2011.01 新全球精英的崛起

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The Rise of the New Global Elite
F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me. But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.

By Chrystia Freeland
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 ISSUE
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IF YOU HAPPENED to be watching NBC on the first Sunday morning in August last summer, you would have seen something curious. There, on the set of Meet the Press, the host, David Gregory, was interviewing a guest who made a forceful case that the U.S. economy had become “very distorted.” In the wake of the recession, this guest explained, high-income individuals, large banks, and major corporations had experienced a “significant recovery”; the rest of the economy, by contrast—including small businesses and “a very significant amount of the labor force”—was stuck and still struggling. What we were seeing, he argued, was not a single economy at all, but rather “fundamentally two separate types of economy,” increasingly distinct and divergent.


This diagnosis, though alarming, was hardly unique: drawing attention to the divide between the wealthy and everyone else has long been standard fare on the left. (The idea of “two Americas” was a central theme of John Edwards’s 2004 and 2008 presidential runs.) What made the argument striking in this instance was that it was being offered by none other than the former five-term Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan: iconic libertarian, preeminent defender of the free market, and (at least until recently) the nation’s foremost devotee of Ayn Rand. When the high priest of capitalism himself is declaring the growth in economic inequality a national crisis, something has gone very, very wrong.

This widening gap between the rich and non-rich has been evident for years. In a 2005 report to investors, for instance, three analysts at Citigroup advised that “the World is dividing into two blocs—the Plutonomy and the rest”:

In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.
Before the recession, it was relatively easy to ignore this concentration of wealth among an elite few. The wondrous inventions of the modern economy—Google, Amazon, the iPhone—broadly improved the lives of middle-class consumers, even as they made a tiny subset of entrepreneurs hugely wealthy. And the less-wondrous inventions—particularly the explosion of subprime credit—helped mask the rise of income inequality for many of those whose earnings were stagnant.


But the financial crisis and its long, dismal aftermath have changed all that. A multibillion-dollar bailout and Wall Street’s swift, subsequent reinstatement of gargantuan bonuses have inspired a narrative of parasitic bankers and other elites rigging the game for their own benefit. And this, in turn, has led to wider—and not unreasonable—fears that we are living in not merely a plutonomy, but a plutocracy, in which the rich display outsize political influence, narrowly self-interested motives, and a casual indifference to anyone outside their own rarefied economic bubble.

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Through my work as a business journalist, I’ve spent the better part of the past decade shadowing the new super-rich: attending the same exclusive conferences in Europe; conducting interviews over cappuccinos on Martha’s Vineyard or in Silicon Valley meeting rooms; observing high-powered dinner parties in Manhattan. Some of what I’ve learned is entirely predictable: the rich are, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously noted, different from you and me.

What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly. Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.

The Winner-Take-Most Economy

The rise of the new plutocracy is inextricably connected to two phenomena: the revolution in information technology and the liberalization of global trade. Individual nations have offered their own contributions to income inequality—financial deregulation and upper-bracket tax cuts in the United States; insider privatization in Russia; rent-seeking in regulated industries in India and Mexico. But the shared narrative is that, thanks to globalization and technological innovation, people, money, and ideas travel more freely today than ever before.

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Peter Lindert is an economist at the University of California at Davis and one of the leaders of the “deep history” school of economics, a movement devoted to thinking about the world economy over the long term—that is to say, in the context of the entire sweep of human civilization. Yet he argues that the economic changes we are witnessing today are unprecedented. “Britain’s classic industrial revolution was far less impressive than what has been going on in the past 30 years,” he told me. The current productivity gains are larger, he explained, and the waves of disruptive innovation much, much faster.

From a global perspective, the impact of these developments has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly in the poorer parts of the world. Take India and China, for example: between 1820 and 1950, nearly a century and a half, per capita income in those two countries was basically flat. Between 1950 and 1973, it increased by 68 percent. Then, between 1973 and 2002, it grew by 245 percent, and continues to grow strongly despite the global financial crisis.




But within nations, the fruits of this global transformation have been shared unevenly. Though China’s middle class has grown exponentially and tens of millions have been lifted out of poverty, the super-elite in Shanghai and other east-coast cities have steadily pulled away. Income inequality has also increased in developing markets such as India and Russia, and across much of the industrialized West, from the relatively laissez-faire United States to the comfy social democracies of Canada and Scandinavia. Thomas Friedman is right that in many ways the world has become flatter; but in others it has grown spikier.

One reason for the spikes is that the global market and its associated technologies have enabled the creation of a class of international business megastars. As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly. Executive pay has skyrocketed for many reasons—including the prevalence of overly cozy boards and changing cultural norms about pay—but increasing scale, competition, and innovation have all played major roles.

Many corporations have profited from this economic upheaval. Expanded global access to labor (skilled and unskilled alike), customers, and capital has lowered traditional barriers to entry and increased the value of an ahead-of-the-curve insight or innovation. Facebook, whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of college just six years ago, is already challenging Google, itself hardly an old-school corporation. But the biggest winners have been individuals, not institutions. The hedge-fund manager John Paulson, for instance, single-handedly profited almost as much from the crisis of 2008 as Goldman Sachs did.

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Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers, however devoted and skilled at their jobs, have missed out on the windfalls of this winner-take-most economy—or worse, found their savings, employers, or professions ravaged by the same forces that have enriched the plutocratic elite. The result of these divergent trends is a jaw-dropping surge in U.S. income inequality. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population. The financial crisis interrupted this trend temporarily, as incomes for the top 1 percent fell more than those of the rest of the population in 2008. But recent evidence suggests that, in the wake of the crisis, incomes at the summit are rebounding more quickly than those below. One example: after a down year in 2008, the top 25 hedge-fund managers were paid, on average, more than $1 billion each in 2009, quickly eclipsing the record they had set in pre-recession 2007.

Plutocracy Now
If you are looking for the date when America’s plutocracy had its coming-out party, you could do worse than choose June 21, 2007. On that day, the private-equity behemoth Blackstone priced the largest initial public offering in the United States since 2002, raising $4 billion and creating a publicly held company worth $31 billion at the time. Stephen Schwarzman, one of the firm’s two co-founders, came away with a personal stake worth almost $8 billion, along with $677 million in cash; the other, Peter Peterson, cashed a check for $1.88 billion and retired.

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In the sort of coincidence that delights historians, conspiracy theorists, and book publishers, June 21 also happened to be the day Peterson threw a party—at Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant, of course—to launch The Manny, the debut novel of his daughter, Holly, who lightly satirizes the lives and loves of financiers and their wives on the Upper East Side. The best seller fits neatly into the genre of modern “mommy lit”—USA Today advised readers to take it to the beach—but the author told me that she was inspired to write it in part by her belief that “people have no clue about how much money there is in this town.”

Holly Peterson and I spoke several times about how the super-affluence of recent years has changed the meaning of wealth. “There’s so much money on the Upper East Side right now,” she said. “If you look at the original movie Wall Street, it was a phenomenon where there were men in their 30s and 40s making $2 and $3 million a year, and that was disgusting. But then you had the Internet age, and then globalization, and you had people in their 30s, through hedge funds and Goldman Sachs partner jobs, who were making $20, $30, $40 million a year. And there were a lot of them doing it. I think people making $5 million to $10 million definitely don’t think they are making enough money.”

As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’”


The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”

As with the aristocracies of bygone days, such vast wealth has created a gulf between the plutocrats and other people, one reinforced by their withdrawal into gated estates, exclusive academies, and private planes. We are mesmerized by such extravagances as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s 414-foot yacht, the Octopus, which is home to two helicopters, a submarine, and a swimming pool.

But while their excesses seem familiar, even archaic, today’s plutocrats represent a new phenomenon. The wealthy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s era were shaped, he wrote, by the fact that they had been “born rich.” They knew what it was to “possess and enjoy early.”

That’s not the case for much of today’s super-elite. “Fat cats who owe it to their grandfathers are not getting all of the gains,” Peter Lindert told me. “A lot of it is going to innovators this time around. There is more meritocracy in Bill Gates being at the top than the Duke of Bedford.” Even Emmanuel Saez, who is deeply worried about the social and political consequences of rising income inequality, concurs that a defining quality of the current crop of plutocrats is that they are the “working rich.” He has found that in 1916, the richest 1 percent of Americans received only one-fifth of their income from paid work; in 2004, that figure had risen threefold, to 60 percent.

Peter Peterson, for example, is the son of a Greek immigrant who arrived in America at age 17 and worked his way up to owning a diner in Nebraska; his Blackstone co-founder, Stephen Schwarzman, is the son of a Philadelphia retailer. And they are hardly the exceptions. Of the top 10 figures on the 2010 Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans, four are self-made, two (Charles and David Koch) expanded a medium-size family oil business into a billion-dollar industrial conglomerate, and the remaining four are all heirs of the self-made billionaire Sam Walton. Similarly, of the top 10 foreign billionaires, six are self-made, and the remaining four are vigorously growing their patrimony, rather than merely living off it. It’s true that few of today’s plutocrats were born into the sort of abject poverty that can close off opportunity altogether— a strong early education is pretty much a precondition—but the bulk of their wealth is generally the fruit of hustle and intelligence (with, presumably, some luck thrown in). They are not aristocrats, by and large, but rather economic meritocrats, preoccupied not merely with consuming wealth but with creating it.

