Good Question
by digby
I think many of us have wondered why the Big Blubbering Babies who run business and Wall Street are so upset when they seem to be making out like bandits. It wasn’t always this way. They used to consider themselves civic leaders with pride in a thriving nation of successful people. Now all they do is whine about not being properly worshiped by the plebes. James Surowiecki in the New Yorker has an interesting theory:
If today’s corporate kvetchers are more concerned with the state of their egos than with the state of the nation, it’s in part because their own fortunes aren’t tied to those of the nation the way they once were. In the postwar years, American companies depended largely on American consumers. Globalization has changed that—foreign sales account for almost half the revenue of the S&P 500—as has the rise of financial services (where the most important clients are the wealthy and other corporations). The well-being of the American middle class just doesn’t matter as much to companies’ bottom lines. And there’s another change. Early in the past century, there was a true socialist movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into reform. Today, by contrast, corporate chieftains have little to fear, other than mildly higher taxes and the complaints of people who have read Thomas Piketty. Moguls complain about their feelings because that’s all anyone can really threaten.
They just want to be loved. It’s the only thing left their money can’t buy.
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