Super Rich Becoming The Dictators Of 21st Century
Late last year, the investment bank Credit Suisse published its annual survey of global wealth. Of its many illuminating findings, one in particular caught my eye. In Russia, just 110 people own a mind-boggling 35 per cent of the country's wealth. At the same time, 93.7 per cent of Russians are worth $10,000 or less.
But as the country with the greatest wealth disparities, it is merely the most extreme case of a worldwide trend that potentially represents one of the greatest threats that democracy faces today: the spread of oligarchy.
The problem isn't just that some people are now fabulously rich. It's that disproportionate wealth increasingly goes along with disproportionate power. Russia, again, offers a textbook example of the dangers. In the 1990s, a handful of well-connected business tycoons profited from their close relations with Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin by taking advantage of the privatisation of the country's industrial jewels - above all its vast oil wealth. Those magnates weren't shy about exploiting their economic power to political ends. They bankrolled Yeltsin's re-election as president in 1996, controlled ministerial appointments and dictated government policy. No wonder they were soon dubbed the ''oligarchs''. (''Oligarchy'' is Greek for ''government of the few''.)
One of them, the recently deceased Boris Berezovsky, engineered the rise of an ex-KGB officer to the prime ministership. But Vladimir Putin ultimately proved less than grateful. Once Putin became president in his own stead, he was quick to cut down his erstwhile patron, forcing Berezvosky into exile. Putin curtailed the power of other Yeltsin-era tycoons, too (most notably Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who has just been released after spending 10 years in a labour camp), but in their place he raised up a new group of businessmen - many with ties to the old Soviet security services - who owed their fortunes to him. One of them, another KGB alumnus named Igor Sechin, who heads the country's largest oil company, is regarded by some as the second-most powerful man after Putin.
But this isn't only Russia's problem. Globalisation and the powerful economic forces it has unleashed have awarded unparalleled wealth and power to a tiny new elite. Call them what you will: the superclass, plutocrats, ''global meritocracy''. What they exemplify is the nexus of wealth and political power. And the situation is increasingly vexing voters in places from London to Kuala Lumpur.
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