If the Rich Really Want to ‘Do Good,’ They Should Become Class Traitors Like FDR | Hacker News Reader

If the Rich Really Want to ‘Do Good,’ They Should Become Class Traitors Like FDR

longreads.com

This is an interesting read, and a good review of Giridharadas. But I'm frustrated that it fails to grapple with the most obvious question of all: who counts as rich?

Instead, we get "Winners Take All aims at today’s upper-crust in a world where wealth has continued to calcify into stock dividends and plush inheritances of the global one-percent...". It's the sort of line that makes me think either Giridharadas or Meyer haven't done their homework, because entering the global one percent takes an income of around $32,000, or a net worth of around $770,000. The average member of the global one percent doesn't have any stock at all, much less a plush inheritance! 46% of Americans break the global 1% income threshold, and ~5% break the wealth threshold. The global one percent are defined by international divides, not intranational ones.

Back home, the 1% continues to be a bizarre construct that conflates heart surgeons with Waltons; the bottom half of the 1% have seen their incomes roughly triple since 1950, while the top 0.01% have seen a 10x increase. Even Darren Walker's million a year only puts him around the 0.3% of earners.

I don't mean to discount the article or the book: it's fascinating to see a comparison of how the ultra-rich view social wellbeing compared to the rest of us. But I do think there's a bit of a failure to grapple with exactly what extreme wealth is, and just how far up the scale goes.

It's not hard.

https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/worldwe...

Everyone with over $5 million USD of investable wealth counts as rich. The report shows that there are at least 1.65 million of such individuals across the planet, with roughly 157,200 of them having a net worth in excess of $30 million.

What about the 15 million in the $1-5 million band? I think you could argue that many of them reside in really high COL areas, so most of their assets could be in the form of primary residence real estate. I'm not going to argue if that makes them 'rich' either way.

Looking at it this way completely avoids ridiculous metrics like "global 1% by income" that completely ignore the effects of relative wealth and cost of living areas.

The "global 1%" stat doesn't seem entirely useless, as a guide to national prosperity after PPP. But you're obviously right that national corrections are totally inadequate to distinguish e.g. NYC incomes from Tulsa incomes. And using it to measure who in America is rich is simply stupid.

The more I think about it, the more I like $5M USD investable.

I was getting set to argue that the $3M-$5M range gets you an above-average income via pure investment, maybe suggest "wealth outside of primary residence", point out purchasing power discrepancies, but all that quibbling just proves it's the wrong metric.

At $5M in wealth, it ought to be possible to go basically anywhere in the world and live comfortably without working. I think that's indisputably "rich".

> At $5M in wealth, it ought to be possible to go basically anywhere in the world and live comfortably without working.

Yes, I like that definition as well. If you look at the wealth report, $5M is also the threshold for getting the highest return on investment and having access to the best possible investment advice.

In other words, it would take pretty serious mismanagement to squander $5M if you aim for a normal lifestyle and not exorbitant luxury.

But I'm not sure where that gets us. So we've defined a level of 'rich'. That's still not good enough to base a policy on. What's our aim? Capping the wealth? Taxing it? What's to be done with the wealth? Does the policy have a chance of being politically viable?

I'm not sure anything can even be done on an individual country level. Once you reach that level of wealth - your capital is mobile, and essentially global. There are no boundaries for wealth management firms with wealthy clients.

Also, there's a really fantastic episode of Chris Hayes's podcast, Why is this Happening, with the author of the reviewed book. https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hay...

Also, a great episode of Ezra Klein's podcast with Anand Giridharadas, the referenced author and speaker.

EDIT: the link: https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/ebd9109...

I listened to the author's recent appearance on Robert Wright's podcast. He states, as what seems representative of his beliefs, that Cinnabon preys on the poor and should be stopped via regulation (similar to alcohol). I couldn't really get on board with his brand of paternalism.

I don't see how saying these policies are typical of a "class traitor" does any good. For one, the idea that different classes are in competition with each other is a very Marxian worldview and whether you buy into that or not depends largely on your pre-rational commitments. For another, even if we accept the inter-class competition worldview, it seems that a different approach is likely to be more fruitful than asking the already successful to be "class traitors". One could, for example, try to show these elites that it is in their self interest to improve the conditions of the lower classes. This has already occurred to some extent in the US as the 2016 election demonstrated, and this book is largely a consequence of the growing realization of the elite that this is the case.

I sometimes wonder if the improvement in the US middle/lower class from 1940 to 1970 wasn't at least partly because the upper class saw the challenge of Communist ideology, and decided that it was exactly in their self-interest to improve the condition of the lower classes.

Perhaps they should notice once again... this time hold the Mcarthyism.

"class traitor"?? Raising taxes on middle class(while high classes pay almost nothing) in order to pay low class benefits is not being a traitor on high class.

It is being their best friend, specially when they were terrorized by the Great Depression. They also removed competition on those small business that could compete with the monsters. Two birds with one stone.

Theodore Roosevelt was someone who actually went against his benefits and privileges fighting against big lobbies. He had a hard time doing it.

