[ The wealthy’s arrogance is wholly unearned.]
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MULTI-MILLIONAIRE CEO 0NCLASS WARFARE  
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James Downie, MSNBC Opinion Editor
September 14, 2023
MSNBC
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_ The wealthy’s arrogance is wholly unearned. _

Luxury home developer Tim Gurner speaking at the Australian Financial
Review’s Property Summit, September 12, 2023.,

 

Tim Gurner wants you to be miserable. Yes, you.

Speaking at the Australian Financial Review’s “property summit,”
the property developer and CEO — net worth $584 million
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— complained
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that the country’s 3.7% unemployment rate was, in fact, a problem.
“We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40,
50%,” said Gurner, because “arrogant” workers aren’t
productive enough for his liking. “We need to see pain in the
economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not
the other way around.”

For these words, we should thank Gurner. Not because his theory —
that low unemployment and the shift to work from home have hurt
productivity — is accurate. Australia’s recent dip in productivity
started in mid-2022
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well after workers were initially sent home
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and unemployment recovered from its initial pandemic-induced increase
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(Gurner admitted his remarks “were wrong” in a subsequent apology
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No, we should thank him for saying the quiet part out loud, baldly
stating what the uber-wealthy think of you and me.

As Georgetown University’s Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò wrote
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can rarely do better at explaining the connection between capital and
social-political domination than just pointing at what the guys with
the capital do and say.” Though Gurner’s words have gotten unusual
exposure on social media, others of his means have expressed similar
distaste for the 99%. “The 1% work harder,” said
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billionaire Sam Zell. “The 1% are much bigger factors in all forms
of our society.” According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of
the wealthiest Americans believe
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the “poor have it easy because they can get government benefits
without doing anything in return.”

This condescension has consequences not just for employees, but also
for consumers. It was no coincidence that as inflation spiked last
year, corporations posted record profits
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The work of economist Isabella Weber and others has shown that many
corporations with market power didn’t raise prices because of supply
chain issues or upward pressure on wages but simply because they could
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“We have more room to take the price as we need to,” Chipotle’s
CEO told investors in late 2021
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A Kroger executive bragged
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that “a little bit of inflation is always good for our business.”
Your checkbook is merely another thing to exploit as much as possible
in the quest for endless growth to satisfy shareholders. As for the
free market? “Competition is for losers,” Peter Thiel is fond of
saying.

The wealthy’s arrogance is wholly unearned. In the U.S. from 1978 to
2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute
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productivity grew more than 60%. Yet the typical worker’s wages —
which in previous decades had roughly tracked productivity — grew
just 18%. The wages of the top 1% of earners, however, grew 385%. CEO
pay grew by more than 1,000%
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the disparity is even starker: Union workers at the Big Three American
automakers are preparing to strike this week, in part because wages
for workers on auto production lines have dropped 30% since 2003.
Meanwhile, in just the last four years, pay for the three companies’
CEOs grew more than 40%, with each taking home $21 million to $29
million in 2022 alone
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And yet, when politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez or other, more moderate voices, like former President
Barack Obama, point out these truths, they are accused of stoking
“class warfare.”
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But the rich have been conducting class warfare for decades. Since the
1970s, the wealthy, particularly in the U.S., have been remarkably
successful in supporting politicians and policies that widened income
gaps. As inequality rose, many governments hollowed out safety nets
— except, of course, when banks needed to be bailed out.

Contrary to far-right fantasies like QAnon, this campaign by the
elites was no conspiracy. It took place right out in the open,
starting with politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and
running right through the present day. “The Davos elite aren’t
eating our children,” Naomi Klein writes in her new book
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“but they are eating our children’s futures, and that is plenty
bad.”

To hide their undeserved gains, some of the wealthy downplay the
helping hands they have received, whether from family (Donald
Trump’s referring to $60.7 million
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as “a small loan from my father”) or the government (Tesla and
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s criticizing government subsidies even though
his companies have received billions from the government
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Mostly, though, they and their political servants (in the U.S., that
means especially, but not exclusively, the Republican Party) stoke
fights on battlefields small and large. Gurner blames young people’s
monetary struggles on avocado toast and overpriced coffee
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Major Republican donors like Rebekah Mercer
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donate millions to conservative media outlets and candidates who stoke
fears of culture wars, drag queens and people of color — and who,
when they get into office, prioritize tax cuts slanted toward the
wealthy
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And some are more brazen. Klein quotes the mid-20th century Belgian
leftist Abram Leon’s observation about the Nazis’ use of
antisemitic conspiracy theories: “Big business endeavored to divert
and control the anti-capitalist hatred of the masses for its exclusive
profit.” If that sounds like an extreme comparison, remember that of
all the organizations and people who have criticized Musk’s
ownership of X (formerly Twitter), he is blaming the collapse in the
company’s value on the Anti-Defamation League.

The uber-rich are winning this class war — for now. It doesn’t
have to be this way. Like every form of oppression, the wealthy’s
exploitation of the rest of the world can be fought — but only if it
is called out and united against. They think of us as disposable;
it’s up to us to show them they’re wrong.

James Downie [[link removed]]

James Downie is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily. He was an editor
and columnist for The Washington Post and has also written for The New
Republic and Foreign Policy. He holds a degree in history from
Columbia University.

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* U.S. ruling class
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