The Road to Davos
To grasp the difference between today’s plutocrats and the hereditary elite, who (to use John Stuart Mill’s memorable phrase) “grow rich in their sleep,” one need merely glance at the events that now fill high-end social calendars. The debutante balls and hunts and regattas of yesteryear may not be quite obsolete, but they are headed in that direction. The real community life of the 21st-century plutocracy occurs on the international conference circuit.


The best-known of these events is the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, invitation to which marks an aspiring plutocrat’s arrival on the international scene. The Bilderberg Group, which meets annually at locations in Europe and North America, is more exclusive still—and more secretive—though it is more focused on geopolitics and less on global business and philanthropy. The Boao Forum for Asia, convened on China’s Hainan Island each spring, offers evidence of that nation’s growing economic importance and its understanding of the plutocratic culture. Bill Clinton is pushing hard to win his Clinton Global Initiative a regular place on the circuit. The TED conferences (the acronym stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design”) are an important stop for the digerati; Herb Allen’s* Sun Valley gathering, for the media moguls; and the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival (co-sponsored by this magazine), for the more policy-minded.

Recognizing the value of such global conclaves, some corporations have begun hosting their own. Among these is Google’s Zeitgeist conference, where I have moderated discussions for several years. One of the most recent gatherings was held last May at the Grove Hotel, a former provincial estate in the English countryside, whose 300-acre grounds have been transformed into a golf course and whose high-ceilinged rooms are now decorated with a mixture of antique and contemporary furniture. (Mock Louis XIV chairs—made, with a wink, from high-end plastic—are much in evidence.) Last year, Cirque du Soleil offered the 500 guests a private performance in an enormous tent erected on the grounds; in 2007, to celebrate its acquisition of YouTube, Google flew in overnight Internet sensations from around the world.


Yet for all its luxury, the mood of the Zeitgeist conference is hardly sybaritic. Rather, it has the intense, earnest atmosphere of a gathering of college summa cum laudes. This is not a group that plays hooky: the conference room is full from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and during coffee breaks the lawns are crowded with executives checking their BlackBerrys and iPads.

Last year’s lineup of Zeitgeist speakers included such notables as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, London Mayor Boris Johnson, and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (not to mention, of course, Google’s own CEO, Eric Schmidt). But the most potent currency at this and comparable gatherings is neither fame nor money. Rather, it’s what author Michael Lewis has dubbed “the new new thing”—the insight or algorithm or technology with the potential to change the world, however briefly. Hence the presence last year of three Nobel laureates, including Daniel Kahneman, a pioneer in behavioral economics. One of the business stars in attendance was the 36-year-old entrepreneur Tony Hsieh, who had sold his Zappos online shoe retailer to Amazon for more than $1 billion the previous summer. And the most popular session of all was the one in which Google showcased some of its new inventions, including the Nexus phone.

This geeky enthusiasm for innovation and ideas is evident at more-intimate gatherings of the global elite as well. Take the elegant Manhattan dinner parties hosted by Marie-Josée Kravis, the economist wife of the private-equity billionaire Henry, in their elegant Upper East Side apartment. Though the china is Sèvres and the paintings are museum quality (Marie-Josée is, after all, president of the Museum of Modern Art’s board), the dinner-table conversation would not be out of place in a graduate seminar. Mrs. Kravis takes pride in bringing together not only plutocrats such as her husband and Michael Bloomberg, but also thinkers and policy makers such as Richard Holbrooke, Robert Zoellick, and Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, and leading them in discussion of matters ranging from global financial imbalances to the war in Afghanistan.


Indeed, in this age of elites who delight in such phrases as outside the box and killer app, arguably the most coveted status symbol isn’t a yacht, a racehorse, or a knighthood; it’s a philanthropic foundation—and, more than that, one actively managed in ways that show its sponsor has big ideas for reshaping the world.

Philanthrocapitalism
George Soros, who turned 80 last summer, is a pioneer and role model for the socially engaged billionaire. Arguably the most successful investor of the post-war era, he is nonetheless proudest of his Open Society Foundations, through which he has spent billions of dollars on issues as diverse as marijuana legalization, civil society in central and eastern Europe, and rethinking economic assumptions in the wake of the financial crisis.

Inspired and advised by the liberal Soros, Peter Peterson—himself a Republican and former member of Nixon’s Cabinet—has spent $1 billion of his Blackstone windfall on a foundation dedicated to bringing down America’s deficit and entitlement spending. Bill Gates, likewise, devotes most of his energy and intellect today to his foundation’s work on causes ranging from supporting charter schools to combating disease in Africa. Facebook’s Zuckerberg has yet to reach his 30th birthday, but last fall he donated $100 million to improving the public schools of Newark, New Jersey. Insurance and real-estate magnate Eli Broad has become an influential funder of stem-cell research; Jim Balsillie, a co-founder of BlackBerry creator Research in Motion, has established his own international-affairs think tank; and on and on. It is no coincidence that Bill Clinton has devoted his post-presidency to the construction of a global philanthropic “brand.”


The super-wealthy have long recognized that philanthropy, in addition to its moral rewards, can also serve as a pathway to social acceptance and even immortality: Andrew “The Man Who Dies Rich Dies Disgraced” Carnegie transformed himself from robber baron to secular saint with his hospitals, concert halls, libraries, and university; Alfred Nobel ensured that he would be remembered for something other than the invention of dynamite. What is notable about today’s plutocrats is that they tend to bestow their fortunes in much the same way they made them: entrepreneurially. Rather than merely donate to worthy charities or endow existing institutions (though they of course do this as well), they are using their wealth to test new ways to solve big problems. The journalists Matthew Bishop and Michael Green have dubbed the approach “philanthrocapitalism” in their book of the same name. “There is a connection between their ways of thinking as businesspeople and their ways of giving,” Bishop told me. “They are used to operating on a grand scale, and so they operate on a grand scale in their philanthropy as well. And they are doing it at a much earlier age.”

A measure of the importance of public engagement for today’s super-rich is the zeal with which even emerging-market plutocrats are developing their own foundations and think tanks. When the oligarchs of the former Soviet Union first burst out beyond their own borders, they were Marxist caricatures of the nouveau riche, purchasing yachts and sports teams, and surrounding themselves with couture-clad supermodels. Fifteen years later, they are exploring how to buy their way into the world of ideas.


One of the most determined is the Ukrainian entrepreneur Victor Pinchuk, whose business empire ranges from pipe manufacturing to TV stations. With a net worth of $3 billion, Pinchuk is no longer content merely to acquire modern art: in 2009, he began a global competition for young artists, run by his art center in Kiev and conceived as a way of bringing Ukraine into the international cultural mainstream. Pinchuk hosts a regular lunch on the fringes of Davos and has launched his own annual “ideas forum,” a gathering devoted to geopolitics that is held, with suitable modesty, in the same Crimean villa where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill attended the Yalta Conference. Last September’s meeting, where I served as a moderator, included Bill Clinton, International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski, and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin.

As an entrée into the global super-elite, Pinchuk’s efforts seem to be working: on a visit to the U.S. last spring, the oligarch met with David Axelrod, President Obama’s top political adviser, in Washington and schmoozed with Charlie Rose at a New York book party for Time magazine editor Rick Stengel. On a previous trip, he’d dined with Caroline Kennedy at the Upper East Side townhouse of HBO’s Richard Plepler. Back home, he has entertained his fellow art enthusiast Eli Broad at his palatial estate (which features its own nine-hole golf course) outside Kiev, and has partnered with Soros to finance Ukrainian civil-society projects.

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A Nation Apart
Pinchuk’s growing international Rolodex illustrates another defining characteristic of today’s plutocrats: they are forming a global community, and their ties to one another are increasingly closer than their ties to hoi polloi back home. As Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of the private-equity firm Silver Lake, puts it, “A person in Africa who runs a big African bank and went to Harvard might have more in common with me than he does with his neighbors, and I could well share more overlapping concerns and experiences with him than with my neighbors.” The circles we move in, Hutchins explains, are defined by “interests” and “activities” rather than “geography”: “Beijing has a lot in common with New York, London, or Mumbai. You see the same people, you eat in the same restaurants, you stay in the same hotels. But most important, we are engaged as global citizens in crosscutting commercial, political, and social matters of common concern. We are much less place-based than we used to be.”

In a similar vein, the wife of one of America’s most successful hedge-fund managers offered me the small but telling observation that her husband is better able to navigate the streets of Davos than those of his native Manhattan. When he’s at home, she explained, he is ferried around town by a car and driver; the snowy Swiss hamlet, which is too small and awkward for limos, is the only place where he actually walks. An American media executive living in London put it more succinctly still: “We are the people who know airline flight attendants better than we know our own wives.”


America’s business elite is something of a latecomer to this transnational community. In a study of British and American CEOs, for example, Elisabeth Marx, of the headhunting firm Heidrick & Struggles, found that almost a third of the former were foreign nationals, compared with just 10 percent of the latter. Similarly, more than two-thirds of the Brits had worked abroad for at least a year, whereas just a third of the Americans had done so.

