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If the Rich Really Want to ‘Do Good,’ They Should Become Class Traitors Like FDR

aaronbrethorst 8y ago
Also, there's a really fantastic episode of Chris Hayes's podcast, Why is this Happening, with the author of the reviewed book. https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episodes/595bbf7a-14b2-49ff-8281-8e96ddcca818 https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hay...
- MaysonL 8y ago
  Also, a great episode of Ezra Klein's podcast with Anand Giridharadas, the referenced author and speaker. EDIT: the link: https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/ebd9109c-d765-43ab-b931-0b95f5fcbc12 https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/ebd9109...
nostromo 8y ago
Unpopular opinion alert! The more I learn about FDR the more he reminds me of Trump. And I say that as a non-fan of Trump. We hear a lot today about how Trump is breaking long-established norms. But FDR was the king of breaking norms: from running for four terms, to trying to pack the Supreme Court and setting off a constitutional crisis, to running the only concentration camps in American History and banning immigration outright from many countries. FDR was a populist bully. He changed the presidency forever. And yet he’s constantly referred to as one of the best presidents.
- astrodust 8y ago
  If you can't see past superficial similarities, yes, they're identical. They both even had hair!
- acconrad 8y ago
  Your use of "bully" is a red herring to your argument. Both people break norms, yes. But when you "bully" the fat cats in government, that's called "doing your job." The president is essentially the highest-paid public servant. It is (supposed to be) the president's job to fight for what the people want. Trump is fighting for himself. He's fighting for big business. He's fighting for exactly his own self interest. That is anathema to what FDR did. Thus, Trump is a bully and FDR is not, and that is why your opinion is being downvoted.
  - wonder_er 8y ago
    FDR's internment camps was hardly a move "for the people". Should we overlook the internment camps? Seems like FDR was a lot worse than a bully, in light of the camps.
    - the_gastropod 8y ago
      No, you shouldn't overlook it. But don't kid yourself in thinking most Americans in the 1940s weren't terribly racist. Check out this Gallup poll from 1942: https://news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-support-japanese-internment.aspx https://news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-s...
  - wdewind 8y ago
    > That is anathema to what FDR did. What happens if you reconsider the New Deal from the perspective that the Roosevelt family benefited hugely from increased government power?
- ColanR 8y ago
  You're downvoted, but I don't really see how you're wrong.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    They were both presidents, but after that I'm not sure how they were the same.
- ChrisLTD 8y ago
  It's not all that helpful to use "norm-breaking" as a rubric to judge politicians because it leaves out important considerations like if the norm itself is bad, or if the outcome is worth the sacrifice of the norm.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  FDR was nothing like Trump. He broke norms, yes, but he was also held office during two of the most dire existential emergencies in the history of the United States: the Great Depression and World War 2. He did unprecedented things because he lived in unprecedented times. And, crucially, he did them to preserve the Constitutional order, not to overthrow it. Unlike most of his class, he was cognizant of the fact that if the government could not organize an effective solution to such a deep crisis, the people would eventually rise up and replace it with one that could. He wanted to stave that off. He took drastic measures to deny oxygen to those would have taken even more drastic ones. (There is one thing on your list that is universally held to be unjustifiable today, of course: the internment of Japanese-Americans. And I would agree that it was unjustifiable, even under the circumstances, which were grave. But there are decent arguments for the other ones.) A good analogue to FDR's unique situation is Abraham Lincoln, who is really the only other President to have faced similar crises. Lincoln did things under the rubric of the Presidency's war powers that go right up to the red line (and, some would argue, beyond). He locked up political opponents who espoused support for the Confederacy, and denied them their habeus corpus rights so they couldn't get out again. He imposed the first involuntary draft in American history. When Maryland threatened to secede and cut Washington, DC off from the rest of the North, he clamped down martial law there, hard. But he did these things to preserve the Constitutional order, not to wreck it. If you want a character from FDR's era who resembles Trump much more closely, go check out a few books on Huey Long, who was exactly the sort of figure FDR acted in order to head off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long
  - wdewind 8y ago
    > Unlike most of his class, he was cognizant of the fact that if the government could not organize an effective solution to such a deep crisis, the people would eventually rise up and replace it with one that could. Would this have been such a bad thing?
    - MaysonL 8y ago
      >Would this have been such a bad thing? It could well have been: see the French and Russian Revolutions, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. There were both Nazis and Communists busy in the US in the '30s, and either taking power would have been really bad.
- the_gastropod 8y ago
  FDR and Trump were/are both demagogues, bombastic. They both pushed/are pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with. There, I agree. But I think there are some very important differences that make one less tolerable than the other: 1. FDR was clearly an intelligent person. He was fluent in at least 3 languages, wrote his own speeches, etc. Trump speaks at a 4th grade reading level, and rarely speaks in coherent sentences (unless he's reading a speech someone else wrote for him). 2. FDR actually won the popular election. And by a pretty substantial margin. Of these two presidents, FDR could argue he had a mandate to push his agenda. Trump lost the popular election, and is still pushing his partisan policies hard.
