You must find the time today to read Ezra Klein's great interview with Chrystia Freeland, an expert of the mindset of the class of people who rule our financial universe and the author of a book I'm going to buy right quick, The Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. My favorite passages:
CF: Thereâs a great joke on Wall Street which is that the bet on Romney is Wall Streetâs worst bet since the bet on subprime. But I found the hostility towards Obama astonishing. I found the commitment to getting him out astonishing. I found the absolute confidence that it would work astonishing. On that Tuesday, the big Romney backers I was talking to were sure he was going to win. They were all flying into Logan Airport for the victory party. Thereâs this stunned feeling of how could we be so wrong, and a feeling of alienation.
And..
CF: Let me be clear that Iâm not defending any of them. But I think the way it works â and I think Romneyâs comments were very telling in this regard â there are two differences in the mind of this class. First, theyâre absolutely convinced that theyâre not asking for special privileges for themselves. Theyâre convinced that it just so happens that their self-interest coincides perfectly with the collective interest. Thatâs where you get this idea of the âjob creatorsâ. The view is that to seek a low tax environment or less regulation, thatâs not special pleading for yourself, itâs not transactional politics. Itâs that this set of rules is the most conducive to economic growth for everybody. It will grow the pie. Now, it also happens to be an incredibly convenient way of thinking. If youâve developed an ideology that whatâs good for you personally also happens to be good for everyone else, thatâs quite wonderful because thereâs no moral tension.
And..,
CF: To get back to Romney, thatâs where you get the belief that being successful in business qualifies you to be president. Whatâs interesting to me is that if you talk to the billionaires in other countries that have different social orders, you heard different views on this.
Yuri Millner, the Russian billionaire, set up a prize in theoretical physics where he gave three million bucks each to what he thought were the nine best theoretical physicists in the world. The reason he did that, he said, is that he thinks that the way our society allocates brainpower against work is not ideal. He thinks the work he does is kind of boring and humdrum and doesnât make that much of a difference in the world but leads to these huge rewards, while in his view, the most defining and important work, the work that makes us human, is grappling with understanding the universe. George Soros will say that he thinks the most important human endeavor is to be a philosopher. You encounter that sentiment less often among the anglo saxons, because weâve persuaded ourselves that the heroes of our social narrative our businesspeople.