But despite the slow start, American business is catching up: the younger generation of chief executives has significantly more international experience than the older generation, and the number of foreign and foreign-born CEOs, while still relatively small, is rising. The shift is particularly evident on Wall Street: in 2006, each of America’s eight biggest banks was run by a native-born CEO; today, five of those banks remain, and two of the survivors—Citigroup and Morgan Stanley—are led by men who were born abroad.

Mohamed ElErian, the CEO of Pimco, the world’s largest bond manager, is typical of the internationalists gradually rising to the top echelons of U.S. business. The son of an Egyptian father and a French mother, ElErian had a peripatetic childhood, shuttling between Egypt, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and now leads a U.S.-based company that is owned by the German financial conglomerate Allianz SE.


Though ElErian lives in Laguna Beach, California, near where Pimco is headquartered, he says that he can’t name a single country as his own. “I have had the privilege of living in many countries,” ElErian told me on a recent visit to New York. “One consequence is that I am a sort of global nomad, open to many perspectives.” As he talked, we walked through Midtown, which ElErian remembered fondly from his childhood, when he’d take the crosstown bus each day to the United Nations International School. That evening, ElErian was catching a flight to London. Later in the week, he was due in St. Petersburg.

Indeed, there is a growing sense that American businesses that don’t internationalize aggressively risk being left behind. For all its global reach, Pimco is still based in the United States. But the flows of goods and capital upon which the super-elite surf are bypassing America more often than they used to. Take, for example, Stephen Jennings, the 50-year-old New Zealander who co-founded the investment bank Renaissance Capital. Renaissance’s roots are in Moscow, where Jennings maintains his primary residence, and his business strategy involves positioning the firm to capture the investment flows between the emerging markets, particularly Russia, Africa, and Asia. For his purposes, New York is increasingly irrelevant. In a 2009 speech in Wellington, New Zealand, he offered his vision of this post-unipolar business reality: “The largest metals group in the world is Indian. The largest aluminum group in the world is Russian … The fastest-growing and largest banks in China, Russia, and Nigeria are all domestic.”


As it happens, a fellow tenant in Jennings’s high-tech, high-rise Moscow office building recently put together a deal that exemplifies just this kind of intra-emerging-market trade. Last year, Digital Sky Technologies, Russia’s largest technology investment firm, entered into a partnership with the South African media corporation Naspers and the Chinese technology company Tencent. All three are fast-growing firms with global vision—last fall, a DST spin-off called Mail.ru went public and immediately became Europe’s most highly valued Internet company—yet none is primarily focused on the United States. A similar harbinger of the intra-emerging-market economy was the acquisition by Bharti Enterprises, the Indian telecom giant, of the African properties of the Kuwait-based telecom firm Zain. A California technology executive explained to me that a company like Bharti has a competitive advantage in what he believes will be the exploding African market: “They know how to provide mobile phones so much more cheaply than we do. In a place like Africa, how can Western firms compete?”

The good news—and the bad news—for America is that the nation’s own super-elite is rapidly adjusting to this more global perspective. The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds told me that his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade,” the CEO recalled.


I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”

At last summer’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Michael Splinter, CEO of the Silicon Valley green-tech firm Applied Materials, said that if he were starting from scratch, only 20 percent of his workforce would be domestic. “This year, almost 90 percent of our sales will be outside the U.S.,” he explained. “The pull to be close to the customers—most of them in Asia—is enormous.” Speaking at the same conference, Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate, also lamented this global reality: “I can get [workers] anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business … American businesses will adapt.”

Revolt of the Elites
Wilson’s distinction helps explain why many of America’s other business elites appear so removed from the continuing travails of the U.S. workforce and economy: the global “nation” in which they increasingly live and work is doing fine—indeed, it’s thriving. As a consequence of this disconnect, when business titans talk about the economy and their role in it, the notes they strike are often discordant: for example, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein waving away public outrage in 2009 by saying he was “doing God’s work”; or the insistence by several top bankers after the immediate threat of the financial crisis receded that their institutions could have survived without TARP funding and that they had accepted it only because they had been strong-armed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Nor does this aloof disposition end at the water’s edge: think of BP CEO Tony Hayward, who complained of wanting to get his life back after the Gulf oil spill and then proceeded to do so by watching his yacht compete in a race off the Isle of Wight.


It is perhaps telling that Blankfein is the son of a Brooklyn postal worker and that Hayward—despite his U.S. caricature as an upper-class English twit—got his start at BP as a rig geologist in the North Sea. They are both, in other words, working-class boys made good. And while you might imagine that such backgrounds would make plutocrats especially sympathetic to those who are struggling, the opposite is often true. For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard—especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers—can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others.

Unsurprisingly, Russian oligarchs have been among the most fearless in expressing this attitude. A little more than a decade ago, for instance, I spoke to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at that moment the richest man in Russia. “If a man is not an oligarch, something is not right with him,” Khodorkovsky told me. “Everyone had the same starting conditions, everyone could have done it.” (Khodorkovsky’s subsequent political travails—his oil company was appropriated by the state in 2004 and he is currently in prison—have tempered this Darwinian outlook: in a jail-cell correspondence last year, he admitted that he had “treated business exclusively as a game” and “did not care much about social responsibility.”)

Though typically more guarded in their choice of words, many American plutocrats suggest, as Khodorkovsky did, that the trials faced by the working and middle classes are generally their own fault. When I asked one of Wall Street’s most successful investment-bank CEOs if he felt guilty for his firm’s role in creating the financial crisis, he told me with evident sincerity that he did not. The real culprit, he explained, was his feckless cousin, who owned three cars and a home he could not afford. One of America’s top hedge-fund managers made a near-identical case to me—though this time the offenders were his in-laws and their subprime mortgage. And a private-equity baron who divides his time between New York and Palm Beach pinned blame for the collapse on a favorite golf caddy in Arizona, who had bought three condos as investment properties at the height of the bubble.


It is this not-our-fault mentality that accounts for the plutocrats’ profound sense of victimization in the Obama era. You might expect that American elites—and particularly those in the financial sector—would be feeling pretty good, and more than a little grateful, right now. Thanks to a $700 billion TARP bailout and hundreds of billions of dollars lent nearly free of charge by the Federal Reserve (a policy Soros himself told me was a “hidden gift” to the banks), Wall Street has surged back to pre-crisis levels of compensation even as Main Street continues to struggle. Yet many of America’s financial giants consider themselves under siege from the Obama administration—in some cases almost literally. Last summer, for example, Blackstone’s Schwarzman caused an uproar when he said an Obama proposal to raise taxes on private-equity-firm compensation—by treating “carried interest” as ordinary income—was “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

However histrionic his imagery, Schwarzman (who subsequently apologized for the remark) is a Republican, so his antipathy toward the current administration is no surprise. What is more striking is the degree to which even former Obama supporters in the financial industry have turned against the president and his party. A Wall Street investor who is a passionate Democrat recounted to me his bitter exchange with a Democratic leader in Congress who is involved in the tax-reform effort. “Screw you,” he told the lawmaker. “Even if you change the legislation, the government won’t get a single penny more from me in taxes. I’ll put my money into my foundation and spend it on good causes. My money isn’t going to be wasted in your deficit sinkhole.”

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He is not alone in his fury. In a much-quoted newsletter to investors last summer, the hedge-fund manager—and 2008 Obama fund-raiser—Dan Loeb fumed, “So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire.” Two other former Obama backers on Wall Street—both claim to have been on Rahm Emanuel’s speed-dial list—told me that the president is “anti-business”; one went so far as to worry that Obama is “a socialist.”

Much of this pique stems from simple self-interest: in addition to the proposed tax hikes, the financial reforms that Obama signed into law last summer have made regulations on American finance more stringent. But as the Democratic investor’s angry references to his philanthropic work suggest, the rage in the C-suites is driven not merely by greed but by a perceived affront to the plutocrats’ amour propre, a wounded incredulity that anyone could think of them as villains rather than heroes. Aren’t they, after all, the ones whose financial and technological innovations represent the future of the American economy? Aren’t they “doing God’s work”?

You might say that the American plutocracy is experiencing its John Galt moment. Libertarians (and run-of-the-mill high-school nerds) will recall that Galt is the plutocratic hero of Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged. Tired of being dragged down by the parasitic, envious, and less talented lower classes, Galt and his fellow capitalists revolted, retreating to “Galt’s Gulch,” a refuge in the Rocky Mountains. There, they passed their days in secluded natural splendor, while the rest of the world, bereft of their genius and hard work, collapsed. (G. K. Chesterton suggested a similar idea, though more gently, in his novel The Man Who Was Thursday: “The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht.”)


This plutocratic fantasy is, of course, just that: no matter how smart and innovative and industrious the super-elite may be, they can’t exist without the wider community. Even setting aside the financial bailouts recently supplied by the governments of the world, the rich need the rest of us as workers, clients, and consumers. Yet, as a metaphor, Galt’s Gulch has an ominous ring at a time when the business elite view themselves increasingly as a global community, distinguished by their unique talents and above such parochial concerns as national identity, or devoting “their” taxes to paying down “our” budget deficit. They may not be isolating themselves geographically, as Rand fantasized. But they appear to be isolating themselves ideologically, which in the end may be of greater consequence.