hevi_jos 8y ago
"class traitor"?? Raising taxes on middle class(while high classes pay almost nothing) in order to pay low class benefits is not being a traitor on high class. It is being their best friend, specially when they were terrorized by the Great Depression. They also removed competition on those small business that could compete with the monsters. Two birds with one stone. Theodore Roosevelt was someone who actually went against his benefits and privileges fighting against big lobbies. He had a hard time doing it.
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
I don't see how saying these policies are typical of a "class traitor" does any good. For one, the idea that different classes are in competition with each other is a very Marxian worldview and whether you buy into that or not depends largely on your pre-rational commitments. For another, even if we accept the inter-class competition worldview, it seems that a different approach is likely to be more fruitful than asking the already successful to be "class traitors". One could, for example, try to show these elites that it is in their self interest to improve the conditions of the lower classes. This has already occurred to some extent in the US as the 2016 election demonstrated, and this book is largely a consequence of the growing realization of the elite that this is the case.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  I sometimes wonder if the improvement in the US middle/lower class from 1940 to 1970 wasn't at least partly because the upper class saw the challenge of Communist ideology, and decided that it was exactly in their self-interest to improve the condition of the lower classes.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Perhaps they should notice once again... this time hold the Mcarthyism.
Bartweiss 8y ago
This is an interesting read, and a good review of Giridharadas. But I'm frustrated that it fails to grapple with the most obvious question of all: who counts as rich? Instead, we get "Winners Take All aims at today’s upper-crust in a world where wealth has continued to calcify into stock dividends and plush inheritances of the global one-percent...". It's the sort of line that makes me think either Giridharadas or Meyer haven't done their homework, because entering the global one percent takes an income of around $32,000, or a net worth of around $770,000. The average member of the global one percent doesn't have any stock at all, much less a plush inheritance! 46% of Americans break the global 1% income threshold, and ~5% break the wealth threshold. The global one percent are defined by international divides, not intranational ones. Back home, the 1% continues to be a bizarre construct that conflates heart surgeons with Waltons; the bottom half of the 1% have seen their incomes roughly triple since 1950, while the top 0.01% have seen a 10x increase. Even Darren Walker's million a year only puts him around the 0.3% of earners. I don't mean to discount the article or the book: it's fascinating to see a comparison of how the ultra-rich view social wellbeing compared to the rest of us. But I do think there's a bit of a failure to grapple with exactly what extreme wealth is, and just how far up the scale goes.
- antisthenes 8y ago
  It's not hard. https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/worldwealthreport_2017_final.pdf https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/worldwe... Everyone with over $5 million USD of investable wealth counts as rich. The report shows that there are at least 1.65 million of such individuals across the planet, with roughly 157,200 of them having a net worth in excess of $30 million. What about the 15 million in the $1-5 million band? I think you could argue that many of them reside in really high COL areas, so most of their assets could be in the form of primary residence real estate. I'm not going to argue if that makes them 'rich' either way. Looking at it this way completely avoids ridiculous metrics like "global 1% by income" that completely ignore the effects of relative wealth and cost of living areas.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    The "global 1%" stat doesn't seem entirely useless, as a guide to national prosperity after PPP. But you're obviously right that national corrections are totally inadequate to distinguish e.g. NYC incomes from Tulsa incomes. And using it to measure who in America is rich is simply stupid. The more I think about it, the more I like $5M USD investable. I was getting set to argue that the $3M-$5M range gets you an above-average income via pure investment, maybe suggest "wealth outside of primary residence", point out purchasing power discrepancies, but all that quibbling just proves it's the wrong metric. At $5M in wealth, it ought to be possible to go basically anywhere in the world and live comfortably without working. I think that's indisputably "rich".
ataturk 8y ago
There is literally nothing stopping the wealthy from giving away their money. It's just that they don't want to give it away, they want to control whatever it is they are "giving" it to. If they could learn to let go, that would be one thing. Also, the attacks on capitalism are so lame. I've never in my lifetime lived under capitalism, and certainly the crony-capitalism we have or corporo-fascism, or whatever you wish to call this, is not aligned with favoring the individual. It is winner take all pretty much. Under true capitalism, at least bad decisions by CEOs, bankers, and lawyers would eliminate them. Instead, they get huge bailouts and keep right on screwing us over. That's the exercise of power.
kareemsabri 8y ago
I listened to the author's recent appearance on Robert Wright's podcast. He states, as what seems representative of his beliefs, that Cinnabon preys on the poor and should be stopped via regulation (similar to alcohol). I couldn't really get on board with his brand of paternalism.

