Economist story that just reminds me that, in globalization terms, we are living through an age of great “robber barons” and their subsequent personal guilt expressed in their laudable but somewhat quixotic attempts to fix the world with their wealth.
Gates cannot become Gates without globalization, nor can Buffett. But globalization, with its capacity to make a huge world seem that much smaller, makes the disparity between fantastic wealth and the rest of us all that much more apparent
The last time we saw this sort of progressive largesse? Naturally, it was during the microcosmic globalization that was America’s sectional economies being knitted together into a continental one following our Civil War. Swap out Carnegie for Gates, and the song remains the same—just on a grander, truly global scale.
Natural and good, it’s just not enough. The populism must be followed by the progressivism, so I understand the reach for Obama, who is perceived as being as anti-business and wealth as Theodore Roosevelt was.