A Critique of the New Gilded Age

This article (via Manan Shukla) personalizes the data that most of us tend to view abstractly. Economists analyze data on income inequality, and report how most of the gains in income have gone to the top 1%, but we don't attempt to describe what this implies about the world we live in. This article describes the culture of the top 1%, which is largely comprised of those who work in the financial services industry. The author contrasts the nature of their work, which no longer consists of allocating capital to its best use, with the productive work done by other sectors that have not been as amply rewarded. He extends his descripton to the changes that he perceives in the culture of New York City which he once regarded as the center creativity in America. Some will view this as nostalgia, some will argue with his description, but it will cause most of us to think more deeply about the issues. I have copied his description of the financial service industry below:

Finance as practiced on Wall Street, says Paul Woolley, is “like a cancer.” There is only maximization of short-term profit in these “financial services”—they are services only in the sense of the vampire at a vein. There is no vision for allocating capital for the building of infrastructure that will serve society in the future; no vision, say, for a post-carbon civilization; no vision for surviving the shocks of coming resource scarcity. The finance nihilist doesn’t look to a viable future; he is interested only in the immediate return.