Also, there's a really fantastic episode of Chris Hayes's podcast, Why is this Happening, with the author of the reviewed book. https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episodes/595bbf7a-14b2-49ff-8281-8e96ddcca818 https://art19.com/shows/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hay...

MaysonL 8y ago
Also, a great episode of Ezra Klein's podcast with Anand Giridharadas, the referenced author and speaker. EDIT: the link: https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/ebd9109c-d765-43ab-b931-0b95f5fcbc12 https://art19.com/shows/the-ezra-klein-show/episodes/ebd9109...

nostromo 8y ago

Unpopular opinion alert! The more I learn about FDR the more he reminds me of Trump. And I say that as a non-fan of Trump. We hear a lot today about how Trump is breaking long-established norms. But FDR was the king of breaking norms: from running for four terms, to trying to pack the Supreme Court and setting off a constitutional crisis, to running the only concentration camps in American History and banning immigration outright from many countries. FDR was a populist bully. He changed the presidency forever. And yet he’s constantly referred to as one of the best presidents.

astrodust 8y ago
If you can't see past superficial similarities, yes, they're identical. They both even had hair!
acconrad 8y ago
Your use of "bully" is a red herring to your argument. Both people break norms, yes. But when you "bully" the fat cats in government, that's called "doing your job." The president is essentially the highest-paid public servant. It is (supposed to be) the president's job to fight for what the people want. Trump is fighting for himself. He's fighting for big business. He's fighting for exactly his own self interest. That is anathema to what FDR did. Thus, Trump is a bully and FDR is not, and that is why your opinion is being downvoted.
- wonder_er 8y ago
  FDR's internment camps was hardly a move "for the people". Should we overlook the internment camps? Seems like FDR was a lot worse than a bully, in light of the camps.
  - the_gastropod 8y ago
    No, you shouldn't overlook it. But don't kid yourself in thinking most Americans in the 1940s weren't terribly racist. Check out this Gallup poll from 1942: https://news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-support-japanese-internment.aspx https://news.gallup.com/vault/195257/gallup-vault-wwii-era-s...
- wdewind 8y ago
  > That is anathema to what FDR did. What happens if you reconsider the New Deal from the perspective that the Roosevelt family benefited hugely from increased government power?
ColanR 8y ago
You're downvoted, but I don't really see how you're wrong.
- Latteland 8y ago
  They were both presidents, but after that I'm not sure how they were the same.
ChrisLTD 8y ago
It's not all that helpful to use "norm-breaking" as a rubric to judge politicians because it leaves out important considerations like if the norm itself is bad, or if the outcome is worth the sacrifice of the norm.
smacktoward 8y ago
FDR was nothing like Trump. He broke norms, yes, but he was also held office during two of the most dire existential emergencies in the history of the United States: the Great Depression and World War 2. He did unprecedented things because he lived in unprecedented times. And, crucially, he did them to preserve the Constitutional order, not to overthrow it. Unlike most of his class, he was cognizant of the fact that if the government could not organize an effective solution to such a deep crisis, the people would eventually rise up and replace it with one that could. He wanted to stave that off. He took drastic measures to deny oxygen to those would have taken even more drastic ones. (There is one thing on your list that is universally held to be unjustifiable today, of course: the internment of Japanese-Americans. And I would agree that it was unjustifiable, even under the circumstances, which were grave. But there are decent arguments for the other ones.) A good analogue to FDR's unique situation is Abraham Lincoln, who is really the only other President to have faced similar crises. Lincoln did things under the rubric of the Presidency's war powers that go right up to the red line (and, some would argue, beyond). He locked up political opponents who espoused support for the Confederacy, and denied them their habeus corpus rights so they couldn't get out again. He imposed the first involuntary draft in American history. When Maryland threatened to secede and cut Washington, DC off from the rest of the North, he clamped down martial law there, hard. But he did these things to preserve the Constitutional order, not to wreck it. If you want a character from FDR's era who resembles Trump much more closely, go check out a few books on Huey Long, who was exactly the sort of figure FDR acted in order to head off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long
- wdewind 8y ago
  > Unlike most of his class, he was cognizant of the fact that if the government could not organize an effective solution to such a deep crisis, the people would eventually rise up and replace it with one that could. Would this have been such a bad thing?
  - MaysonL 8y ago
    >Would this have been such a bad thing? It could well have been: see the French and Russian Revolutions, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot. There were both Nazis and Communists busy in the US in the '30s, and either taking power would have been really bad.
the_gastropod 8y ago
FDR and Trump were/are both demagogues, bombastic. They both pushed/are pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with. There, I agree. But I think there are some very important differences that make one less tolerable than the other: 1. FDR was clearly an intelligent person. He was fluent in at least 3 languages, wrote his own speeches, etc. Trump speaks at a 4th grade reading level, and rarely speaks in coherent sentences (unless he's reading a speech someone else wrote for him). 2. FDR actually won the popular election. And by a pretty substantial margin. Of these two presidents, FDR could argue he had a mandate to push his agenda. Trump lost the popular election, and is still pushing his partisan policies hard.

