In these essays Evan Osnos makes the case that the ultrarich, solely focussed on themselves and their wealth, have abandoned America.
Evan Osnos is a staff writer with the New Yorker who began his career as a commentator on politics and foreign affairs. In more recent times he has reported on the activities of the ultrarich, and he sees his book as a kind of field guide, aiming to
… capture the thinking and behavior of some of the world’s most powerful people. By assessing their tactics and obsessions, their manners and delusions, it attempts to show how the very rich see themselves and how they see the world they increasingly control … [These essays] hover around a set of persistent concerns – ambition and fakery, status and shame, duty and disregard.
The Haves and Have-Yachts brings together pieces Osnos originally published in the New Yorker between the first and second Trump presidencies.
In assembling a consolidated portrait of the ultrarich … my hope is that patterns emerge: how money monumentalizes itself in steel and stone; how self-interest and civic duty shape philanthropy; how the technologies of influence determine what we see, hear and believe.
While Osnos’s focus is on the ultrarich, the book is really an examination of the rise of neoliberalism and, more importantly, its limitations. In focusing on the ‘lucid facts’ of ultrarich behaviour, he provides a cultural exploration of the meaning of neoliberalism. Drilling down even further, he unpacks that shibboleth of American exceptionalism known as rugged individualism.
The book has two major themes. The first is the widening gap in the distribution of income between the ultrarich and the rest.
[I]n 1965, the CEO of an average large public company earned about twenty times as much as a front-line worker. Today [2020], that figure is 278 times.
[It is] estimated that sophisticated tax ploys and shelters cause ordinary citizens to pay an extra 15 per cent in taxes each year.
As of 2019, America’s richest individuals owned about $3 trillion in wealth – more than all Black households and a quarter of all Latino households combined.
In 1978, the top 0.1 percent of Americans owned about 7 per cent of the nation’s wealth; today [2023], according to the World Inequality Database, it owns 18 percent.
The second theme is that, in focusing on their individual selves, the ultrarich have no sense of community. It is as if they have abandoned America. They involve themselves in politics not because of any sense of civic duty – their object is to capture the state to ensure that governments, courts and tribunals do not interfere with their activities or, most significantly, their wealth. Osnos quotes an ultrarich matriarch who told her housekeeper, ‘We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.’
Osnos documents the tricks employed by financial planners and tax advisors to help the ultrarich avoid paying taxes and enhance family wealth. The ultrarich have no interest in social welfare, the provision of community services or acting to counter climate change.
One chapter examines how the ultrarich saw Donald Trump as someone in accord with their values, and the financial and other support Trump has received from them. In doing so, Osnos focuses his attention on Greenwich, Connecticut; a haven for the ultrarich. It is not as if they like to pay state taxes: ‘Connecticut has the richest one per cent of any one state, but … its roads are among the worst in the country.’ You don’t need good roads if you can travel by helicopter, and as for the support staff who prepare your food, wash and iron your clothes and clean your toilets who must use them, well that’s their problem.
[S]ome of America’s powerful people [have] championed a version of capitalism that liberates wealth from responsibility. They embraced a fable of self-reliance (except when the fable was untenable), a philosophy of business that leached more wealth from the economy than it created, and a vision of politics that forgave cruelty as the price of profit. In the long battle between the self and service, [the ultrarich] settled, for the time being, firmly on self.
Osnos sees the need for status and achievement driving the ultrarich in their pursuit, maintenance, enhancement and displays of wealth. Aggression and rule-breaking are considered strengths in the quest for success, as illustrated by Gordon Caplan, a successful lawyer who was indicted, and subsequently jailed, for paying $75,000 to fix his daughter’s entry exam for a prestigious college. ‘It exposed how far some of America’s most powerful and prosperous people will go to give their families an advantage in a life already full of them.’ Osnos asked Caplan why he was prepared to bribe someone to falsify his daughter’s results:
Achievement … is like a drug. Once you achieve one thing, you need to achieve the next thing. And, when you are surrounded by people that are doing that, it becomes self-reinforcing. When you also have insecurities, which a lot of highly motivated people do, you’re more apt to do what is necessary to achieve … I saw what I believed to be a very corrupt system, and I’ve got to play along or I’ll be disadvantaged.
Osnos also examines the mores of white-collar criminals. These are individuals who have been found guilty of insider trading, hedge fund managers who have embezzled their clients’ money or operated Ponzi schemes – schemes that usually target friends and family. One financial advisor revealed how the managing directors of various funds described their clients as ‘muppets’. Osnos comments how such an attitude encourages ‘gray behaviour’ by those who manage other people’s money. It also reflects an attitude of I-am-smarter-than-you and what-I do-is-OK-as-long-as-I-don’t-get-caught.
Anthony Scaramucci achieved fame as communications director for Donald Trump in mid-2017, lasting just 11 days in the position. Prior to that appointment he had been a hedge fund manager, and Osnos quotes him on America’s celebration of fame.
Our society is addicted to it … But let me give you bad news for rich people: They can only go four places. They can go into the art world, or private aircraft and yachting, or charity – naming buildings and hospitals after themselves – or they can go into experimental.
Osnos devotes three chapters to how the ultrarich go about displaying, or expending, their wealth. The first is the purchase of ever larger and larger yachts – hence the book’s title – which are a marker of one’s wealth and success.
The second is having an escape plan in case of the potential problems of global warming or political turmoil, especially fears of unrest over the uneven distribution of income. Such escape plans range from building large underground bunkers with ‘windows’ that provide videos of ‘natural scenes’, to the purchase of homes in safer, faraway lands. New Zealand is a favourite destination of the ultrarich. (They have presumably heard of its wonderful ice cream.) Osnos points out a potential problem with these plans: when they escape, they will need to take the pilot’s family with them if they expect to be flown to safety. It is not so much that the ultrarich expect that there will be an Armageddon, but rather that, if you have the wealth, it makes sense to purchase an insurance policy just in case.
The third is obtaining top-level performers for functions such as weddings, birthdays and anniversaries. Enormous sums are paid to stars to provide entertainment.
In 1908, the English writer GK Chesterton wrote, ‘The poor man has a stake in the country … The rich man hasn’t; he can go away … in a yacht.’ Now, as Osnos attests, he can also fly away.
In examining the behaviour of America’s ultrarich, Osnos demonstrates how, beyond having the means to ‘go away’, they have abandoned America mentally. They have no sense of purpose beyond themselves; of being cleverer and more ruthless than the ‘muppets’ who are there to be taken advantage of. Osnos quotes economic historian Guido Alfani, who said that when elites become ‘insensitive to the plight of the masses’, societies tend to become unstable. This book provides valuable insights into the conceits of America’s ultrarich and their broader impact on the ‘working out’, or more correctly the dismantling of, the American dream.
Evan Osnos The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the ultrarich Simon and Schuster, 2025 PB 304pp $36.99
Braham Dabscheck is a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne who writes on industrial relations, sport and other things. He is a connoisseur of ice-cream.
You can buy The Haves and Have-Yachts from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.
You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.
Tags: Anthony Scaramucci, current affairs, Donald Trump, Evan | Osnos, Gordon Caplan, income inequality, social inequality, tax evasion, the 0.1 per cent, ultrarich, United States oligarchs
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