The Rise of the Global Superclass

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the growing income gap between Indian rat catchers, human organ sellers, and young software and computer billionaires in the land of the Taj Mahal. I added that there are a growing number of American metal thieves roaming the cemeteries and parks “of the richest country in the world” (I see St. Cloud has had a rash of manhole covers.).
A reader responded with “OK, so there are both fabulously rich and horribly poor people in India. What is your fascination with India?...I don’t agree that our economy is in the tank.” He added that his wife still worked full-time and he part-time, but not of necessity.
The fact that even Warren Buffet and 75 percent of the American people think the economy is lousy hadn’t impressed the e-mailer.
I have written about income inequality in the U.S. before, with the thought that it is our major domestic problem. Now it is a world problem.
I have just finished reading “Superclass: The Global Power Elite And The World They Are Making,” by David Rothkopf, the CEO of an international consulting firm, a former managing associate of Henry Kissinger’s consulting firm, and a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
I believe this book should be must reading for politicians, teachers, businessmen, and democratic voters around the world.
The world now has more than 1,100 billionaires with net worths equal to the bottom 2.5 billion of the world’s total population. Three billion people still live on $2 a day. The richest 10 percent of adults worldwide own 85 percent of the globe’s wealth. The world now has 10 million millionaires—who have seen their wealth double to nearly $37 trillion just in the last ten years.
Is a backlash inevitable? The theft of metals from cemeteries is one sign. The fact that Wall Street CEOs making $50 million pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries making $50,000 is another.
And what countries rank highest on livability and human development indexes? Iceland and Norway, with two of the lowes
t rich-poor gaps in the world.
The U.S., the land that Woody Guthrie sang was “the land made for you and me,” ranks as one of the lowest industrialized countries in livability with 37.3 million Americans living in poverty and 45.7 million without health insurance because “a living wage is a socialist plot,” according to conservatives.

One in a Million Rule the World

Lines from the book’s preface outline Rothkopf’s theme: “They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and from the shadows, the world’s most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. Today’s superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power.”
As Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed” wrote: “Woody Guthrie’s song was not meant to be sung by a gaggle of rich hedge fund managers.”
But who owns the beaches? Who owns the mountains? Who owns the private skyboxes in stadium after stadium? Who lives in gated and guarded estates on the most scenic real estate in the country?
Key West still advertises its colorful characters. But every home in Key West is now worth more than a million dollars. So the “characters” who are left have to sleep under underpasses with the scorpions.
According to Nancy Etcoff, an evolutionary psychologist, human beings are hardwired to need scenery. But the superclass and the rich have bought most of the hills, beaches, mountains, and practically all of the river and stream shorelines for their own private use. Our national parks? Let the middle class pay for their upkeep and use.
But the outright purchase of all scenery has it drawbacks. A couple of years ago when traveling through the Naples-Fort Myers area of Florida, we noticed the wealthy who had purchased estates and condos in the area were complaining that the service in the local stores was just terrible.
The store owners countered: “The poor who do the cleaning, the stocking of shelves, and run the cash registers cannot live in the area because rents are too high and the cost of living is outrageous.” The WalMarts and K-Marts could not get enough help to run the stores in these wealthy enclaves.

Do Christians Spend Millions on Themselves?

Remember the interrogation of Barack Obama and John McCain by Rick Warren, the religious guru who made millions writing his Christian guidebooks?
Biblical experts say there are over 3,000 references to poverty in the Bible. Rick Warren’s only concession to the poor was a question to the candidates to “define rich.” Remember John McCain thought $5 million was a nice round figure? Not a single admonishment about the rich passing through the eye of that very tight needle. Tsk, tsk.
Of course, I’m on the side of that famous cynic Jean Anouilh who dropped this bomb on all the “tithers”: “God is on everyone’s side…and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.”
Perhaps those hedge fund managers—the top 50 made a total of $29 billion, or an average of $580 million each, or $278,000 an hour—should have taken a look at New York City where most of them live.
Over three million residents of New York City had great difficulty affording food in 2007. It’s much worse today but the figures aren’t out yet. Over 1.3 million residents ate at soup kitchens or used food pantries.
John Paulson, CEO of his hedge fund made $3.7 billion last year. The median income of an American family last year was $49,901.

