The Least Inspiring Group of Class Warriors Ever Assembled in Human History
You know that the ultrawealthy in America are getting nervous when they enlist Deepak Chopra in their showy, useless gestures about fixing income inequality.
Paul Tudor Jones is a billionaire hedge fund manager. On the bright side, he helped to found the Robin Hood Foundation, which raises money to fight poverty in New York. He has demonstrated that he has some level of concern over inequality. Thus ends the bright side of Paul Tudor Jones.
How does this incredibly wealthy hedge fund magnate approach the issue of economic inequality, which he calls the “single most important issue in this country?” He approaches it by founding a group called JUST Capital which seeks to... (establish higher taxes on the rich? Invest in education? Fund progressive political movements?)... put out rankings of companies based on how “Just” they are, so that investors may direct their money to, you know, relatively more “Just” capitalist enterprises. It is perhaps the absolute pinnacle of the capitalist futilely seeking to use capitalism to save capitalism from itself.
This weekend, the New York Times checked in on the progress of this rather insulting scheme to distract the public from inequality, and produced a story even richer in farce than one might have hoped. The JUST Capital leadership dream team of Paul Tudor Jones (billionaire Republican donor) and Deepak Chopra (new age Oprah pal who, the Times notes, “who wears diamonds in his eyeglass frames”) have been joined by a new board member: Arianna Huffington, nap evangelist, whose own ostentatiously “liberal” business is currently engaged in fighting against a large group of its own employees who are asking to unionize.
Has there ever been a more impressive band of committed progressives?
The poor and the shrinking American middle class often complain about the fact that a tiny group of very wealthy people are accumulating an ever larger share of our nation’s wealth as the rest of us are left behind. But now you regular people can rest easy: Deepak Chopra and Arianna Huffington are working with a Republican hedge fund billionaire to ensure that a meaningless ranking of companies is published, which will be widely ignored by other hedge fund billionaires, who didn’t become billionaires by giving a fuck what companies are “just.” This should pacify the public long enough to allow Deepak Chopra, Arianna Huffington, and Paul Tudor Jones to build their diamond-encrusted rocket to the moon (including nap rooms).
We can’t start taxing the shit out of these people soon enough. Nap time is over motherfuckers.