The Rise of the New Global Elite - Magazine - The Atlantic

A nice summary of everything that's wrong with the global economy - income inequality, plutocrats, hubris, etc. You see, the rich really do think they're smarter than you. Why else would they be so stinking rich, and you so stinking mediocre:

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.

and..

You might say that the American plutocracy is experiencing its John Galt moment. Libertarians (and run-of-the-mill high-school nerds) will recall that Galt is the plutocratic hero of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. Tired of being dragged down by the parasitic, envious, and less talented lower classes, Galt and his fellow capitalists revolted, retreating to “Galt’s Gulch,” a refuge in the Rocky Mountains. There, they passed their days in secluded natural splendor, while the rest of the world, bereft of their genius and hard work, collapsed. (G. K. Chesterton suggested a similar idea, though more gently, in his novel The Man Who Was Thursday: “The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.”)

This plutocratic fantasy is, of course, just that: no matter how smart and innovative and industrious the super-elite may be, they can’t exist without the wider community. Even setting aside the financial bailouts recently supplied by the governments of the world, the rich need the rest of us as workers, clients, and consumers. Yet, as a metaphor, Galt’s Gulch has an ominous ring at a time when the business elite view themselves increasingly as a global community, distinguished by their unique talents and above such parochial concerns as national identity, or devoting “their” taxes to paying down “our” budget deficit. They may not be isolating themselves geographically, as Rand fantasized. But they appear to be isolating themselves ideologically, which in the end may be of greater consequence.

Why Income Matters | Mother Jones

Kevin Drum's latest on income inequality:

I think the rich in America have simply managed to reengineer our political and economic institutions to suppress middle class income, thus producing a vast pool of money that flows in their direction.

Follow the Money | Kevin Drum | Mother Jones

Tim Noah wraps up his series on income inequality:

1. Race and gender are responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually none of it.
2. Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.
3. The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none of it.
4. Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.
5. The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.
6. Trade is responsible for 10 percent.
7. Wall Street and corporate boards' pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30 percent.
8. Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent.

Drum responds:

Labor unions have historically agitated for greater access to education, more labor-friendly trade policy, and higher wages for the middle class (which in turn means less for Noah's Stinking Rich). So in a world in which labor unions were as powerful a force as they were in the 50s and 60s, it's hard to believe that items 6, 7, and 8 would have evolved the way they have over the past three decades. If even a third of that evolution can be traced to the decline of organized labor as a counterweight to business interests, it means that the fading influence of unions is responsible not for 20% of the growth of inequality, but closer to half of it.

Here's What's the Matter With Kansas | Mother Jones

Questions:

Why has income inequality grown so explosively over the past 30 years? Why do so many working and middle class voters cast their ballots for a party that's so obviously a captive of corporations and the rich? Why is there no longer any real sustained effort to improve the lot of the middle class?

and answers.

The fortunes of what we used to call "the middle class" rose and fell with trade unions and the fact that World War II provided a wide open manufacturing market for American goods. Once the rest of the world started to catch up, and more to the point, when we started to import more than we exported, the game was up.

I'd also say that most middle class people today are actually struggling elites - over-educated, white collar, strugglers. The working classes that once swelled the ranks of the middle, are fading back into the lower end, buoyed only by Wal-Mart discounting.