Why conservative billionaires have started talking like Bernie Sanders: “We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape”

Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot
Credit: Richard Drew/AP

I’ve written previously about the growing fear among elites that they’ve pushed economic inequality too far. That fear is proliferating, according to a New York Times Op-Ed this weekend by former marketing conglomerate CEO Peter Georgescu. Joined by his friend Ken Langone, founder of Home Depot, Georgescu warns his fellow 1 percenters that “[w]e are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape.” The column raises the specter of “major social unrest” if inequality is not addressed.

Georgescu writes:

I’m scared. The billionaire hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones is scared. My friend Ken Langone, a founder of the Home Depot, is scared. So are many other chief executives. Not of Al Qaeda, or the vicious Islamic State or some other evolving radical group from the Middle East, Africa or Asia. We are afraid where income inequality will lead.

In June, Cartier chief Johann Rupert — worth an estimated $7.5 […]

2 Comments

P.M.Temple on Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 4:02 pm

After reading this article and the last one, I have to comment on the American lifestyle, the old companies that provide the population with products and diet, basically consumer items, and other items that give us the lifestyle that we have known but are becoming very aware that we are being sold short. Feed the livestock crap at our price and conditions. That seems to be the philosophy of many of the old style stodgy companies that provide the greater population with their services and products. May of the old companies are feeling the hurt. McDonalds, whose products are becoming less and less up with the times. Coca Cola, Pepsi. They are too behind the times enough to make a fast correction, they are trying to change their ingredients, menus, etc. For Coke- to still sticking to Aspertame is like changing the formula to the new Coke which went over like a bombshell. Their adherence to Aspertame will have the same effect. So many sectors are looking very hard at business models like Uber that turned over the box of crayons literally over night. Health care may use this model quickly (and it sound like they are) and wipe out entire old companies that can’t keep up.The same with old companies like Proctor and Gamble. And Kraft. And there is a certain company betting on them just because they have been around for a long time and have an old brand name. Well, there are a lot of companies that have bit the dust in the last 100 years that no one remembers that took the same stance. Times are changing so quickly that we could see many many companies that we know now become unknown by the next generation coming up. People are getting smarter quicker. They value their health and have little help from others to figure it out. They work hard and have little to show for it. Businesses have betrayed the consumer. A stupid thing to do in any business model.

Rev. Dean on Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 5:50 pm

It seems like the efforts of our host Mr. Schwartz and all of us petition signers and writers are having an effect after all. I hope the message gets through to all the people so we can reverse the thought patterns of the people on the “Right Wing” of our political structure so we may get our REAL Democracy back.

P.M.Temple on Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 4:02 pm

After reading this article and the last one, I have to comment on the American lifestyle, the old companies that provide the population with products and diet, basically consumer items, and other items that give us the lifestyle that we have known but are becoming very aware that we are being sold short. Feed the livestock crap at our price and conditions. That seems to be the philosophy of many of the old style stodgy companies that provide the greater population with their services and products. May of the old companies are feeling the hurt. McDonalds, whose products are becoming less and less up with the times. Coca Cola, Pepsi. They are too behind the times enough to make a fast correction, they are trying to change their ingredients, menus, etc. For Coke- to still sticking to Aspertame is like changing the formula to the new Coke which went over like a bombshell. Their adherence to Aspertame will have the same effect. So many sectors are looking very hard at business models like Uber that turned over the box of crayons literally over night. Health care may use this model quickly (and it sound like they are) and wipe out entire old companies that can’t keep up.The same with old companies like Proctor and Gamble. And Kraft. And there is a certain company betting on them just because they have been around for a long time and have an old brand name. Well, there are a lot of companies that have bit the dust in the last 100 years that no one remembers that took the same stance. Times are changing so quickly that we could see many many companies that we know now become unknown by the next generation coming up. People are getting smarter quicker. They value their health and have little help from others to figure it out. They work hard and have little to show for it. Businesses have betrayed the consumer. A stupid thing to do in any business model.
Rev. Dean on Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 5:50 pm

It seems like the efforts of our host Mr. Schwartz and all of us petition signers and writers are having an effect after all. I hope the message gets through to all the people so we can reverse the thought patterns of the people on the “Right Wing” of our political structure so we may get our REAL Democracy back.