THIS IS A GREAT ARTICLE ABOUT THE TOP 0.1%

(h/t Ken Hoop)

I skimmed this piece ("Revolt of the Rich") by Mike Lofgren and now that I'm reading it in depth, I strongly recommend it to almost anyone interested in the global sociology of the extremely wealthy.

This part set off some connections:

There have been numerous books about globalization and how it would eliminate borders. But I am unaware of a well-developed theory from that time about how the super-rich and the corporations they run would secede from the nation state.

What I mean by secession is a withdrawal into enclaves, an internal immigration, whereby the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot.

The first connection is the current spending patterns of the rich:

The 2012 Survey of Affluence and Wealth in America, from American Express Publishing and Harrison Group, finds that One Percenters are hoarding three times as much cash as they were two years ago. Their savings rate soared to 34 percent in the second quarter of 2012, up from 12 percent in 2007.
...
One respondent in the study said “My savings rate has gone up and I’m not spending, which I realize is bad for the economy ... but I like having a wide moat around me so that nothing can bother me.”

If they are saving that much, they aren't creating any jobs so we can dismiss all the agit-prop about liberals being against "the producers."

These world elites also don't have much concern about their "neighborhood" because they really don't have a place where they live most of the year. London's ritzy Mayfair neighborhood is a great example:

Unoccupied, unloved: London mansions left to crumble by elusive offshore owners
Helen Pidd
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 October 2009 11.59 EDT

"When I was a boy I used to come up to London and see houses like these and think 'Wow. Who lives there?'" says Paul Palmer, gazing up at a pair of seven-storey mansions in Park Lane across the road from Hyde Park.

What makes his job unique is the staggering value of the properties on his books: some of his Mayfair mansions are worth as much as £50m, even in their dilapidated state. What makes his job difficult is that many of the biggest and most expensive are owned not by dusty old dowagers down on their luck but by mystery investors hiding their identities behind offshore companies.

"So often offshore owners have little or no interest in the property as a building - it is merely an asset to be traded as they see fit," he says, adding that offshore firms are very tricky to track down.

Amanda Royce, a property solicitor, says Mayfair is a particularly attractive investment location for foreigners now because of the weak pound. "The owners leave them empty sometimes because they lose track of their properties. Often they have a place in New York, a place in Monte Carlo, one in the south of France and so on."