“History Is the Story of Negotiation”

Rothkopf loads up the last two pages of his book with one key thought after another. They should be duplicated in marble and put over the doors of the U.S. capitol, the Kremlin, the Great Hall Of The People’s Republic of China, and #10 Downing Street.
I’m going to try to condense the two into a coherent stream:
“History is the story of a negotiation between the rich and powerful and the less fortunate but still dangerous (witness the Russian and French Revolutions): a bargaining over the price that must be paid for stability (30,000 Thai demonstrated in Bangkok today about economic problems).
The poor and weak are never at the table. In era after era, the deals brokered have been inadequate, with the rich winning today and gaining an advantage in the future, while the poor get crumbs today and only the promise of a better life generations hence. It is a lousy deal and it has never held for long.
The questions, then, that we and the superclass must ask are, Who will make the first moves for change this time? Will elites be deposed by other elites, acting in the name of the people but actually representing their own narrow interests?
Or will progress finally offer lasting proof that true stability lies in balance: between freedom and justice, between growth and equity, between market and state, and between the few who would lead and the rest of us from whom the legitimacy of leaders must flow?
The critical issue is balance. We have learned the hard way that the institutions of democracy are not enough if they are not accompanied by the culture of democracy.”
Balance, again, is critical. Do we want to be governed by the superclass that lives at 740 Park Avenue and owns mansions in the Hamptons, ski lodges at Aspen, Sun Valley, and Big Sky, and beach homes in West Palm Beach, Malibu, and the French Riviera?
Do we want to be ruled by the superclass of Asia who live in the four most expensive homes in Hong Kong?
In Moscow, where the wife of the mayor is the only woman billionaire because she takes a Russian-Mafia share of everything happening in the city, the superrich race around Moscow in two-way blue zones in the middle of roadways in their Bentleys, BMWs, Mercedes, and Rolls.
Superclass Russians buy roof blue lights and special licenses for $50,000 so they can drive in the blue zone. Sometimes they feel so important they play “chicken” in the two-way blue zone and kill each other. Do we want them running the world? Meanwhile, when it’s 40 below, hundreds of frozen bodies are found each week in the central Moscow ghettos.

Do We Really Want To Be Governed By The Superclass?

Can we depend on a billionaire living at 740 Park Avenue to provide critical balance in our lives? Stephen Schwarzman, another big hedge fund guy, recently spent $3 million celebrating his 60th birthday, including importing special clams that cost him $400 each. He also paid singer Rod Stewart $1 million for singing “Happy Birthday.”
Can we depend on Henry Kravitz of Wall Street, who also lives at 740 Park Avenue? Henry uses other people’s money to buy corporations, sells off huge chunks of the business, fires thousands of workers, and then cuts salaries and benefits for those who continue to work. Henry pocketed $51,400 PER HOUR last year. Do you think he understands critical balance?
Do we want to be governed by someone who bought a used Tiger Woods apple core on e-bay tossed away during the U.S. Open for $36,000?
Do we want to be governed by a Middle Eastern businessman who paid $14 million at auction for the license plate “1” in his country? Will he provide critical balance?
Do we want to be governed by a member of the superclass who paid $170,000 for a pair of Led Zeppelin tickets to a London concert? Of course, he also got to watch them rehearse.
Who will be the first of the superclass to buy the world’s most expensive chocolate treat, the Frozen Haute Chocolate? It’s offered at Serendipity3, a fancy New York ice cream parlor, for $25,000.
John Rogers of North Little Rock recently paid $1.62 million for a 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card. The 35-year-old said it was the realization of a life long dream. He actually paid $1.18 million less than the record paid for a baseball card. Do we want either of these superclass collectors to govern the world? What kind of man has a lifelong dream about a five cent baseball card?
Members of the Chinese superclass pay more than $1,000 for pet crickets. What is a superclass cricket?
Twenty-four hundred years ago Plato in the Republic wrote: “Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two; one, the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.”
I guess that’s why we have the battle of the thousand-dollar crickets and the 100 million-dollar private planes today.