George Monbiot - 24th September 2012
We could call it Romnesia: the ability of the very rich to forget the context in which they made their money. To forget their education, inheritance, family networks, contacts and introductions. To forget the workers whose labour enriched them. To forget the infrastructure and security, the educated workforce, the contracts, subsidies and bail-outs the government provided...
The rich lists are stuffed with people who either inherited their money or who made it through rent-seeking activities: by means other than innovation and productive effort. They’re a catalogue of speculators, property barons, dukes, IT monopolists, loansharks, bank chiefs, oil sheikhs, mining magnates, oligarchs and chief executives paid out of all proportion to any value they generate.
Looters, in short. The richest mining barons are those to whom governments sold natural resources for a song. Russian, Mexican and British oligarchs acquired underpriced public assets through privatisation, and now run a toll-booth economy(4). Bankers use incomprehensible instruments to fleece their clients and the taxpayer. But as rentiers capture the economy, the opposite story must be told...
Equal opportunity, self-creation, heroic individualism: these are the myths that predatory capitalism requires for its political survival. Romnesia permits the ultra-rich both to deny the role of other people in the creation of their own wealth and to deny help to those less fortunate than themselves. A century ago, entrepreneurs sought to pass themselves off as parasites: they adopted the style and manner of the titled, rentier class. Today the parasites claim to be entrepreneurs.
Edited to fit DU rules. More at the link:
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/09/24/romnesia/
References:
1. The Ragged Dick series.
2. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/31/world/in-soviet-eager-beaver-s-legend-works-overtime.html
3. http://www.ipa.org.au/sectors/northern-australia-project/publication/2081/let%27s-get-back-to-our-roots
4. Mike Lofgren uses this term in this fascinating article: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/revolt-of-the-rich/
5. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-mitt-romney-secret-video
6. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
7. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829
8. Emmanuel Saez, 2nd March 2012. Striking it Richer: the Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 estimates). http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf
9. Joseph Stiglitz, 2012. The Price of Inequality. Allen Lane, London.
10. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz. The State of Working America 2008/2009. Economic Policy Institute, cited by Joseph Stiglitz, as above.
11. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/was-greed-good/
12. OECD, 2010. Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth. Chapter 5, Figure 5.1. http://www.oecd.org/tax/publicfinanceandfiscalpolicy/45002641.pdf
Romney, we remember how good you are at 'busting' the lives and hopes of millions. You are dismissed!
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