The Backlash
The cultural ties that bind the super-rich to everyone else are fraying from both ends at once. Since World War II, the United States in particular has had an ethos of aspirational capitalism. As Soros told me, “It is easier to be rich in America than in Europe, because Europeans envy the billionaire, but Americans hope to emulate him.” But as the wealth gap has grown wider, and the rich have appeared to benefit disproportionately from government bailouts, that admiration has begun to sour.


One measure of the pricklier mood is how risky it has become for politicians to champion Big Business publicly. Defending Big Oil and railing against government interference used to be part of the job description of Texas Republicans. But when Congressman Joe Barton tried to take the White House to task for its post-spill “shakedown” of BP, he was immediately silenced by party elders. New York’s Charles Schumer is sometimes described as “the senator from Wall Street.” Yet when the financial-reform bill came to the Senate last spring—a political tussle in which each side furiously accused the other of carrying water for the banks—on Wall Street, Schumer was called the “invisible man” for his uncharacteristic silence on the issue.

In June, when I asked Larry Summers, then the president’s chief economic adviser, about hedge funds’ objections to the carried-interest tax reform, he was quick to disassociate himself from Wall Street’s concerns. “If that’s been the largest public-policy issue you’ve encountered,” he told me, “you’ve been traveling in different circles than I have been over the last several months.” I reminded him that he had in fact worked for a hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, as recently as 2008, and he emphasized his use of the qualifier over the last several months.

Critiques of the super-elite are becoming more common even at gatherings of the super-elite. At a Wall Street Journal conference in December 2009, Paul Volcker, the legendary former head of the Federal Reserve, argued that Wall Street’s claims of wealth creation were without any real basis. “I wish someone,” he said, “would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth—one shred of evidence.”


At Google’s May Zeitgeist gathering, Desmond Tutu, the opening speaker, took direct aim at executive compensation. “I do have a very real concern about capitalism,” he lectured the gathered executives. “The Goldman Sachs thing. I read that one of the directors general—whatever they are called, CEO—took away one year as his salary $64 million. Sixty-four million dollars.” He sputtered to a stop, momentarily stunned by this sum (though, by the standards of Wall Street and Silicon Valley compensation, it’s not actually that much money). In an op-ed in TheWall Street Journal last year, even the economist Klaus Schwab—founder of the World Economic Forum and its iconic Davos meeting—warned that “the entrepreneurial system is being perverted,” and businesses that “fall back into old habits and excesses” could “undermin[e] social peace.”

Bridging the Divide
Not all plutocrats, of course, are created equal. Apple’s visionary Steve Jobs is neither the moral nor the economic equivalent of the Russian oligarchs who made their fortunes by brazenly seizing their country’s natural resources. And while the benefits of the past decade’s financial “innovations” are, as Volcker noted, very much in question, many plutocratic fortunes—especially in the technology sector—have been built on advances that have broadly benefited the nation and the world. That is why, even as the TARP-recipient bankers have become objects of widespread anger, figures such as Jobs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett remain heroes.


And, ultimately, that is the dilemma: America really does need many of its plutocrats. We benefit from the goods they produce and the jobs they create. And even if a growing portion of those jobs are overseas, it is better to be the home of these innovators—native and immigrant alike—than not. In today’s hypercompetitive global environment, we need a creative, dynamic super-elite more than ever.

There is also the simple fact that someone will have to pay for the improved public education and social safety net the American middle class will need in order to navigate the wrenching transformations of the global economy. (That’s not to mention the small matter of the budget deficit.) Inevitably, a lot of that money will have to come from the wealthy—after all, as the bank robbers say, that’s where the money is.

It is not much of a surprise that the plutocrats themselves oppose such analysis and consider themselves singled out, unfairly maligned, or even punished for their success. Self-interest, after all, is the mother of rationalization, and—as we have seen—many of the plutocracy’s rationalizations have more than a bit of truth to them: as a class, they are generally more hardworking and meritocratic than their forebears; their philanthropic efforts are innovative and important; and the recent losses of the American middle class have in many cases entailed gains for the rest of the world.


But if the plutocrats’ opposition to increases in their taxes and tighter regulation of their economic activities is understandable, it is also a mistake. The real threat facing the super-elite, at home and abroad, isn’t modestly higher taxes, but rather the possibility that inchoate public rage could cohere into a more concrete populist agenda—that, for instance, middle-class Americans could conclude that the world economy isn’t working for them and decide that protectionism or truly punitive taxation is preferable to incremental measures such as the eventual repeal of the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts.

Mohamed El-Erian, the Pimco CEO, is a model member of the super-elite. But he is also a man whose father grew up in rural Egypt, and he has studied nations where the gaps between the rich and the poor have had violent resolutions. “For successful people to say the challenges faced by the lower end of the income distribution aren’t relevant to them is shortsighted,” he told me. Noting that “global labor and capital are doing better than their strictly national counterparts” in most Western industrialized nations, ElErian added, “I think this will lead to increasingly inward-looking social and political conditions. I worry that we risk ending up with very insular policies that will not do well in a global world. One of the big surprises of 2010 is that the protectionist dog didn’t bark. But that will come under pressure.”


The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth. It is obvious which of these would be the better outcome for America, and the world. Let us hope the plutocrats aren’t already too isolated to recognize this. Because, in the end, there can never be a place like Galt’s Gulch.

*Originally, the article mistakenly referred to the sponsor of the Sun Valley conference as Paul Allen. We regret the error.

Chrystia Freeland is the deputy prime minister of Canada. She was previously a journalist and writer.



新全球精英的崛起
F. 当斯科特-菲茨杰拉德宣布富人与你和我不同时，他是对的。但今天的超级富豪也与昨天的富豪不同：他们更勤奋、更有才干，但与给予他们机会的国家的联系却更少，而他们正把自己的同胞甩在后面。

作者：Chrystia Freeland
2011年1月/2月号
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如果你在去年夏天8月的第一个周日早上碰巧在看NBC，你会看到一些奇怪的东西。在 "会见记者 "节目现场，主持人大卫-格雷戈里正在采访一位嘉宾，他有力地指出美国经济已经 "非常扭曲"。这位嘉宾解释说，在经济衰退之后，高收入个人、大银行和大公司经历了 "重大复苏"；相反，经济的其他部分--包括小企业和 "非常多的劳动力"--却陷入困境，仍然在挣扎。他认为，我们看到的根本不是一个单一的经济，而是 "从根本上说是两种不同类型的经济"，它们之间的差别越来越大。


这种诊断虽然令人震惊，但并不独特：提请注意富人和其他人之间的鸿沟，长期以来一直是左派的标准做法。("两个美国 "的想法是约翰-爱德华兹2004年和2008年竞选总统的核心主题。) 在这种情况下，使这种论点引人注目的是，提出这种论点的不是别人，正是前五届美联储主席艾伦-格林斯潘：标志性的自由主义者，自由市场的杰出捍卫者，以及（至少直到最近）全国最重要的艾恩-兰德的信徒。当资本主义的大祭司自己宣布经济不平等的增长是一场国家危机时，有些事情已经变得非常，非常错误。

富人和非富人之间差距的扩大多年来一直是显而易见的。例如，在2005年给投资者的一份报告中，花旗集团的三位分析师建议，"世界正在划分为两个集团--多元经济和其他集团"。

在多元经济中，不存在 "美国消费者 "或 "英国消费者"，甚至 "俄罗斯消费者 "这样的动物。有一些富裕的消费者，数量不多，但在收入和消费中占有巨大的比例。剩下的是 "非富人"，他们人数众多，但只占全国蛋糕的一小部分，令人惊讶。
在经济衰退之前，忽视这种财富集中于少数精英阶层的现象相对容易。现代经济的奇妙发明--谷歌、亚马逊、iPhone--广泛地改善了中产阶级消费者的生活，即使它们使一小部分企业家获得了巨大的财富。而那些不那么好的发明--特别是次级信贷的爆炸--帮助掩盖了许多收入停滞不前的人的收入不平等的增加。


但是，金融危机及其长期、令人沮丧的后果改变了这一切。数十亿美元的救助和华尔街随后迅速恢复的巨额奖金，激发了人们对寄生的银行家和其他精英为了自己的利益操纵游戏的叙述。而这反过来又导致了更广泛的、并非不合理的担忧，即我们不仅生活在一个多头经济中，而且生活在一个多头政治中，其中富人显示出超强的政治影响力，狭隘的自我利益动机，以及对他们自己稀薄的经济泡沫之外的任何人的随意漠视。

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通过我的商业记者工作，我在过去十年的大部分时间里都在跟踪新的超级富豪：参加欧洲同样的独家会议；在玛莎葡萄园岛或硅谷会议室的卡布奇诺中进行采访；观察曼哈顿的高权重晚宴。我所了解到的一些情况是完全可以预测的：正如菲茨杰拉德(F. Scott Fitzgerald)著名地指出的那样，富人与你和我不同。

