Billionaire bewildered that American voters are angry

It's easy to forget sometimes just how cut off from reality that the super-rich can be.
Nowhere is this more true than at a meeting of the wealthy elite.

DAVOS, Switzerland -- As income inequality and healthcare costs rise in the United States and as an economic slowdown may be on the horizon, one of the world’s richest men expressed surprise that U.S. voters seem so angry in advance of the 2016 presidential election. Speaking at a gathering of corporate and government leaders in Switzerland, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman told Bloomberg Television that he is bewildered about why Americans seem so discontented.
“I find the whole thing astonishing and what’s remarkable is the amount of anger whether it’s on the Republican side or the Democratic side,” the Wall Street mogul said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Bernie Sanders, to me, is almost more stunning than some of what’s going on in the Republican side. How is that happening, why is that happening?”

Yes, why would average Americans be upset when everything is going so good for me? My butler's servant says the poor are happy to toil in the sweatshops.

Schwarzman’s private equity firm, Blackstone, manages — and makes fees from — billions of dollars of pensioners’ assets, and was recently fined by federal regulators for not properly disclosing fee terms to its investors. The investors harmed by Blackstone’s conduct included public retirement systems in California, Florida and New Jersey...
Schwarzman has made national headlines likening tax increases on the wealthy to the Nazi invasion of Poland.

Those poor, oppressed billionaires. I'm sure when the tax Nazis come they will be weeping while they flee in one of their 1,700 private jets.
It's an ironic coincidence that Oxfam released this study earlier this week.

The richest 1% now has as much wealth as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam.
It uses data from Credit Suisse from October for the report, which urges leaders meeting in Davos this week to take action on inequality.

Yeh, I don't think that Schwarzman was won over by Oxfam's study.
It's the new math: 1% = 99%.
They only teach that math in business school.
wealth_disparity.png

I should point out that it wasn't Schwarzman, but Goldman Sach's Lloyd Blankfein who said that bankers were "doing God's work."

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

Particularly since the vulture capitalists took it from everyone else.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

NCTim's picture

I feel fortunate.

up
0 users have voted.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Ah, this will probably seem totally incoherent unless you've watched Girl Meets Money. I recommend it, the whole series in fact. Though my roof leaks, there are cracks in the plaster, and a hole in the wall, I am the luckiest man in the world to live in such splendor. I look around every day and see people who have a harder life than I.

[video:https://youtu.be/5FU7AWkyjtI width:480 height:315]

up
0 users have voted.