Posted on 08/27/2022 12:20:23 PM PDT by FarCenter
As in Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex, we are witnessing a generational drama in which inheritors kill their proverbial father to marry their mother, in this case Mother Earth. The psychology behind this pattern is above my pay grade, but many of the richest people on the planet, and their heirs, now seem anxious to disparage the economic system that created their fortunes. With few exceptions, the new rich, and particularly their children and ex-wives, embrace a racial, gender and environmental agenda that, while undermining merit and economic growth, still leaves them on top of the heap.
The ideology of the mega-rich will shape our society for the next generation, in large part through philanthropy. The non-profit sector, the primary vehicle for inherited wealth to be laundered into political influence, has been growing rapidly; in the US, non-profits’ assets have grown nine-fold since 1980. In 2020, non-profits brought in $2.62 trillion in revenues, constituting over 5.6% of the US economy. Increasingly, much this money came from the new tech elite: among the most prolific donors were Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott; Bill Gates and his now-discarded wife, Melinda French Gates; Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan; and Laureen Powell Jobs, the Left-leaning publisher of the Atlantic and the widow of Apple’s founder.
This rise of non-profits is reminiscent of feudal times, when the rich and powerful donated to the Church to ensure that its message wouldn’t threaten their power. Indeed, our society is becoming more like the Middle Ages all the time, with entrepreneurial success becoming more difficult and property and wealth becoming ever more concentrated. “Inherited wealth”, notes Thomas Piketty, is making a “comeback”. In the US, according to the consulting firm Accenture, the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers will gift their heirs up to $30 trillion by 2030 and $75 trillion by 2060.
Of course, the use of inherited wealth to push Left-wing causes is nothing new. As Heather Mac Donald demonstrated in 1996, big-money foundations in the US have been bankrolling far-Left politics for several generations. But the rise of the tech oligarchy seems likely to accelerate this move to the gentrified Left. Many of these billionaires are still in their 30s and 40s but have accumulated more cash than anyone since the Gilded Age. And unlike their early 20th-century counterparts, today’s robber-barons — with a few notable exceptions, such as Peter Thiel — are decisively aligned with the Left. In 2020, five of the top eight donors to Joe Biden came from people tied to tech firms.
”Green” on the outside
but RED on the inside!
“The ideology of the mega-rich will shape our society for the next generation, in large part through philanthropy. “
I wouldn’t worry too much. I’ve seen repeatedly what happens when money is given to people. It does not get used for what the giver intended, and it doesn’t accomplish what was desired. It tends to have the opposite effect. When two of my three renters were given free rent by the government for Covid relief, they were destroyed by drugs. Suddenly they had more disposable income than they knew what to do with. (Oh, and the woman I thought was putting the money away for other uses apparently bought a new car. I sure hope it doesn’t get repossessed now that the money has stopped flowing.) When you look at how Hillary spent the nearly billion and a half, it went for the election equivalent of cotton candy.
Of course, the use of inherited wealth to push Left-wing causes is nothing new. As Heather Mac Donald demonstrated in 1996, big-money foundations in the US have been bankrolling far-Left politics for several generations. But the rise of the tech oligarchy seems likely to accelerate this move to the gentrified Left. Many of these billionaires are still in their 30s and 40s but have accumulated more cash than anyone since the Gilded Age. And unlike their early 20th-century counterparts, today’s robber-barons — with a few notable exceptions, such as Peter Thiel — are decisively aligned with the Left. In 2020, five of the top eight donors to Joe Biden came from people tied to tech firms.
Elites have always been ambiguous about the muscular classes who replace their tires, paint their homes, and cook their food. And the masses who tend to them likewise have been ambivalent about those who hire them: appreciative of the work and pay, but also either a bit envious of those with seemingly unlimited resources or turned off by perceived superciliousness arising from their status and affluence.
Yet the divide has grown far wider in the 21st century. Globalization fueled the separation in a number of ways.
One, outsourcing and offshoring eroded the Rust Belt interior, while enriching the two coasts. The former lost good-paying jobs, while the latter found new markets in investment, tech, insurance, law, media, academia, entertainment, sports, and the arts making them billions rather than mere millions.
So, the problem was one of both geography and class. Half the country looked to Asia and Europe for profits and indeed cultural “diversity,” while the other half stuck with tradition, values, and custom — as they became poorer.
The elite found in the truly poor — neglecting their old union-member, blue-collar Democratic base — an outlet for their guilt, noblesse oblige, condescension at a safe distance, call it what you will. The poor if kept distant were fetishized, while the middle class was demonized for lacking the taste of the professional classes and romance of the far distant underclass.
Second, race became increasingly divorced from class — a phenomenon largely birthed by guilty, wealthy, white elites and privileged, diverse professionals. For the white bicoastal elite, it became a mark of their progressive bona fides to champion woke racialism that empowered the non-white of their own affluent class, while projecting their own discomfort with and fears of the nonwhite poor onto the middle class as supposed “racists,” ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...By Victor Davis Hanson
https://nypost.com/2022/08/26/how-middle-class-now-view-their-rulers-with-rightly-earned-disdain/
Tragedy will result. If not stopped, the psychotic Left will destroy the USA, the rest of us, and themselves.
The Left is Oedipus and Jocasta on a national scale.
Pray that they wake up and come to their senses before it's too late.
They don’t seem to understand that when the “system” completely breaks down they will be some of the first to be ROBBED, RAPED, and MURDERED.
After all, the they have all the good stuff, even their security will turn on them under those circumstances!
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