Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is telling everyone that he’s thinking of running for president as an independent because people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their make-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share talk are sort of freaking him out. During an interview Schultz was doing with Squawk Box’s Andrew Sorkin in front of a few hundred New Yorkers, a man stood up to protest Schultz’s general lack of humility and the fact that he is a part of the income-inequality problem—not the solution.
Protester: Don't help elect Trump! You egotistical billionaire asshole. Go back to getting ratioed on Twitter. Go back to Davos with the other billionaire elite who think they know how to run the world. That's not what democracy needs.
Sorkin came back around to ask Schultz about the clearly popular sentiment amongst the majority of Americans that people like Schultz, the top percent of the 1 percent, are a big part of the problem in today’s America. Schultz can’t help himself, in no small part because, like virtually all billionaires, he is an egotist.
Schultz: The moniker “billionaire” now has become the catch phrase. I would rephrase that and I would say that people of means have been able to leverage their wealth and their interest in ways that speaks to the inequality. But it also directly speaks to the special interests that are paid for by people of wealth and corporations who are looking for influence. And they have such unbelievable influence on the politicians who are steeped in the ideology of both parties and once again, I’ll go back to this if I should run for president ...
So, that’s a yes, they are a problem—but you, Howard Schultz, are a different kind of billionaire. One of the great mythologies developed over the past two decades is that the startup CEO is some kind of Ayn Rand superman. In most cases these are (mostly) men who got in on the ground floor of a simple idea that was easily scalable and took off. They are not stupid (mostly) men, but they are not exceptional in anything besides their bank statements. Howard Shultz is one such person. Sure, he is probably pro-choice, and I’m sure he thinks racism is “bad,” but in the end his opinions are classic libertarian tropes that support his personal sense of importance.