“RICH PRICKS”

Deborah Hill Cone: All out of love for the super rich

Power elite look down on the rest of us, but
they still want to be admired. Well, tough!

The Business Herald | 9:30AM - Friday, January 28, 2011

RICH PRICK: New Zealand's own billionaire Graeme Hart now fails to impress Deborah Hill Cone.
— Photo: Martin Sykes.

I HAVE GONE OFF RICH PEOPLE. I used to like them. I spent years of my career as a professional brown-noser writing stories saying we should hero worship business tycoons, they create wealth and jobs, they work blimmin' hard and are actually misunderstood little flowers in their superyachts, poor petals. And now I am saying Eat the Tossers. Or rather, let's chow down on the super thermonuclear rich, who are another category entirely.

You might not be familiar with this uber-wealthy breed as we don't see many of this sort down here except for boring old Graeme Hart.

These are the sort who go to the billionaire jamboree in Davos, Switzerland. They have private jets and four homes and say things like "Twenty [million] is only 10 after tax". These are the super-elite who made their own dosh, frequently from technology or financial jiggery pokery.

They are hard-working, highly educated meritocrats. As Chrystia Freedland put it in an essay in The Atlantic, this "transglobal community of peers" feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition - and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent, even dismissive, attitude towards the rest of us who didn't succeed so spectacularly.

There is no allegiance to where they came from. "Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today's super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves."

RICH PRICK

Maybe we should stop hounding Amanda Hotchin and focus on Hart instead because only the galactically rich have the ability to be truly blithe about the little people. Oh, I admit some of these innovators have contributed profoundly to civilisation and progress. Granted, some of their products have improved the lives of millions of people. But find a billionaire and dollars to donuts their empire will include some money-go-round gimmicks dreamed up on Wall Street. And Wall Street doesn't do jack shit for anyone.

Even Paul Volcker, the legendary former head of the Federal Reserve, has said: "I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence." With ya Paul. Waiting, waiting.

Since the GFC, HNWs have gone off into the stratosphere. (That's the global financial crisis and high net worth individuals, for you civilians.) Wall Street has recovered nicely thank you but Main Street — that's you and me — is left even further behind. That's our own fault, according to the uber rich.

Ask the power elite who was really responsible for the global economic collapse and with eye-swivelling arrogance they will point to their hairdresser who has three plasma screen TVs and borrowed 100 per cent to buy investment properties. Or the builder who got ideas above his station. Whatever. Their answer is: it wasn't me, man.

What really irks me though, is the righteous rich's bogus pretensions to doing good.

With the self-obsession of overgrown grad students, they fancy themselves intellectuals who are going to change the world rather than just make money.

The new guard sneer at the old school big swinging dicks of Wall Street; they were just gamblers.

The real status symbol among this gang is not anything with a logo or a motor or even a knighthood; it's a philanthropic foundation.

The uber-rich want glory and adoration — recognition as visionaries and altruists — as well as money. They want to be loved. Well tough. You're not getting it from me anymore.

• Email: Deborah Hill Cone

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10702313

• “GREED”