Anand Giridharadas on Society’s Global Elites

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I think you agree, despite your condemnation of so many aspects of the political system and the elite system, that it will only be a government that can structurally change people’s lives and the lives of those people who are hurting.

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: You know, Brexit like Donald Trump and the wall in the shutdown, all these things are downstream problems. They are the end of a story of problems that we’ve been having in these societies for decades, that too many people, particular winners of our age, ignored until they became the level of Brexit and Donald Trump, until they became earthquakes that actually cracked their own houses. These — you know, when he said rebuilding Britain for the many not the few in that slogan, that’s getting closer to the reality of the story. For decades, the world of globalization, the world you’ve spent so long covering, globalization, trade, this amazing digital revolution that has transformed so much that the era of extraordinary innovation that we have lived in has actually been working for a tiny minority of people. And the reality is that the very few have monopolized the fruits of progress. There’s actually a difference between the word innovation the word progress. Innovation just means new stuff. Progress has to do with most people’s lives getting better. And I think if you walk down the street in most small towns in Britain or in the United States, most people will tell you that while it has been an age of extraordinary innovation, of new stuff, their lives haven’t gotten measurably better, their children’s education and health haven’t gotten measurably better, their faith in the future hasn’t gotten better. And the unmistakable truth of it that is uncomfortable for many of us to face is that the people who run these companies, the people who are meeting next week in Davos for the big family reunion of the politically elite have fought for and built and maintained systems of taxation, labor, the rules of the game that all but assured that they would be the only people to benefit from this future, that they would be able to build monopolies and capture most of the gains. 82 percent of new wealth created in 2017 went to the global 1 percent. And so, it’s no accident that people are angry, that’s the upstream problem. And then downstream, you end up with Brexit, with shutdowns, with Donald Trump. And so, I think the people who feel most exciting to me, politically, in this time, whether on the left or the right, are people who are trying to solve the upstream problem, who are inspired by the downstream moment to actually try to solve that upstream problem of opportunity and people’s faith in the future.