The rich we will always have with us -- until they bolt to save their hides

Mirror caption: "Hideaway: Rich people are plotting to escape to remote parts of the world"

by Ken

Don't you have to love it when people behave like complete tool-stereotypes?

You remember how until, oh, just a couple of weeks ago, "economic inequality" was either a figment of some rabble rousers' imagination or just the perfectly normal way of things in God's universe? (After all, if economic driblets are going to dribble down to the nonrich rabble, they have to dribble down from somewhere.) Either way, to mention it, to so much as utter the blasphemous words, was to commit the unpardonable offense of class warfare, about as heinous a crime as there is.

Now, as we've been noting, economic inequality has not only been discovered by far-right pols but has been appropriated by them as, in some weird way, their issue. Not because of all the effort and money they poured into bringing it about. No, they're just innocent bystanders. The culprit, the evil-doer, it turns out, is -- Barack Obama! (And if you didn't see that one coming, you should probably turn in your tin-foil hat.)

So real has economic inequality become to at least some of the fabled 1% that they've taken it in their heads that some of those poor people they've worked so hard to pauperize might become, you know, uppity -- and a clear and present danger to their own noble and precious selves. Why, the riffraff might actually take it into their mangy heads to rise up! Shudder!

Luckily, it seems that the super-rich have developed a plan to cope with the threat of violence: get the hell out.

Where better to eavesdrop on the thinking of the super-rich than in Davos when they congregate for the World Economic Forum? Oh, they weren't talking much in public, where just anyone could hear. In fact, in the little interview in the clip below, Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, tells the interviewer that the best gauge of the mood at Davos this year was the very quiet. It's all about what they weren't saying, at least publicly. But privately, he reveals, some very important people are very worried.

So they're doing the logical thing -- equipping themselves with remote hideaways with private landing strips to get them safely to ground in the event of need. And the way they talk, you get the feeling they expect it to happen sooner rather than later. And if you don't believe Britain's Mirror tabloid, well, just who would you believe?

Panicked super rich buying boltholes with private airstrips to escape if poor rise up

By Alex Wellman
12:14, 26 January 2015

Hedge fund managers are buying up remote ranches and land in places like New Zealand to flee to in event of wide-spread civil unrest


Escape: Rich financiers have put plans in place to getaway from rioters

Super rich hedge fund managers are buying 'secret boltholes' where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed.

Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up.

With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.

Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.



He said: “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway."

Mr Johnson, said the economic situation could soon become intolerable as even in the richest countries inequality was increasing.

He said: "People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else.

"There is a wicked feedback loop. Politicians who get more money tend to use it to get more even money."

His comments were backed up by Stewart Wallis, executive director of the New Economics Foundation, who when asked about the comments told CNBC Africa: "Getaway cars the airstrips in New Zealand and all that sort of thing, so basically a way to get off.  If they can get off, onto another planet, some of them would."

He added: "I think the rich are worried and they should be worried. I mean inequality, why does it matter?

"Most people have heard the Oxfam statistics that now we’ve got 80, the 80 richest people in the world, having more wealth that the bottom three-point-five billion, and very soon we’ll get a situation where that one percent, one percent of the richest people have more wealth than everybody else, the 99."

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