hevi_jos 8y ago

"class traitor"?? Raising taxes on middle class(while high classes pay almost nothing) in order to pay low class benefits is not being a traitor on high class. It is being their best friend, specially when they were terrorized by the Great Depression. They also removed competition on those small business that could compete with the monsters. Two birds with one stone. Theodore Roosevelt was someone who actually went against his benefits and privileges fighting against big lobbies. He had a hard time doing it.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

I don't see how saying these policies are typical of a "class traitor" does any good. For one, the idea that different classes are in competition with each other is a very Marxian worldview and whether you buy into that or not depends largely on your pre-rational commitments. For another, even if we accept the inter-class competition worldview, it seems that a different approach is likely to be more fruitful than asking the already successful to be "class traitors". One could, for example, try to show these elites that it is in their self interest to improve the conditions of the lower classes. This has already occurred to some extent in the US as the 2016 election demonstrated, and this book is largely a consequence of the growing realization of the elite that this is the case.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I sometimes wonder if the improvement in the US middle/lower class from 1940 to 1970 wasn't at least partly because the upper class saw the challenge of Communist ideology, and decided that it was exactly in their self-interest to improve the condition of the lower classes.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Perhaps they should notice once again... this time hold the Mcarthyism.

Bartweiss 8y ago

This is an interesting read, and a good review of Giridharadas. But I'm frustrated that it fails to grapple with the most obvious question of all: who counts as rich? Instead, we get "Winners Take All aims at today’s upper-crust in a world where wealth has continued to calcify into stock dividends and plush inheritances of the global one-percent...". It's the sort of line that makes me think either Giridharadas or Meyer haven't done their homework, because entering the global one percent takes an income of around $32,000, or a net worth of around $770,000. The average member of the global one percent doesn't have any stock at all, much less a plush inheritance! 46% of Americans break the global 1% income threshold, and ~5% break the wealth threshold. The global one percent are defined by international divides, not intranational ones. Back home, the 1% continues to be a bizarre construct that conflates heart surgeons with Waltons; the bottom half of the 1% have seen their incomes roughly triple since 1950, while the top 0.01% have seen a 10x increase. Even Darren Walker's million a year only puts him around the 0.3% of earners. I don't mean to discount the article or the book: it's fascinating to see a comparison of how the ultra-rich view social wellbeing compared to the rest of us. But I do think there's a bit of a failure to grapple with exactly what extreme wealth is, and just how far up the scale goes.

antisthenes 8y ago
It's not hard. https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/worldwealthreport_2017_final.pdf https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/worldwe... Everyone with over $5 million USD of investable wealth counts as rich. The report shows that there are at least 1.65 million of such individuals across the planet, with roughly 157,200 of them having a net worth in excess of $30 million. What about the 15 million in the $1-5 million band? I think you could argue that many of them reside in really high COL areas, so most of their assets could be in the form of primary residence real estate. I'm not going to argue if that makes them 'rich' either way. Looking at it this way completely avoids ridiculous metrics like "global 1% by income" that completely ignore the effects of relative wealth and cost of living areas.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  The "global 1%" stat doesn't seem entirely useless, as a guide to national prosperity after PPP. But you're obviously right that national corrections are totally inadequate to distinguish e.g. NYC incomes from Tulsa incomes. And using it to measure who in America is rich is simply stupid. The more I think about it, the more I like $5M USD investable. I was getting set to argue that the $3M-$5M range gets you an above-average income via pure investment, maybe suggest "wealth outside of primary residence", point out purchasing power discrepancies, but all that quibbling just proves it's the wrong metric. At $5M in wealth, it ought to be possible to go basically anywhere in the world and live comfortably without working. I think that's indisputably "rich".

ataturk 8y ago

There is literally nothing stopping the wealthy from giving away their money. It's just that they don't want to give it away, they want to control whatever it is they are "giving" it to. If they could learn to let go, that would be one thing. Also, the attacks on capitalism are so lame. I've never in my lifetime lived under capitalism, and certainly the crony-capitalism we have or corporo-fascism, or whatever you wish to call this, is not aligned with favoring the individual. It is winner take all pretty much. Under true capitalism, at least bad decisions by CEOs, bankers, and lawyers would eliminate them. Instead, they get huge bailouts and keep right on screwing us over. That's the exercise of power.

kareemsabri 8y ago

I listened to the author's recent appearance on Robert Wright's podcast. He states, as what seems representative of his beliefs, that Cinnabon preys on the poor and should be stopped via regulation (similar to alcohol). I couldn't really get on board with his brand of paternalism.