Daniel Gross on Economic Culture

Daniel Gross hoists the wealthy snobs with their own petard.

On first read, the article seemed incendiary, probably due to the shifting of my perspective by the establishment pages of Newsweek. Some quotes:

In the overclass, twice-married, middle-aged Wall Street daddies don't own up to the consequences of their insane financial miscues.
...
The pernicious culture of affluence merits further study. When self-proclaimed rogue sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh sought to learn about the culture of poverty, he hung out in Chicago's notorious Robert Taylor Homes and befriended drug dealers. The tale is chronicled in his fascinating book "Gang Leader for a Day."

If he really wants to understand the workings of the dysfunctional class that's threatening American values and taxing national resources, Venkatesh, who teaches at Columbia, should move into a co-op on the Upper East Side and get a job on Morgan Stanley's trading desk. He can call it "Hedge-Fund Manager for a Day."

The main criticism of the overclass in the article is by indirect analogies with 'blame the victim' poverty studies. More direct criticism is levied at government regulators for bailing out the Wall Street failures. He points out that anti-underclass polemics have been common for decades, but does not point out that corporate bailouts are nothing new. Still, look at this article about the Chrysler bailout nearly thirty years ago: The dollar amount of the bailout was somewhat less than $1billion.

The Reagan-Bush I financial sleaze prototype, the Savings and Loan bailout, was more expensive, according to Wikipedia:

The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD$160.1 billion, about $124.6 billion of which was directly paid for by the U.S. government -- that is, the U.S. taxpayer

I hope that Gross writes more on this subject. There is a lot more to say.