不过，与我们这个时代更相关的是，今天的富人也与昨天的富人不同。我们的光速、全球连接的经济导致了一个新的超级精英阶层的崛起，他们在很大程度上由第一代和第二代财富组成。其成员都是勤奋工作、受过高等教育、乘坐飞机的功利主义者，他们认为自己是一场艰难的全球经济竞争中当之无愧的赢家--因此，他们中的许多人对我们这些没有取得如此惊人成功的人抱有矛盾的态度。也许最值得注意的是，他们正在成为一个由同龄人组成的跨全球社区，他们彼此之间的共同点比他们在国内的同胞更多。无论他们在纽约还是香港，在莫斯科还是孟买都有主要住所，今天的超级富豪们越来越成为一个独立的国家。

赢家通吃的经济

新财阀的崛起与两个现象密不可分：信息技术的革命和全球贸易的自由化。个别国家对收入不平等做出了自己的贡献--美国的金融放松管制和上层阶级减税；俄罗斯的内部私有化；印度和墨西哥在受管制行业的寻租行为。但共同的说法是，由于全球化和技术革新，今天人们、金钱和思想比以往任何时候都更自由。

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彼得-林德特是加州大学戴维斯分校的经济学家，也是经济学 "深层历史 "学派的领导者之一，该学派致力于长期思考世界经济，也就是说，在整个人类文明的背景下思考世界经济。然而他认为，我们今天看到的经济变化是前所未有的。"他告诉我："英国的经典工业革命远没有过去30年里发生的事情令人印象深刻。他解释说，目前的生产力提高幅度更大，颠覆性创新的浪潮也快得多。

从全球角度来看，这些发展的影响是压倒性的，特别是在世界的贫困地区。以印度和中国为例：从1820年到1950年，将近一个半世纪，这两个国家的人均收入基本持平。在1950年至1973年间，它增加了68%。然后，在1973年至2002年期间，它增长了245%，并在全球金融危机的情况下继续强劲增长。




但在国家内部，这一全球转型的成果被不均衡地分享。尽管中国的中产阶级成倍增长，数以千万计的人摆脱了贫困，但上海和其他东海岸城市的超级精英阶层却在稳步拉开距离。在印度和俄罗斯等发展中市场，以及在西方大部分工业化国家，从相对自由放任的美国到加拿大和斯堪的纳维亚半岛舒适的社会民主国家，收入不平等也在增加。托马斯-弗里德曼是对的，在许多方面，世界已经变得更平坦；但在其他方面，它却变得更尖锐。

造成尖峰的一个原因是，全球市场及其相关技术已经使国际商业巨头阶层得以产生。随着公司规模越来越大，全球环境竞争越来越激烈，颠覆性技术创新的速度越来越快，吸引最好的CEO对股东的价值也相应增加。高管薪酬飙升的原因有很多，包括董事会的过度舒适和关于薪酬的文化规范的变化，但规模的扩大、竞争和创新都发挥了重要作用。

许多公司已经从这场经济动荡中获利。全球范围内对劳动力（包括技术工人和非技术工人）、客户和资本的准入扩大，降低了传统的准入门槛，提高了领先的洞察力或创新的价值。Facebook的创始人马克-扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）六年前才从大学辍学，他已经在挑战谷歌，而谷歌本身就不是一个老派公司。但最大的赢家是个人，而不是机构。例如，对冲基金经理约翰-保尔森(John Paulson)单枪匹马地从2008年的危机中获利，几乎与高盛公司一样多。

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与此同时，绝大多数美国工人，无论他们对工作多么投入和熟练，都错过了这个赢家通吃的经济的暴利，或者更糟糕的是，他们发现自己的储蓄、雇主或职业被那些使财阀精英们致富的同样力量所破坏。这些不同趋势的结果是美国收入不平等的激增，令人瞠目结舌。根据伯克利的经济学家Emmanuel Saez和巴黎经济学院的Thomas Piketty的说法，在2002年至2007年期间，美国所有收入增长的65%流向了人口中的前1%。金融危机暂时打断了这一趋势，因为在2008年，收入最高的1%的人的收入比其他人口的收入下降得多。但最近的证据表明，在危机过后，最高层的收入比下面的收入回升得更快。一个例子是：在经历了2008年的下滑之后，排名前25位的对冲基金经理在2009年平均每人获得了超过10亿美元的收入，迅速超越了他们在经济衰退前的2007年创造的记录。

现在的财阀制度
如果你想找一个美国财阀的出场日期，你可以选择2007年6月21日。在这一天，私人股权投资巨头黑石集团进行了自2002年以来美国最大的首次公开募股，筹集了40亿美元，创建了一个当时价值310亿美元的上市公司。该公司的两位联合创始人之一斯蒂芬-施瓦茨曼（Stephen Schwarzman）带走了价值近80亿美元的个人股份和6.77亿美元的现金；另一位创始人彼得-彼得森（Peter Peterson）兑现了一张18.8亿美元的支票并退休。

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在那种令历史学家、阴谋论者和图书出版商高兴的巧合中，6月21日也恰好是彼得森举办派对的日子--当然是在曼哈顿的四季餐厅--推出他女儿霍利的首部小说《曼尼》，她轻描淡写地讽刺了上东区金融家和他们妻子的生活和爱情。这本畅销书完全符合现代 "妈妈文学 "的类型--《今日美国》建议读者把它带到海滩上，但作者告诉我，她写这本书的部分灵感来自她的信念，即 "人们对这个城市有多少钱一无所知"。

霍利-彼得森和我多次谈到近年来的超级富豪是如何改变财富的含义的。"现在上东区有这么多钱，"她说。"如果你看一下最初的电影《华尔街》，那是一种现象，有一些30多岁和40多岁的男人每年赚200万和300万美元，那是令人厌恶的。但后来你有了互联网时代，然后是全球化，你有了30多岁的人，通过对冲基金和高盛的合伙人工作，他们一年赚了2000、3000、4000万美元。他们中有很多人在这样做。我认为赚500万到1000万美元的人肯定不认为他们赚的钱够多。"

作为一个例子，她描述了在曼哈顿一个晚宴上与一对夫妇的对话。"他们开始说，'如果你要买所有这些东西，生活开始变得非常昂贵。如果你要做NetJet的事情'"--这是一项为那些不想直接购买飞机的人提供 "部分飞机所有权 "的服务--"'如果你要有四所房子，你要经营这四所房子，就好像你开始花费一些钱。


彼得森说，最关键的问题来自于妻子。"她转身对我说，'你知道，关于20的事情'--她指的是每年2000万美元--"'20只是税后的10'。桌子上的每个人都在点头。"

就像过去的贵族一样，这种巨大的财富在财阀和其他人之间造成了一道鸿沟，他们撤回到有门的庄园、独家学院和私人飞机中，这道鸿沟得到了加强。我们被诸如微软联合创始人保罗-艾伦（Paul Allen）的414英尺长的游艇 "章鱼"（Octopus）所吸引，该游艇上有两架直升机、一艘潜水艇和一个游泳池。

但是，虽然他们的过度行为似乎很熟悉，甚至是古老的，但今天的财阀代表了一种新的现象。菲茨杰拉德（F. Scott Fitzgerald）时代的富人被塑造出来，他写道，他们是 "生而为富 "的事实。他们知道什么是 "提前拥有和享受"。

今天的许多超级精英却不是这样的情况。"彼得-林德特告诉我："那些归功于他们祖辈的肥猫们并没有得到所有的收益。"这一次，很多东西都给了创新者。比起贝德福德公爵，比尔-盖茨在顶层有更多的功利性。" 就连对收入不平等加剧的社会和政治后果深感忧虑的埃马纽埃尔-萨伊兹（Emmanuel Saez）也同意，当前这批财阀的一个决定性特征是他们是 "工作的富人"。他发现，在1916年，最富有的1%的美国人只有五分之一的收入来自有偿工作；在2004年，这个数字上升了三倍，达到60%。

例如，彼得-彼得森(Peter Peterson)是一个希腊移民的儿子，他17岁就来到美国，通过努力在内布拉斯加拥有一家餐馆；他的黑石集团联合创始人斯蒂芬-施瓦茨曼(Stephen Schwarzman)是一个费城零售商的儿子。而他们几乎都不是例外。在2010年福布斯美国富豪榜的前10名中，有4人是自力更生，2人（查尔斯和大卫-科赫）将一个中等规模的家族石油企业扩展为价值数十亿美元的工业集团，其余4人都是自力更生的亿万富翁山姆-沃尔顿的继承人。同样，在排名前10位的外国亿万富翁中，有6位是自己做的，其余4位正在大力发展他们的遗产，而不仅仅是靠它生活。诚然，今天的财阀中很少有出生在那种可以完全关闭机会的赤贫中的人--强有力的早期教育几乎是一个先决条件，但他们的大部分财富通常是勤奋和智慧的成果（估计还有一些运气）。总的来说，他们不是贵族，而是经济上的功利主义者，他们不仅专注于消费财富，而且专注于创造财富。

通往达沃斯之路
要掌握今天的财阀和世袭精英之间的区别，他们（用约翰-斯图尔特-米尔（John Stuart Mill）令人难忘的短语）"在睡梦中致富"，人们只需看一眼现在充满高端社交日历的活动。昔日的名媛舞会、狩猎和帆船赛可能还没有完全过时，但它们正朝着这个方向发展。21世纪财阀的真正社区生活是在国际会议上进行的。


