If I felt that Krugman was a little too easy on the First Gilded Age yesterday, today I think he gets it right. The real issue with the super-rich is their shamelessness. Certainly, Trump is the great pioneer of all this - his tabloid persona cultivated throughout the '70s and '80s was designed around the Yuppie culture, but it was more depraved than that. The obvious punctuation mark of this was Epstein.
Back in the 90s, as I referenced yesterday, there were efforts by Ted Turner to shame people like Bill Gates into philanthropy. It worked in Gates' case, but there have been other efforts by the emerging billionaire class to have at least SOME charitable work, even if it's something as trivial as the Google Money trying to preserve "Old" Nantucket.
With the rise of Trump in 2016, we saw the destruction of so many political norms. He insulted a Gold Star family, people with disabilities, he used slurs, he refused to release his tax returns, he was caught in tape bragging about sexual assault...and he still "won." The lesson that so many people - rich and poor - took from this was that the norms that had largely existed for years, decades or even centuries were now moot.
We recently saw this on Twitter after Trump's re-election, with people using the slur "retarded" with virulent gusto. It's juvenile and the very definition of "punching down" in ways that any normally emotionally adjusted person would find gross and cruel. Look, I don't think I need to put my pronouns in my email signature; I think my gender presentation is pretty straightforward. Having to do so was annoying for a few moments, but I got over it, because I'm an adult. There are, however, people who made opposing these actions their whole personality. Bullying became an act of rebellion against the norms that have arisen over the last few decades.
For the superrich, they've always been more constrained by norms more than laws. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were sons of bitches. Rockefeller, though, pretended to piety in ways that eventually moved him towards some charitable work. Certainly the example of someone like Carnegie pricked the sensibilities of other very rich men. Today, our leading philanthropist is likely MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, who has given roughly $26 billion in gifts. Bezos himself has given "only" $4 billion; Musk really hasn't given anything. Those sorts of billionaires have the capacity to change the world for the poor, but instead they spend lavishly on themselves and their hobby horses.
When we finally de-Trumpify America, one of our priorities has to be writing stronger rules to constrain the rich. Trump has taught them a lesson that Rockefeller or even Vanderbilt never learned: When you're rich, they let you do it.
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