Plutocrat Archipelagos
macguffinmagazine.com
macguffinmagazine.com
Abortion bans don't apply to them. Hospitals closing don't apply to them. Wars didn't apply to them. All external problems are also solved with money.
This is what makes them fundamentally unfit to be in government. I think we should have a net worth cap and undo citizen's United.
I am afraid of idealist elites living in a paralel reality that manipulate the populace into voting against their interests. These ones terrify me.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Money is probably the most convenient way to solve problems (whenever it is possible), and I cannot think of a person who'd prefer to solve problems in some harder, more cumbersome way when given the option to solve it with money.
As much as being that rich is obviously a blessing, it's also a curse. I'm grateful for my privileges, but also my lack of such extreme privilege.
The author is making this out to represent the end of modernity, but that's a description of medieval nobility, even literally so - he said Versailles!
It's funny to read this kind of bullshit but imagine it being a description of like, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
I'd counter your example with another: the documentary Born Rich pretty well captures the article's point. There are lots of young people who were born into very wealthy families who clearly don't understand how anything works even at a basic level and at some points of the movie the more self-aware ones are anxious about and reflect on this fact.
For instance one admits that she doesn't understand how her credit card bill ends up with so much money on it every month, how people could possibly live on a fraction of what she spends, or how money is made or how expenses are paid. This fills with anxiety because she understands that she is utterly dependent on the largess of her family.
That doesn't sound true; high-income houses pay a disproportionate amount of the tax burden and any type of corporate tax will fall disproportionately on the ultra-rich. There is a truism here that you can't tax poor people because they don't have enough money to cover the State's bills - by virtue of controlling all the wealth it is difficult to see how the very wealthy people can avoid paying most of the taxes. If they've managed to avoid classing their income as income then that'd do it, but that isn't happening because of a fiction that they are "infinitely mobile".
And more to the point I'd like to make - there is a better argument than one of mobility. People tend to have a position that high taxes are appropriate and someone else obviously has to be the one to pay them. That is one of those strategically stupid ideas where when they get what they want it tends to make them worse off (see also, the economic outcomes of socialism). The ultra-wealthy aren't benefiting personally from their money, the ability of a human to enjoy excess wealth starts to cap out practically in the millions. All that wealth and money sloshing around is being used to make the lives of fairly ordinary people better. Most of Amazon's benefits flow to the lifestyle of average people rather than Bezos' lifestyle, it just happens his dose of improvement is extremely concentrated. If the money is taxed out of Bezos, ordinary people will suffer a bigger hit before he suffers any personal inconvenience - he isn't using enough resources personally to make redistributing them important. The accounting benefits flow to him, but the physical world benefits aren't (you can check this by imagining doubling Bezos' money - his lifestyle will be unchanged so obviously he isn't reaping any benefits from that in the physical world).