这些活动中最知名的是在瑞士达沃斯举行的世界经济论坛年会，邀请参加该会议标志着有抱负的财阀进入了国际舞台。每年在欧洲和北美举行会议的比尔德伯格集团(Bilderberg Group)更具有排他性，而且更加神秘，尽管它更关注地缘政治，而不是全球商业和慈善事业。每年春天在中国海南岛召开的博鳌亚洲论坛，证明了这个国家日益增长的经济重要性及其对财阀文化的理解。比尔-克林顿正在努力为他的 "克林顿全球倡议 "赢得一个固定的席位。TED会议（缩写为 "技术、娱乐、设计"）是小人物的重要一站；赫伯-艾伦的*太阳谷聚会是为媒体大亨们准备的；而阿斯彭研究所的思想节（由本杂志共同赞助）则是为更具政策意识的人准备的。

一些企业认识到这种全球聚会的价值，开始举办自己的聚会。其中包括谷歌的Zeitgeist会议，我已经在那里主持了几年的讨论。最近的一次聚会于去年5月在格罗夫酒店举行，这是一个位于英国乡村的前省级庄园，其300英亩的土地已被改造成一个高尔夫球场，其高天花板的房间现在装饰着古董和现代家具的混合物。(模仿路易十四的椅子是用高端塑料制成的，很有特色）。去年，太阳马戏团在场地上搭建的巨大帐篷里为500名客人提供了一场私人演出；2007年，为了庆祝收购YouTube，谷歌从世界各地空运来了一夜之间的网络红人。


然而，尽管奢华，Zeitgeist会议的气氛却并不富裕。相反，它有一种大学毕业生聚会的紧张、认真的气氛。这不是一个玩逃学的团体：会议室从上午9点到下午6点都是满的，在咖啡休息时间，草坪上挤满了查看黑莓和iPad的高管。

去年的 "时代精神 "演讲者阵容包括德斯蒙德-图图大主教、伦敦市长鲍里斯-约翰逊和星巴克首席执行官霍华德-舒尔茨等知名人士（当然，更不用说谷歌自己的首席执行官埃里克-施密特）。但是，在这次和类似的聚会中，最有力的货币既不是名声也不是金钱。相反，它是作家迈克尔-刘易斯所称的 "新事物"--有可能改变世界的洞察力或算法或技术，无论多么短暂。因此，去年有三位诺贝尔奖得主出席，包括行为经济学的先驱丹尼尔-卡尼曼。出席会议的商业明星之一是36岁的企业家谢霆锋，他在去年夏天以超过10亿美元的价格将他的Zappos在线鞋类零售商出售给亚马逊。而最受欢迎的会议是谷歌展示其一些新发明的会议，包括Nexus手机。

这种对创新和想法的极客式热情在全球精英的更亲密的聚会上也很明显。以私人股本亿万富翁亨利的经济学家妻子玛丽-约瑟-克拉维斯在其优雅的上东区公寓中举办的优雅的曼哈顿晚宴为例。虽然瓷器是塞夫勒(Sèvres)的，画作是博物馆级别的（毕竟玛丽-约瑟是现代艺术博物馆的董事会主席），但餐桌上的谈话不会与研究生研讨会不相称。克拉维斯夫人感到自豪的是，她不仅把她丈夫和迈克尔-布隆伯格这样的财阀聚集在一起，还把理查德-霍尔布鲁克、罗伯特-佐利克和《金融时报》专栏作家马丁-沃尔夫这样的思想家和政策制定者聚集在一起，带领他们讨论从全球金融失衡到阿富汗战争的各种问题。


事实上，在这个精英们乐于使用 "盒子之外 "和 "杀手级应用 "这样的短语的时代，最令人垂涎的地位象征不是游艇、赛马或爵位；而是一个慈善基金会，而且是一个积极管理的基金会，表明其赞助者有重塑世界的大想法。

慈善资本主义
去年夏天刚满80岁的乔治-索罗斯是社会参与型亿万富翁的先驱和榜样。可以说，他是战后最成功的投资者，但他最引以为豪的是他的开放社会基金会，通过这些基金会，他在大麻合法化、中东欧公民社会以及金融危机后重新思考经济假设等不同问题上花费了数十亿美元。

在自由主义者索罗斯的启发和建议下，彼得-彼得森（Peter Peterson）--他本人是共和党人，曾是尼克松内阁的成员--将他在黑石集团获得的10亿美元资金用于一个致力于降低美国财政赤字和福利支出的基金会。同样，比尔-盖茨今天也将他的大部分精力和智慧用于他的基金会的工作，从支持特许学校到在非洲防治疾病。脸谱网的扎克伯格还没到30岁生日，但去年秋天他捐赠了1亿美元用于改善新泽西州纽瓦克的公立学校。保险和房地产大亨伊莱-布罗德(Eli Broad)已成为干细胞研究的一个有影响力的资助者；黑莓手机制造商Research in Motion的联合创始人吉姆-巴尔西利(Jim Balsillie)建立了自己的国际事务智囊团；还有其他一些。比尔-克林顿在担任总统后致力于构建一个全球慈善 "品牌"，这并不是巧合。


超级富豪们早就认识到，慈善事业除了能带来道德上的回报外，还能成为获得社会认可甚至是不朽的途径。安德鲁-卡内基（Andrew "The Man Who Dies Rich Dies Disgraced" Carnegie）通过他的医院、音乐厅、图书馆和大学将自己从强盗男爵变成了世俗的圣人；阿尔弗雷德-诺贝尔（Alfred Nobel）确保他将因发明炸药以外的东西而被人记住。今天的财阀值得注意的是，他们倾向于以与他们创造财富相同的方式捐赠他们的财富：企业家精神。他们不是仅仅向有价值的慈善机构捐款或捐赠现有机构（当然他们也会这样做），而是利用他们的财富来测试解决大问题的新方法。记者Matthew Bishop和Michael Green在他们的同名书中把这种方法称为 "慈善资本主义"。"他们作为商人的思维方式和他们的捐赠方式之间存在着联系，"Bishop告诉我。"他们习惯于在宏大的规模上运作，所以他们的慈善事业也是在宏大的规模上运作。而且他们在更早的时候就这样做了。"

衡量公共参与对今天的超级富豪的重要性的一个标准是，即使是新兴市场的财阀也在发展自己的基金会和智囊团。当前苏联的寡头们第一次走出自己的国界时，他们是马克思主义的新贵漫画，购买游艇和运动队，并与穿着高级时装的超级名模为伍。15年后，他们正在探索如何购买他们的方式进入思想的世界。


其中最坚定的是乌克兰企业家维克多-平丘克，他的商业帝国从管道制造到电视台都有。拥有30亿美元净资产的平丘克不再仅仅满足于购买现代艺术：2009年，他开始为年轻艺术家举办全球比赛，该比赛由他在基辅的艺术中心管理，被认为是将乌克兰带入国际文化主流的一种方式。平丘克在达沃斯的边缘地带定期举办午餐会，并发起了自己的年度 "思想论坛"，这是一个专门讨论地缘政治的聚会，在斯大林、罗斯福和丘吉尔出席雅尔塔会议的同一克里米亚别墅中举行，具有适当的谦虚性。去年9月的会议，我担任主持人，与会者包括比尔-克林顿、国际货币基金组织负责人多米尼克-斯特劳斯-卡恩、波兰总统布罗尼斯瓦夫-科莫罗夫斯基和俄罗斯副总理阿列克谢-库德林。

作为进入全球超级精英阶层的入口，平丘克的努力似乎正在发挥作用：去年春天访问美国时，这位寡头在华盛顿会见了奥巴马总统的最高政治顾问大卫-阿克塞尔罗德，并在纽约为《时代》杂志编辑里克-斯坦格尔举办的图书派对上与查理-罗斯攀谈起来。在上一次旅行中，他与卡罗琳-肯尼迪在HBO的理查德-普莱普勒的上东区联排别墅里共进晚餐。在国内，他曾在基辅郊外的宫殿式庄园（拥有自己的九洞高尔夫球场）招待他的艺术爱好者伊莱-布罗德，并与索罗斯合作资助乌克兰民间社会项目。

纽约时报
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一国之隔
平丘克不断增长的国际关系说明了当今财阀的另一个决定性特征：他们正在形成一个全球社区，他们彼此之间的关系比他们与国内人民的关系更密切。正如私人股权投资公司Silver Lake的联合创始人格伦-哈钦斯(Glenn Hutchins)所说："一个在非洲经营一家大型非洲银行并在哈佛上学的人，与我的共同点可能比与他的邻居的共同点更多，而我与他的共同关注点和经验很可能比与我的邻居的共同点更多。" 哈钦斯解释说，我们所处的圈子是由 "兴趣 "和 "活动 "而不是 "地理 "来界定的。"北京与纽约、伦敦或孟买有很多共同之处。你看到同样的人，你在同样的餐馆吃饭，你住在同样的酒店。但最重要的是，我们作为全球公民参与到共同关心的跨领域商业、政治和社会事务中。我们比过去更不以地点为基础了。"

同样，美国最成功的对冲基金经理之一的妻子向我提出了一个微小但有说服力的意见，即她丈夫在达沃斯的街道上比在他家乡曼哈顿的街道上更能游刃有余。她解释说，当他在家的时候，他是由汽车和司机带着在城里转悠的；瑞士的雪地小城对于豪华轿车来说太小太笨拙了，是他唯一真正步行的地方。一位住在伦敦的美国媒体主管说得更简洁："我们是比自己的妻子更了解航空公司空姐的人。"


