powered dinner parties in Manhattan. Some of what Ive learned is entirely predictable: the rich are, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously noted, different from you and me.
What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competitionand many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didnt succeed so spectacularly. Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, todays super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.
The Winner-Take-Most Economy
The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution in information technology and the liberalization of global trade.
cont'd
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/
But the financial crisis and its long, dismal aftermath have changed all that. A multibillion-dollar bailout and Wall Streets swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to widerand not unreasonablefears that we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble.
Through my work as a business journalist, Ive spent the better part of the past decade shadowing the new super-rich: attending the same exclusive conferences in Europe; conducting interviews over cappuccinos on Marthas Vineyard or in Silicon Valley meeting rooms; observing high-powered dinner parties in Manhattan. Some of what Ive learned is entirely predictable: the rich are, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously noted, different from you and me.
What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competitionand many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didnt succeed so spectacularly. Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, todays super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.
The Winner-Take-Most Economy
The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution in information technology and the liberalization of global trade.
cont'd
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/
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The Rise of the New Global Elite (Original Post)
Lodestar
Apr 2016
OP
Baobab
(4,667 posts)1. They have more in common with each other than with the nations that....
THAT IS EXACTLY THE PROBLEM WITH CLINTON-BUSH TRADE DEAL WORLD- Its a conspiracy against all of the rest of us, by these amoral elites.