[p2p-research] the decoupling of ruling elite from national condiitions

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gordon Cook <cook at cookreport.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 6:53 AM
Subject: Re: Please read this long but CHILLING!
  Tuesday, August 3, 2010
“Do the Rich Even Need the Rest of America
Anymore?”<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/do-the-rich-even-need-the-rest-of-america-anymore.html>

Robert Frank at the Wall Street Journal contends that the rich don’t need
the rest of us all that
much<http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2010/08/02/do-the-rich-even-need-the-rest-of-america-anymore/?blog_id=25&post_id=3375>(hat
tip reader Don B):

Late last year, the U.S. economy experienced a surprising decoupling.

As stocks boomed, the wealthy bounced back. And while the Main Street
economy was wracked by high unemployment and the real-estate crash, the
wealthy–whose financial fates were more tied to capital markets than jobs
and houses– picked themselves up, brushed themselves off and started buying
luxury goods again.

Who knows what the next few months and years will bring. But one thing seems
clear: the economic fate of Richistan seems increasingly separate from the
fate of the U.S.

Some argue that the decoupling has gone even further. Michael Lind, a policy
director for the Economic Growth Program at the New American Foundation,
argues in Salon that the American rich no longer need the rest of America.

He says the wealthy increasingly earn their fortunes with overseas labor,
selling to overseas consumers and managing financial transactions that have
little to do with the rest of the U.S. “A member of the elite can make money
from factories in China that sell to consumers in India, while relying
entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes
around the country.”

This is an interesting line of PR. To the extent those at the top of the
food chain believe it, and better yet, can get the great unwashed to buy
into it, the more they will be able to get their way.

Yes, the rich increasingly live lives apart from those not in their economic
cohort. But separation is not the same as independence. The Southern
plantation owner had little interaction with his slaves (his overseer took
care of that), yet he clearly depended on their labor. The financial crisis
resulted in the greatest looting of the public purse in history. While the
banksters were the obvious beneficiaries, most of the rest of the rich were
carried along with them. The sudden recovery in the fortunes of the wealthy
was no accident, but the result of a host of policies to prop up asset
values.

This line of thinking is hardly new. James Galbraith, in The Predator State,
discusses how the corporate elite have come to serve their own interests
rather than those of their companies, and have become adept at using the
state to further their personal aims. Thus the profit potential of remaining
engaged in the US (albeit at as much of a remove as the top echelon can
manage) is too great to be ignored.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100804/d21fdd66/attachment.html>