美国的商业精英们是这个跨国社区的后来者。例如，在对英国和美国首席执行官的研究中，猎头公司Heidrick & Struggles的Elisabeth Marx发现，前者几乎有三分之一是外国公民，而后者只有10%。同样，超过三分之二的英国人曾在国外工作过至少一年，而只有三分之一的美国人曾这样做过。

但是，尽管起步缓慢，美国企业正在迎头赶上：年轻一代首席执行官的国际经验明显多于老一代，外国和外国出生的首席执行官的数量虽然仍然相对较少，但正在上升。这种转变在华尔街尤为明显：2006年，美国八大银行中的每一家都由本土出生的首席执行官管理；今天，这些银行中还剩下五家，其中两家幸存者--花旗集团和摩根士丹利--都由出生在国外的男性领导。

世界最大的债券管理公司Pimco的首席执行官穆罕默德-埃利安(Mohamed ElErian)是逐渐上升到美国商业高层的国际主义者的典型代表。埃利安的父亲是埃及人，母亲是法国人，他的童年是在埃及、法国、美国、英国和瑞士之间穿梭的。他曾在剑桥大学和牛津大学接受教育，现在领导一家总部设在美国的公司，该公司为德国金融集团安联（Allianz SE）所有。


尽管埃利安住在加州拉古纳海滩，靠近Pimco的总部所在地，但他说他无法说出一个国家是他自己的国家。"我有幸在许多国家生活过，"埃利安在最近一次访问纽约时告诉我。"一个结果是，我是一种全球流浪者，对许多观点持开放态度。" 在他说话的时候，我们走过中城，埃利安对他童年时的中城记忆犹新，那时他每天都会乘坐跨城巴士去联合国国际学校。那天晚上，埃利安正在赶往伦敦的航班。本周晚些时候，他将抵达圣彼得堡。

的确，人们越来越感觉到，美国企业如果不积极地进行国际化，就有可能被甩在后面。尽管Pimco公司的业务遍及全球，但它的总部仍然设在美国。但是，超级精英们赖以生存的商品和资本的流动正在比过去更频繁地绕过美国。以斯蒂芬-詹宁斯为例，这位50岁的新西兰人共同创立了投资银行文艺复兴资本。文艺复兴的根在莫斯科，詹宁斯在那里有他的主要住所，他的商业战略包括将公司定位为捕捉新兴市场之间的投资流，特别是俄罗斯、非洲和亚洲。对于他的目的，纽约越来越不重要。2009年在新西兰惠灵顿的一次演讲中，他提出了他对这种后单极商业现实的看法。"世界上最大的金属集团是印度。世界上最大的铝业集团是俄罗斯的......中国、俄罗斯和尼日利亚增长最快和最大的银行都是国内的。"


恰好，詹宁斯的高科技、高层莫斯科办公楼的一位同僚租户最近达成了一笔交易，正好体现了这种新兴市场内的贸易。去年，俄罗斯最大的技术投资公司Digital Sky Technologies与南非媒体公司Naspers和中国技术公司腾讯建立了伙伴关系。这三家公司都是具有全球视野的快速增长的公司--去年秋天，数字天空技术公司分拆的Mail.ru上市，立即成为欧洲估值最高的互联网公司--但没有一家公司主要关注美国。印度电信巨头Bharti Enterprises收购了科威特电信公司Zain的非洲资产，这也是新兴市场内部经济的一个类似预兆。加州的一位技术主管向我解释说，像巴帝这样的公司在他认为将是爆炸性的非洲市场中具有竞争优势。"他们知道如何比我们更便宜地提供移动电话。在非洲这样的地方，西方公司如何能够竞争？"

对美国来说，好消息和坏消息是，美国自己的超级精英们正在迅速适应这种更加全球化的视角。世界上最大的对冲基金之一的美国首席执行官告诉我，他的公司的投资委员会经常讨论在今天的经济中谁赢谁输的问题。他说，在最近的一次内部辩论中，他的一位高级同事认为，美国中产阶级的空洞化其实并不重要。"他的观点是，如果世界经济的转型使中国和印度的四个人摆脱了贫困，进入了中产阶级，同时意味着一个美国人跌出了中产阶级，这并不是一个糟糕的交易，"这位CEO回忆说。


我从一家美国互联网公司的30多岁的台湾籍首席财务官那里听到了类似的观点。他是一个温和、朴实的人，从公立学校到哈佛大学，但他对美国中产阶级的抱怨并不十分同情。他告诉我："我们要求的薪水比世界上其他地方高，"他说。"因此，如果你要要求10倍的薪水，你需要提供10倍的价值。这听起来很苛刻，但也许中产阶级的人需要决定减薪。"

在去年夏天的阿斯彭思想节上，硅谷绿色科技公司应用材料公司的首席执行官迈克尔-斯普林特说，如果他从头开始，他的员工队伍中只有20%是国内员工。"他解释说："今年，我们几乎90%的销售额将在美国之外。"靠近客户--大部分在亚洲--的拉力是巨大的。" 在同一会议上，Allstate公司的首席执行官托马斯-威尔逊（Thomas Wilson）也对这一全球现实表示感叹。"我可以在世界任何地方找到[工人]。这对美国来说是个问题，但对美国企业来说不一定是个问题......美国企业会适应。"

精英们的反抗
威尔逊的区别有助于解释为什么许多美国的其他商业精英看起来如此远离美国劳动力和经济的持续困境：他们日益生活和工作的全球 "国家 "做得很好，事实上，它正在蓬勃发展。由于这种脱节，当商业巨头们谈论经济和他们在经济中的作用时，他们发出的音符往往是不和谐的：例如，高盛公司首席执行官劳埃德-布兰克费恩在2009年以 "做上帝的工作 "来回避公众的愤怒；或者在金融危机的直接威胁消退后，一些顶级银行家坚持认为他们的机构没有TARP资金也能生存下去，他们接受资金只是因为他们被财政部长亨利-保尔森强行拉住。这种冷漠的态度在水边也没有结束：想想英国石油公司的首席执行官托尼-海沃德（Tony Hayward），他抱怨说在海湾漏油事件后想要恢复自己的生活，然后通过观看他的游艇在怀特岛附近的比赛来实现。


也许可以说明的是，布兰克梵是布鲁克林一名邮政工人的儿子，而海沃德--尽管他在美国被讽刺为英国上流社会的傻子--在英国石油公司开始时是一名北海的钻井地质学家。换句话说，他们都是工人阶级的好孩子。虽然你可能会想象，这样的背景会使财阀们特别同情那些正在挣扎的人，但事实往往相反。对于超级精英来说，功成名就的感觉可以激发高度的自尊心，而这种自尊心--尤其是当他们在志同道合的同龄人中孤立无援时--可能会导致对他人的痛苦视而不见、漠不关心。

不足为奇的是，俄罗斯寡头一直是最无畏地表达这种态度的人之一。例如，十多年前，我与米哈伊尔-霍多尔科夫斯基交谈，当时他是俄罗斯最富有的人。"霍多尔科夫斯基告诉我："如果一个人不是寡头，那他就有问题了。"每个人都有相同的起始条件，每个人都可以做到这一点。" (霍多尔科夫斯基后来的政治困境--他的石油公司在2004年被国家没收，他目前在监狱里--已经缓和了这种达尔文式的观点：在去年的狱中通信中，他承认自己 "完全把商业当作一种游戏"，"不太关心社会责任")

虽然通常在言语选择上更加谨慎，但许多美国财阀像霍多尔科夫斯基一样表示，工人和中产阶级所面临的考验通常是他们自己的错。当我问华尔街最成功的投资银行首席执行官之一，他是否为他的公司在制造金融危机中的作用感到内疚时，他明显真诚地告诉我，他没有。他解释说，真正的罪魁祸首是他那无能的表弟，他拥有三辆车和一套他负担不起的房子。美国的一位顶级对冲基金经理向我提出了一个几乎相同的案例--尽管这次的犯罪者是他的姻亲和他们的次级抵押贷款。还有一位在纽约和棕榈滩之间奔波的私募股权大亨，把崩盘的责任归咎于他在亚利桑那州最喜欢的高尔夫球童，他在泡沫的高峰期买了三套公寓作为投资物业。


正是这种 "不是我们的错 "的心态，使财阀们在奥巴马时代产生了深刻的受害感。你可能会想到，美国的精英们--尤其是金融业的精英们--现在会感觉很好，而且还有点感激。由于7000亿美元的TARP救助计划和美联储几乎免费提供的数千亿美元贷款（索罗斯本人告诉我这是给银行的 "隐性礼物"），华尔街的报酬已经飙升至危机前的水平，即使主街继续挣扎。然而，许多美国的金融巨头认为自己受到了奥巴马政府的围攻--有些情况下几乎是真的。例如，去年夏天，黑石集团的施瓦茨曼引起了轩然大波，他说奥巴马提出的通过将 "结转利息 "视为普通收入来提高私人股本公司报酬税的建议 "就像希特勒在1939年入侵波兰时一样"。

