The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy

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Superrich guy argues the merits of inequality in this week's NYTimes Magazine:

Ever since the financial crisis started, we’ve heard plenty from the 1 percent. We’ve heard them giving defensive testimony in Congressional hearings or issuing anodyne statements flanked by lawyers and image consultants. They typically repeat platitudes about investment, risk-taking and job creation with the veiled contempt that the nation doesn’t understand their contribution. You get the sense that they’re afraid to say what they really believe. What do the superrich say when the cameras aren’t there?

With that in mind, I recently met Edward Conard on 57th Street and Madison Avenue, just outside his office at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped build into a multibillion-dollar business by buying, fixing up and selling off companies at a profit. Conard, who retired a few years ago at 51, is not merely a member of the 1 percent. He’s a member of the 0.1 percent. His wealth is most likely in the hundreds of millions; he lives in an Upper East Side town house just off Fifth Avenue; and he is one of the largest donors to his old boss and friend, Mitt Romney.

Unlike his former colleagues, Conard wants to have an open conversation about wealth. He has spent the last four years writing a book that he hopes will forever change the way we view the superrich’s role in our society. “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio, aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is not a sign that the system is rigged. On the contrary, Conard writes, it is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off. This could be the most hated book of the year.

Conard understands that many believe that the U.S. economy currently serves the rich at the expense of everyone else. He contends that this is largely because most Americans don’t know how the economy really works — that the superrich spend only a small portion of their wealth on personal comforts; most of their money is invested in productive businesses that make life better for everyone. “Most citizens are consumers, not investors,” he told me during one of our long, occasionally contentious conversations. “They don’t recognize the benefits to consumers that come from investment.”

Romney’s Former Bain Partner Makes a Case for Inequality - NYTimes.com

I found his argument weak. The article touches on this at the end, but he completely disregards what people are most concerned about. People, I think, still admire those that achieve their wealth through risk-taking and innovation--Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc. What they don't like is rent-seeking. He refuses to address that issue.

Further, he admonishes lawyers, but not investment bankers and management consultants, who took a similar treadmill path to "safe" jobs out of school. What risk was he taking going to Harvard Business School?

His whining also reminds of Romney's rag-to-riches tale. Even setting aside all his advantages growing up, the biggest "risk" he took--heading Bain Capital--wasn't a risk at all. Mr. Bain essentially agreed to bear all the consequences--and guaranteed Romney would get his old job, and raises, back--if it failed.