Worth a read this morning in WaPo Worldview:
Ishaan Tharoor A Trumpless Davos tries to counter populism
In which he cites an open letter in Time, of all places, to the Davos participants by Giridharadas:
Elites Who Want to Fix the World's Problems Should Start By Looking in the Mirror
(succinct and to the point at 3 paragraphs, click over and read it; first few words here)
Dear Davos delegates,
Once again, you plutocrats are gathering above the rest of us, convinced you hold the key to solving problems you’ve caused. You meet to celebrate your plutocrat religion, Win-win-ism, which teaches that what’s best for the winners of our age is best for all. But we don’t believe you anymore.
Which led me to his longer-form article in the Guardian:
The new elite’s phoney crusade to save the world – without changing anything
Which is an excerpt from his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
I hadn’t read this guy before, but I hope more people will now.
The Guardian piece is a short read at ~3,800 words; here’s the first ~200 for ya:
A successful society is a progress machine. It takes in the raw material of innovations and produces broad human advancement. America’s machine is broken. The same could be said of others around the world. And now many of the people who broke the progress machine are trying to sell us their services as repairmen.
When the fruits of change have fallen on the US in recent decades, the very fortunate have basketed almost all of them. For instance, the average pretax income of the top 10th of Americans has doubled since 1980, that of the top 1% has more than tripled, and that of the top 0.001% has risen more than sevenfold – even as the average pretax income of the bottom half of Americans has stayed almost precisely the same. These familiar figures amount to three-and-a-half decades’ worth of wondrous, head-spinning change with zero impact on the average pay of 117 million Americans. Globally, over the same period, according to the World Inequality Report, the top 1% captured 27% of new income, while the bottom half of humanity – presently, more than 3 billion people – saw 12% of it.
...and a few more for good measure…
New data published this week by Oxfam showed that the world’s 2,200 billionaires grew 12% wealthier in 2018, while the bottom half of humanity got 11% poorer. It is no wonder, given these facts, that the voting public in the US (and elsewhere) seems to have turned more resentful and suspicious in recent years, embracing populist movements on the left and right, bringing socialism and nationalism into the centre of political life in a way that once seemed unthinkable, and succumbing to all manner of conspiracy theory and fake news. There is a spreading recognition, on both sides of the ideological divide, that the system is broken, that the system has to change.
To me, putting numbers to these things makes it evident where to put the blame, as he does so well.
For good measure, listen to Paul Krugman and Bill Moyers discuss Piketty’s Capital in the 21th Century. These people are so far above us as to be invisible to the rest of humanity. They truly live in a different world, and not one that’s good for us.