无论他的想象力多么夸张，施瓦茨曼（随后为这一言论道歉）是一名共和党人，所以他对现任政府的反感并不奇怪。更令人吃惊的是，即使是金融业的前奥巴马支持者也在一定程度上反对总统和他的政党。一位热衷于民主党的华尔街投资者向我讲述了他与国会中一位参与税收改革工作的民主党领导人的痛苦交流。"去你的，"他对这位立法者说。"即使你改变了立法，政府也不会从我身上多拿一分钱的税。我会把我的钱放到我的基金会，把它花在好的事业上。我的钱不会浪费在你的赤字天坑里。"

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他并不是一个人在发怒。去年夏天，对冲基金经理、2008年奥巴马的筹款人丹-勒布在一份被广泛引用的致投资者的通讯中大发雷霆："只要我们的领导人告诉我们，我们必须相信他们能通过监管和重新分配来恢复繁荣，我们就不会走出这个经济泥潭。" 另外两位华尔街的前奥巴马支持者--他们都声称曾在拉姆-伊曼纽尔的快速拨号名单上--告诉我，总统是 "反商业的"；其中一位甚至担心奥巴马是 "社会主义者"。

这种赌气在很大程度上源于简单的自身利益：除了拟议的加税，奥巴马去年夏天签署的金融改革也使美国的金融监管更加严格。但是，正如这位民主党投资者愤怒地提到他的慈善工作所表明的那样，首席执行官们的愤怒不仅仅是由贪婪驱动的，而且是对财阀们的爱的侮辱，一种受伤的难以置信，即有人会认为他们是恶棍而不是英雄。毕竟，他们的金融和技术创新代表了美国经济的未来，难道他们不是这样的人吗？他们不是在 "做上帝的工作 "吗？

你可以说，美国的财阀正在经历它的John Galt时刻。自由主义者（和普通的高中书呆子）会记得，高尔是安-兰德1957年的小说《阿特拉斯耸立》中的财阀英雄。厌倦了被寄生的、嫉妒的和缺乏天赋的下层阶级拖累，高尔特和他的资本家伙伴们发动了反抗，撤退到落基山脉的避难所 "高尔特之谷"。在那里，他们在与世隔绝的自然风光中度过了他们的日子，而世界上的其他地方，由于失去了他们的天才和辛勤工作而崩溃了。(G. K. Chesterton在他的小说《星期四的男人》中提出了一个类似的想法，尽管更加温和。"穷人真的与国家有关系。富人没有；他可以坐着游艇到新几内亚去"）。


当然，这种财阀式的幻想就是这样：无论超级精英们多么聪明、创新和勤奋，他们的存在都离不开更广泛的社会。即使撇开最近由世界各国政府提供的金融救助，富人也需要我们其他人作为工人、客户和消费者。然而，作为一个比喻，当商业精英们越来越多地将自己视为一个全球社区时，Galt's Gulch有一种不祥的预感，他们因自己独特的才能而与众不同，超越了国家认同等狭隘的关切，或将 "他们 "的税收用于支付 "我们 "的预算赤字。他们可能不会像兰德幻想的那样，在地理上孤立自己。但他们似乎正在从意识形态上孤立自己，这最终可能会产生更大的影响。

反击
将超级富豪与其他所有人联系在一起的文化纽带正从两端同时断裂。自二战以来，美国尤其有一种有抱负的资本主义的精神。正如索罗斯告诉我的，"在美国比在欧洲更容易致富，因为欧洲人羡慕亿万富翁，但美国人希望模仿他。但是，随着贫富差距越来越大，富人似乎从政府的救助中得到了过多的好处，这种钦佩已经开始变味。


衡量这种挑剔情绪的一个标准是，政治家公开支持大企业已经变得非常危险。捍卫大石油公司和抨击政府干预曾经是德克萨斯州共和党人工作描述的一部分。但是，当国会议员乔-巴顿（Joe Barton）试图对白宫在漏油事件后对英国石油公司的 "洗劫 "行为进行指责时，他立即被党内长老们压制了。纽约的查尔斯-舒默有时被描述为 "来自华尔街的参议员"。然而，当去年春天金融改革法案提交给参议院时--在这场政治角力中，双方都愤怒地指责对方为华尔街的银行背水一战，舒默被称为 "隐形人"，因为他对这个问题一反常态地保持沉默。

今年6月，当我向时任总统首席经济顾问的拉里-萨默斯询问对冲基金对结转利息税改革的反对意见时，他很快就把自己与华尔街的担忧撇清了关系。"如果这是你遇到的最大的公共政策问题，"他告诉我，"在过去的几个月里，你所处的圈子与我不同。" 我提醒他，事实上，他最近在2008年曾为一家对冲基金D.E.Shaw工作，他强调他在过去几个月中使用了修饰语。

即使在超级精英的聚会上，对超级精英的批评也变得越来越普遍。在2009年12月的华尔街日报会议上，具有传奇色彩的前美联储主席保罗-沃尔克认为，华尔街关于创造财富的说法没有任何实际依据。"我希望有人，"他说，"能给我一丝中立的证据，证明金融创新导致了经济增长--一丝证据。"


在谷歌5月份的 "时代精神 "集会上，德斯蒙德-图图作为开幕式演讲人，直接瞄准了高管薪酬。"我确实对资本主义有一个非常真实的担忧，"他对聚集在一起的高管们说。"高盛公司的事情。我读到其中一位董事--不管他们被称为什么，首席执行官--在一年内拿走了6400万美元的工资。六千四百万美元。" 他口齿不清地停了下来，一时被这个数字惊呆了（尽管按照华尔街和硅谷的报酬标准，这实际上并不是那么多钱）。在去年《华尔街日报》的一篇专栏文章中，甚至经济学家克劳斯-施瓦布--世界经济论坛及其标志性的达沃斯会议的创始人--也警告说，"创业系统正在被扭曲"，"重新陷入旧习惯和过度行为 "的企业可能 "破坏社会和平"。

弥合分歧
当然，并非所有财阀都是平等的。苹果公司的远见卓识者史蒂夫-乔布斯既不是道德上的，也不是经济上的，他是通过公然夺取国家的自然资源而发家的俄罗斯寡头。而且，正如沃尔克所指出的，过去十年的金融 "创新 "所带来的好处是非常有问题的，但许多财阀的财富--特别是在技术领域--是建立在广泛惠及国家和世界的进步上的。这就是为什么，即使接受TARP的银行家已经成为普遍愤怒的对象，像乔布斯、比尔-盖茨和沃伦-巴菲特这样的人物仍然是英雄。


归根结底，这就是两难境地：美国确实需要许多财阀。我们从他们生产的商品和创造的就业机会中受益。即使这些工作有越来越多的部分在海外，但作为这些创新者--本地人和移民--的家乡，总比不在好。在今天这个竞争激烈的全球环境中，我们比以往任何时候都更需要一个有创意、有活力的超级精英阶层。

还有一个简单的事实是，必须有人为改善美国中产阶级的公共教育和社会安全网买单，以便驾驭全球经济的激烈变革。(这还不算预算赤字这个小问题。)不可避免的是，很多钱将不得不来自富人--毕竟，正如银行劫匪所说，钱就在那里。

财阀们自己反对这样的分析，认为自己被挑出来，受到不公平的诽谤，甚至因为他们的成功而受到惩罚，这并不令人惊讶。毕竟，自我利益是合理化之母，正如我们所看到的，财阀们的许多合理化建议都有一定的道理：作为一个阶级，他们通常比他们的祖先更勤奋，更有功绩；他们的慈善事业是创新和重要的；最近美国中产阶级的损失在许多情况下给世界其他地区带来了好处。


但是，如果财阀们反对增加他们的税收和加强对其经济活动的监管是可以理解的，那么这也是一个错误。超级精英们在国内外面临的真正威胁不是适度提高税收，而是公众的愤怒可能会凝聚成一个更具体的民粹主义议程--例如，美国中产阶级可能会得出结论，世界经济对他们不起作用，并决定保护主义或真正的惩罚性税收比最终废除布什的高额减税等渐进措施更可取。

Pimco首席执行官穆罕默德-埃利安(Mohamed El-Erian)是超级精英阶层的模范成员。但他也是一个父亲在埃及农村长大的人，他研究过那些贫富差距有暴力解决的国家。"他告诉我："对于成功人士来说，说收入分配的低端所面临的挑战与他们无关是短视的。注意到在大多数西方工业化国家，"全球劳动力和资本比他们严格意义上的国家对应方做得更好"，ElErian补充说，"我认为这将导致越来越内向的社会和政治状况。我担心，我们有可能最终采取非常孤立的政策，而这些政策在一个全球化的世界里不会有好结果。2010年最大的惊喜之一是保护主义的狗没有吠叫。但这将面临压力。"


历史的教训是，从长远来看，超级精英们有两种生存方式：通过压制异议或分享财富。显然，这两种方式中哪一种对美国和世界来说是更好的结果。让我们希望财阀们不会因为过于孤立而认识到这一点。因为归根结底，永远不可能有一个像Galt's Gulch那样的地方。

*最初，这篇文章错误地将太阳谷会议的赞助商称为保罗-艾伦。我们对这一错误表示遗憾。

克里斯蒂亚-弗里兰是加拿大副总理。她之前是一名记者和作家。