Unpopular opinion alert! The more I learn about FDR the more he reminds me of Trump. And I say that as a non-fan of Trump.

We hear a lot today about how Trump is breaking long-established norms. But FDR was the king of breaking norms: from running for four terms, to trying to pack the Supreme Court and setting off a constitutional crisis, to running the only concentration camps in American History and banning immigration outright from many countries.

FDR was a populist bully. He changed the presidency forever. And yet he’s constantly referred to as one of the best presidents.

If you can't see past superficial similarities, yes, they're identical.

They both even had hair!

Your use of "bully" is a red herring to your argument. Both people break norms, yes. But when you "bully" the fat cats in government, that's called "doing your job."

The president is essentially the highest-paid public servant. It is (supposed to be) the president's job to fight for what the people want.

Trump is fighting for himself. He's fighting for big business. He's fighting for exactly his own self interest. That is anathema to what FDR did. Thus, Trump is a bully and FDR is not, and that is why your opinion is being downvoted.

FDR's internment camps was hardly a move "for the people".

Should we overlook the internment camps? Seems like FDR was a lot worse than a bully, in light of the camps.

No, you shouldn't overlook it. But don't kid yourself in thinking most Americans in the 1940s weren't terribly racist. Check out this Gallup poll from 1942: https://news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-s...

> That is anathema to what FDR did.

What happens if you reconsider the New Deal from the perspective that the Roosevelt family benefited hugely from increased government power?

You're downvoted, but I don't really see how you're wrong.

They were both presidents, but after that I'm not sure how they were the same.

It's not all that helpful to use "norm-breaking" as a rubric to judge politicians because it leaves out important considerations like if the norm itself is bad, or if the outcome is worth the sacrifice of the norm.

FDR was nothing like Trump. He broke norms, yes, but he was also held office during two of the most dire existential emergencies in the history of the United States: the Great Depression and World War 2. He did unprecedented things because he lived in unprecedented times.

And, crucially, he did them to preserve the Constitutional order, not to overthrow it. Unlike most of his class, he was cognizant of the fact that if the government could not organize an effective solution to such a deep crisis, the people would eventually rise up and replace it with one that could. He wanted to stave that off. He took drastic measures to deny oxygen to those would have taken even more drastic ones.

(There is one thing on your list that is universally held to be unjustifiable today, of course: the internment of Japanese-Americans. And I would agree that it was unjustifiable, even under the circumstances, which were grave. But there are decent arguments for the other ones.)

A good analogue to FDR's unique situation is Abraham Lincoln, who is really the only other President to have faced similar crises. Lincoln did things under the rubric of the Presidency's war powers that go right up to the red line (and, some would argue, beyond). He locked up political opponents who espoused support for the Confederacy, and denied them their habeus corpus rights so they couldn't get out again. He imposed the first involuntary draft in American history. When Maryland threatened to secede and cut Washington, DC off from the rest of the North, he clamped down martial law there, hard. But he did these things to preserve the Constitutional order, not to wreck it.

If you want a character from FDR's era who resembles Trump much more closely, go check out a few books on Huey Long, who was exactly the sort of figure FDR acted in order to head off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long

> Unlike most of his class, he was cognizant of the fact that if the government could not organize an effective solution to such a deep crisis, the people would eventually rise up and replace it with one that could.

Would this have been such a bad thing?

>Would this have been such a bad thing?

It could well have been: see the French and Russian Revolutions, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. There were both Nazis and Communists busy in the US in the '30s, and either taking power would have been really bad.

> And, crucially, he did them to preserve the Constitutional order, not to overthrow it.

Quite the opposite really. Many of the things FDR did were highly populist and there was no existing constitutional framework allowing the federal government to do them. Then when the courts started striking down his legislation, he threatened to pack the court if they didn't start bending to his will.

But that meant there was no constitutional framework. There was no reasoned debate over the expansion of government power, nor constitutional amendment setting out its limits, only a threat by the executive to dismantle the court as a check on his power if they didn't get out the rubber stamp.

> A good analogue to FDR's unique situation is Abraham Lincoln

It is a good analog, but Lincoln is subject to many of the same criticisms. If the Confederacy had won the war, he would have gone down as the President who dissolved the Union.

He's a legend because he won and the winner writes the history books, but that's no proof that the extreme measures were actually necessary. A President who resolved the conflict through diplomacy rather than bloodshed would have gone down as a footnote in history. You get a lot more credit for winning a war than preventing one, whether you should or not.

FDR and Trump were/are both demagogues, bombastic. They both pushed/are pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with. There, I agree. But I think there are some very important differences that make one less tolerable than the other:

1. FDR was clearly an intelligent person. He was fluent in at least 3 languages, wrote his own speeches, etc. Trump speaks at a 4th grade reading level, and rarely speaks in coherent sentences (unless he's reading a speech someone else wrote for him).

2. FDR actually won the popular election. And by a pretty substantial margin. Of these two presidents, FDR could argue he had a mandate to push his agenda. Trump lost the popular election, and is still pushing his partisan policies hard.

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