Guest: Evan Osnos, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a National Book Award winner, and the author of The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich.
In a nutshell: We’re all fascinated by stories of the ultrarich and their eccentricities: the private islands, the yachts, the art collections, the survival bunkers. But what if some extravagances aren’t just indulgences, but signs of fear that are changing the economy, social mobility, and geopolitics?
On today’s third episode of The Geopolitical Edge mini-series, Evan Osnos describes how the ultrawealthy are no longer just living large. They’re building fortresses of protection from a world they no longer trust. This conversation will help advisors see where wealth is heading, what it’s reacting to, and how you can guide your clients through a world that’s being quietly and powerfully reshaped.
Photo by Pete Marovich
.Evan Osnos and I discuss:
- The fears and anxieties that drive the ultrawealthy to increase their wealth, beef up their security, and seek political control.
- How today’s “New Gilded Age” differs from the original.
- The paradox in the American psyche of resenting billionaires while also aspiring to become one.
- How extreme economic inequality negatively impacts social mobility and the American Dream.
- The stark contrast between how the U.S. embraces its billionaires in politics versus how China’s authoritarian government keeps its oligarchs “in a box.”
- How AI is poised to cause massive white-collar job loss and what that means for societal stability and politics.
- The geopolitical risks of the U.S.-China rivalry, from a potential war over Taiwan to the race for technological supremacy.
- Why authenticity is the most valuable and powerful asset in American politics today.
. Quotes:
Evan Osnos on how the rising influence of billionaires affects the rest of us:
“ In 2004, billionaires in the United States contributed about $13 million to the presidential election, and it seemed like a lot at the time. But actually it was a pittance compared to where we are today. Today, billionaires contributed, in the 2024 election, about 200 times as much, $3 billion. So we’ve just entered into a whole new terrain. And the prime example, of course, being Elon Musk, who was the largest donor in the 2024 presidential election. He was able to almost literally buy a department of government. And even at the high point of their wealth a hundred years ago, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, none of them actually had that level of control. The data is very clear that the amount of wealth controlled by the top fraction of 1% is higher than it was even during the Gilded Age. It’s not true that you can continue to have all this money accumulating in the hands of a few without having an impact on other people’s social mobility. We know this from a heap of very reliable social science literature. A child born in 1940 in this country had about a 90% chance of out-earning their parents, but a child coming of age today has less than half that chance of out-earning their parents, and that’s what makes people unhappy.”
Evan Osnos on “Zuckerbergs” and “Buffetts”:
“ I’ll take Mark Zuckerberg as an example. I think that he was motivated initially by a kind of narrow idea, which was success in technology. He succeeded as a teenager, left college, went out and built this extraordinary business, a company that almost was bigger than anything in the history of commerce and, to be blunt, it had more customers than Christianity. Then he decided, okay, what am I really here for? What kind of imprint am I gonna leave on the world? And so then he and his wife started a foundation, which was similar in some ways to what the Gates Foundation had been. They were dedicated to public health and education. And then I think that he went through a bit of a blowback after the 2016 election. Then he realized, wait a second, the public is saying that I’ve actually injured democracy because my website was not engineered well enough to protect against misinformation. It was invading people’s privacy. Maybe it was a monopoly, according to the Federal Trade Commission. So he then had this whole realization, maybe the world doesn’t see me as I see myself. And so then he narrowed his column, his societal ambitions, and has said, I’m no longer going to do fact-checking the way you want me to. I’m just going to do what I need to do to get out of the crosshairs of Donald Trump. So I think he’s taken a much narrower definition of his role in society.
“But you then take somebody like Warren Buffett, who’s such an interesting and admired figure because Buffett has been very clear that, as he has said many times, from his perspective, the tax code doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t know why his secretary is paying more in taxes than he is. He’s written about it in op-eds in The New York Times. He’s really tried to make this case publicly. He’s giving away a huge portion of his net worth. In fact, as he says, he can’t even give it away fast enough because it’s continued to accumulate. And he has been, as so many people would say, ‘the conscience of capitalism’ of the last half a century. Part of the reason why I wrote this book was to say there are many different ways to be in the world and to have tremendous resources and to have influence, and you can decide how you want to be.”
Evan Osnos on the United States and China:
“ As somebody who really has spent a lot of time paying attention to these two giant countries and the courses that we’re on, I’m deeply concerned that we’re making what are essentially day-to-day decisions right now about some of America’s core strengths, and we’re doing it to satisfy very short-term political motives. We’re not laying in the kind of investment, or even preserving the power that we have, to be the target of every big talented technologist who emerges on the scene. We’re in a world right now where, pretty soon, you’re going to have kids all over the world growing up in poor places where they have the power through the AI models that we’re developing in our country to tap into extraordinary knowledge and educate themselves. If they’re the kind of person that was born with that sort of talent and ingenuity, they’re going to rise above the rest of the people around them. They’re going to get to the top of the heap. They’re going to thrive in school. They’re going to, finally, get themselves out of that village, that town, that county. They’re going to want to go to the greatest institutions in the world. And I sure as heck want them to be able to come to this country and survive and thrive here and benefit the United States and benefit the rest of the world. And I’m concerned that we’re making really short-term choices that are not going to make them want to come here. They’re going to want to go to Canada, they’re going to want to go elsewhere, and that’ll be to our loss.”
