Bloomberg News's Matthew Lynn has a truly bizarre column out assailing "the rich." He writes: "the rich have changed over the past decade. They are, it turns out, a nasty bunch of people who are only getting nastier."
More: "There is an increasing amount of evidence that the rich are a vicious tribe of people."
And he claims, "The investment bankers and hedge-fund managers who make up most of the new rich elite don't have much contact with ordinary people." This is nuts. Does he assume the rich don't have family members who aren't rich? Or that their children don't have teachers in school? Or that they don't have any interactions with employees or staff people?
Does this blanket description of "the rich" as nasty and vicious include Mr. Lynn's employer, Michael Bloomberg?
The column pokes fun at a private banker complaining about his rich customers: "Executives in any business tend to feel the real trouble always comes from the customer, who is often stupid, unreasonable and annoying, and sometimes all of the above. No doubt, the software engineers at Microsoft Corp. fume about all those blockheads who don't know how to partition their hard drive, or re-configure the registry file. There must be countless airline executives who occasionally dream about how smoothly their planes would circle the globe if only they didn't have to fill them up with stupid tourists, their snotty children, and their overstuffed bags."
Mr. Lynn seems blissfully un-self-aware of the fact that by describing investment bankers and hedge fund managers as nasty and vicious, he's insulting his own customers. Who does he think pays for Bloomberg terminals? And how much longer will they keep paying the steep subscription prices for the privilege of having their character insulted by columnists whose salaries are paid for by their terminal fees?
