Warren Buffett and the myth of the Laissez Faire super rich

By Christopher Dowd
Boston Libertarian Examiner

No shibboleth is as central to American progressives as the notion that super rich corporate America embraces Laissez Faire economic policies and that free market ideology inhabits a central place in the hearts of the American uber wealthy. To a lesser degree some conservatives think this is true as well.


Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the history of the United States is a history of corporate power growing hand in glove alongside federal government power. The two are intertwined to the point now that they are all but indistinguishable. More corporate mercenaries have drawn paychecks in Iraq than have government troops. Some 70 percent of the CIA’s “de facto workforce” is private corporate contractors. Federal political hacks jump government job to corporate job to government job and back again. And our national corporate media? Honeycombed with federal political operatives throughout. In between federal government posts and need some dollars? Hey- just get your corporate buddies to hire you as a CNN or Fox News “consultant” or “special correspondent”. Great way to get the lowdown on what our government is doing- by hiring lifelong DC political hacks, apparatchiks, and Pentagon flunkies heavily invested in our "defense" establishment huh? Yeah- they are really impartial and without conflicts of interest.

But I digress . . .

From the age of the Robber Barons down to today- the federal government has been utilized by large corporate interests and the uber wealthy to protect their wealth, eliminate or severely handicap competition, and remove their actions from the review of local powers and agencies.

What progressives refuse to admit is that large corporate entities like federal government regulations. In fact- they are the ghost authors of many laws “regulating” their businesses. Corporations and the uber wealthy like concentrated power. The more concentrated the power- the fewer hands they have to grease and the fewer the probing eyes.

The North’s industrial class supported Lincoln’s war to “save the Union” not because it liked the black man and hated slavery. They supported him because they detested dispersed power. All those annoying state legislatures and grubby little people in their town and city governments affecting their bottom lines? No. They couldn’t have that. They much rather prefer to deal with one large centrally powerful government that huge mega wealthy interests can manipulate easily and efficiently.

And so it is with Warren Buffett. He is ostensibly the embodiment of the American Capitalist in our popular culture. But look at him here and here? Here is this “free marketer” equating a recession/depression with . . . a war. Why compare the economy to a war? Because in America wars have proven to justify ever more federal government power- and specifically executive power. Buffett is all but calling on Congress to shut its mouth in this “time of war” so our new Pharaoh Obama can wave his magic economy recovery wand. Oligarchs like Buffett cheer on and applaud our super Imperial Presidency. They want a rump, powerless, show pony Congress relegated to investigating tabloid issues. One point of power? One branch of government calling all the shots for all intent and purpose? That’s the dream of people like Buffett.



Warren Buffett has access to Obama. We don’t. Whose interests do you think will be protected? Buffett and those like him will always have access to the oval office no matter which of our two fraud parties inhabits the White House and they could care less which one it is- they own both of them. The American super rich embrace no “ism” or ideology in private- they are the ultimate pragmatists and will adopt whatever rhetoric or political position they need in order to defend what they have or to get more. In fact, the American super rich spend a great deal of time and money carefully attuning their images to be palpable to both sides of the political spectrum- funding left wing foundations and causes while publically supporting conservative positions is one of their old standard numbers.

Now I don’t want to be simplistic here (but I guess a certain amount of it is unavoidable). Not all super rich people in this country are like Buffett- users of government power to enhance and protect their own wealth. Buffett more than likely didn’t even start out that way. He isn’t a “bad man” but like most people he believes that what is good for him is good for everybody. Some of the super rich are born into being “political entrepreneurs” – those whose wealth is primarily made and maintained through political connections (see the House of Rockefeller)- but others are burned by government and resign themselves to play the game to protect and preserve what they have built. Bill Gates is one such member of the super rich. Just as Microsoft was reaching its unquestioned dominance in the computer industry Gates famously boasted that his one Washington lobbyist didn’t have anything to do and that DC was not on his radar screen. He paid dearly for this brash dismissal of weasel bureaucratic Washington. For soon after uttering that boast his company was slapped around by the Justice Department and nearly split in two at the urging of his far more DC connected competitors (Sun Microsystems and Oracle). Microsoft now employs dozens of well compensated lobbyists in our Mordor on the Potomac.

The super rich don’t mind paying higher taxes. At their level of the game taxes are not factors. Who gets the worst from this parasitical corporate/government relationship? The most innovative people of our society: the upper middle class and the middle class get the shaft. The guy with 4 million dollars scratched together over a lifetime of hard work, the medium sized business owner, the guy who owns 5 gas stations . . . those are the people who lose out the most to our thieving mercantilist federal government.

The guy who owns two car washes and a moving company isn’t going to get his emails read by Barak Obama. He isn’t going to be offered sweet heart deals to pump up the stock market. He isn’t invited to sit on foreign policy advisory boards or given high level security clearances or access to and influence within whole swaths of the federal government. He can’t get billions of dollars created out of thin air for his business with a phone call to his friends in the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. He won’t be laughing off higher tax rates. He’s the guy who embraces Laissez Faire economics. He’s the guy who believes in the free market . . . not the Warren Buffetts of the world.