X-Message-Number: 31557
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: The rich prepare for the apocalypse
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 07:53:26 -0700
[I've wondered if the super-rich act as reverse miner's canaries about the
future: The strongest specimens of the human species (in one respect) can
anticipate coming dangers somewhat better than the rest of us. The author's
emphasis on their escaping to mountain doomsteads during the Malthusian die-off
also brings to mind Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged." Mark Plus.]
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.rodricks24.1mar24,0,1135106,print.column
baltimoresun.com
The rich prepare for the apocalypse
CEOs' desire for even more wealth a preparation for end-times luxury
Dan Rodricks
March 24, 2009
Click here to find out more!
The decision by JPMorgan Chase to proceed with plans to spend $138 million on
new jets and a hangar to house them, as ABC News reported Monday, fits right
into my theory about why the corporate rich continue to indulge and reward
themselves despite a public uproar amid financial crisis.
Same with the now-shelved plan at Constellation Energy Group to reward
executives with about $32 million in performance benefits and retention
incentives - I have a pretty good idea why such a feast had been arranged
despite the company's near-bankruptcy, its layoff of some 800 employees and its
demand for more money from electric customers.
And same with the whole AIG fiasco - those bonuses that went into the mail
despite company catastrophe and the need for a $170 billion taxpayer-funded
bailout - it, too, fits perfectly with this theory of mine, which I've kept to
myself until now.
It's not just greed that drives this behavior, though greed is certainly part of
it.
It's not that the smartest guys in the room are also the most obtuse or
arrogant. ("When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America, I
personally don't understand it," Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said in
a recent speech. "I think it's hurting our country.")
There's something else going on. I call it: hoarding up for the apocalypse.
I have been watching the concentration of wealth in this country accelerate
during the past 10 years in particular. The gap between middle class and rich
has become wider and wider, and the gap between rich and poor has become so vast
as to be immeasurable.
(Actually, it is measurable. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tracked
the long-standing trend of growing income inequality and found that it had gone
crazy since 1990: On average, incomes for the bottom fifth of American families
declined by 2.5 percent while those among the top fifth increased by 9.1
percent. More than one in four working families are considered low-income,
earning too little to meet their basic needs, according to a research project
funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, among others. One other factoid, from
the Economic Policy Institute: The ratio of total CEO compensation to average
worker pay rose from 24:1 in 1965 to 262:1 in 2005.)
Knowing that it wasn't always so, I've tried to figure out why so many
millionaires of the corporate class do everything within their power to become
multimillionaires and even billionaires, piling on layer after layer of wealth,
beyond anything most people can imagine as necessary in a lifetime.
(Various groups and agencies that study the gap between rich and poor - those
"class warfare" warriors who keep bringing this sore subject up - say the
richest 1 percent of Americans own anywhere from 80 percent to 90 percent of all
net assets. Or, at least they did before this mess, which many of them had a
hand in creating.)
Hoarding for the apocalypse calls for belief that the end is coming and that
wealth will insulate the wealthy from the misery that will befall the rest of
us. (The rest of us might harbor apocalyptic fears, from time to time, but we
haven't figured out what to do about them. We're wage-earners, for the most
part, or the owners of small businesses. We haven't all that much to hoard - not
enough to make a difference, anyway - so we keep working to keep the bills paid
and the kids fed.)
The apocalyptic rich have hoarded cash and assets - and they continue to
accumulate as much as possible - and they've built retreats to allay a deep fear
that, when the world starts to fall apart, they will be at the top of a
mountain, in a secure compound with its own source of energy and potable water
(and a decade's supply of cabernet), isolated from the screaming, rioting
masses.
As the world's population grows, as the recession expands and unemployment
worsens, as the globe continues to warm and the oceans rise, as questions about
the future of energy and natural resources become graver, as civil unrest
becomes a greater concern, the masters of the universe grab all they can. It's
an Idaho panhandle mentality on Wall Street - hoard money and assets, and enough
golf balls to ride out the coming cataclysm. There's social Darwinism at play
in this, to be sure - survival of the richest - but it's the most cynical and
self-centered kind, based not on enterprise or capitalism, but on a dark view of
the future. Their concept of the greater good is gone, and they certainly
display nothing you might call civic-mindedness or patriotism.
Of course, the cynics always existed among us, but they've grown in number in
recent years, and they have more power and influence than ever. Those who work
in financial markets and deal in commodities, those who watch global trends in
energy and food production and population growth - those who have seen the
numbers - I believe they have become gravely pessimistic about what life on
Earth in the next quarter-century will become, and that's what drives them.
Certainly they would not say these things publicly, and they will dismiss my
two-bit theory as two-bit pop psychology. But I think there's something to this.
Why else would they keep buying and upgrading their private jets? The day will
come when they need to make a quick escape to their mountain retreats, leaving
the rest of us suckers on the ground.
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