The View From The Top

This is an interesting interview about the outcome of the presidential election.  Many of Romney's staff, and most of his big contributors were certain that he would win the election.  Many of Romney's contributors had supported Obama in the 2008 election and they switched to Romney.  This raises questions about why the Romney people ignored the data which suggested that Obama would win the election.  It also raises questions about why the super-rich abandoned Obama in 2012.

In a sense, Obama is like one of the super rich.  He is very smart and has an Ivy League education.  They chose to go into business and make money.  Obama chose to be a community organizer and to go into politics to make the world a better place.  The super rich do not want to believe that they sold out and the Obama took the high road.  They believe that what is good for them is good for everyone else.  The CEO of Goldman Sachs said that Wall Street did God's work.  He meant that allocating capital, which is what Wall Street does, shapes the global economy.  He, and others like him, were disappointed by Obama when he called them "fat cats".  They want to believe that it is better to be a business person than to be a do-gooder like Obama.  The fact that they got rich in the process proves that they are correct.  The system should reward those who provide the greatest good to society and it is the.  They are Ayn Rand's character in Atlas Shrugged.  They are John Galt.

The super rich and Obama also share a common view of the global economy.  It is providing huge rewards to those who benefit from globalization and it is punishing the middle class in rich countries as wages, and standards of living converge across nations.  The super rich are not concerned about this dynamic.  They worry that Obama will try to remedy the problem by redistributing income from them to the middle class.  They know that this will increase their taxes, and they have come to enjoy living in a society without a progressive tax system.  The government should not punish the job creators by raising their taxes.