Ultra-Rich in Finance Are Meaner Than Rest of Us: Matthew Lynn - Bloomberg

Addition/revision--in the comments Alain rightly points out that it matters little if hedge fund managers are nice as individuals. The point is the system. I agree. It was a mistake on my part to excerpt the article from Bloomberg without comment. I posted it for two reasons: 1. It was in Bloomberg, which is not inclined to critical articles on those in the finance sector; 2. It is has some nice links to empirical pieces that refute the capitalist argument that inequalities of wealth can be beneficial because of the generosity of the rich, that is, their donations to charities, non-profit institutions, museums, private colleges and universities, etc. The article points to the fact that the new rich aren't doing this as much as people suppose. And, in addition to wringing every cent they can out of any transaction they can monetize or securitize, they avoid paying lots of fees the rest of us get stuck with us. They game the system already in place to benefit them; even the smallest fee is too much.

There is an increasing amount of evidence that the rich are a vicious tribe of people. One study last year from the University of California, Berkeley, found that the rich are ruder than others. Another piece of research, conducted at the same institution, concluded they were less likely to give to charity than poorer people were. A third study, carried out at the Humboldt University in Berlin, concluded they were “nastier,” in the sense of being keener to punish others.

Top of Tree

Nothing is shocking about that. You don’t get to be rich without being difficult and demanding. You need some sharp elbows to get to the top of the tree, and there is no point in being squeamish about treading on a few toes along the way. And the rich have a lot more to protect than other people: They have to be fierce to hang on to all that wealth.

They have probably been vicious ever since one caveman used a bigger club to take control of the grandest cave on the hill.

In the past, most fortunes were built in association with ordinary people. Factory owners were aware of the shop-floor workers on whom their wealth depended, and that shaped the view of themselves. Carmaker Henry Ford doubled his workers’ average pay to $5 a day in 1913 and shortened their working hours. The Cadbury family of chocolate makers in the U.K. built a small town for many of the company’s workers in Bournville, near Birmingham, in the 19th century. That made them more human.

The growth of the financial-services industry and the bonus culture has changed that. The investment bankers and hedge-fund managers who make up most of the new rich elite don’t have much contact with ordinary people. They assume their wealth is entirely the result of their own brilliance. And they cut themselves off from normal life.

It is an industry that mints billionaires and also breeds arrogance, selfishness and snobbishness.

via www.bloomberg.com

Comments

[Alain]

No offense Jodi but I find this sort of argument beside the point: hedge fund managers could be the sweetest, most generous guy in the world but the system they benefit from is destroying the rest of us.

[Robert Allen]

What I find significant about all this is how these dog-eat-dog values filter down into the working class, for example the cruelty of the Tea Partiers toward the disabled who showed up at town hall meetings advocating health care reform, etc. Also, I've talked to more than a few co workers (and this may be an AM radio conservative viral meme, which of course caters to privileged white worker's fears) who actually feel sorry for the rich, after all they are "smarter than us" and they create wealth, so why do the liberals want to tax these poor rich geniuses from whom all blessings flow, inhibiting their capacity to shower us with jobs? I am certain that AM radio and conservative media are a complete course in inverted Marxism, and in a sense, Marxism lives like a zombie through this constant barrage of its inverted memes on the airwaves, as if it must be killed over and over again each day in order to keep white privilege alive...

[Alain]

Thanks for the clarification - it is interesting that Bloomberg is reporting this sort of information. But I assume it is burried amongst a thousand other things talking about the ensuing "recovery" that is taking place. While the rest of us drown.