Two surveys came out on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

One of them was about inequality.



Even as Davos saw a record 1,500 private jets arrive this year, 50 percent more than last, and Oxfam reported that the richest 26 people in the world now own as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population, that half—some 3.8 billion—saw their wealth decline by 11 percent. According to Axios, wealth held by the world’s billionaires has grown from $3.4 trillion in 2009, right after the Wall Street-generated market crash, to $8.9 trillion in 2017.

...As former U.S. Federal Reserve vice chair Alan Blinder once told me, when historians look back on the late 20th century, “they will marvel at the equanimity” with which those in power accepted “the shift from labor to capital, the almost unprecedented shift of money and power up the income pyramid.”

In response, the sycophants at Bloomberg rushed to the defense of the wealthy.

Their reason to doubt Oxfam? 2018 economic growth numbers "look healthy".

So how can things be bad if the GDP is going up?

So far in Davos -a room full of billionaires laughed tauntingly at @AOC’s 70% marginal tax prop.

-Bill Gates scoffed at notion the system was broken, hinted critics were communists

-Tony Blair laughed at idea his cohort was responsible for any global malady Uh, keep it up guys pic.twitter.com/sCAZoZorH1 — Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant) January 23, 2019

The other survey to come out was by a shameless group of corporate brown-nosers.



Amid low confidence that politicians will fix the problems, these people are turning to companies, with 75 percent saying they trust “my employer”, compared to 48 percent for government and 47 percent for the media. “CEOs now have to be visible, show personal commitment, absolutely step into the void, because we’ve got a leadership void in the world,” Richard Edelman, head of the communications marketing firm that commissioned the research, told Reuters.

A "study" comes out on the eve of Davos saying that people are in love with CEOs and want them to run the world. What are the chances of that?

The survey had a separate category for the better-educated, higher-earning “informed public”.

You have to contact the firm to get the methodology of the study. It isn't publicly available.

When you are surrounded by yes men, eager to tell you whatever you want to hear, it's easy to believe pretty much anything.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Yellow Vests in France who have an interesting new strategy.



France’s anti-government “yellow vest” protesters are to put forward a list of candidates to run in upcoming European Parliament elections, it said on Wednesday.



I'm not sure whether this is a good thing, or a bad thing, but it shows that the movement still has legs. This isn't gonna go away.

Interestingly, the tax policies of the anti-globalist/populist Trump and the globalist/neoliberal darling Macron have the exact same outcome, benefiting the exact same 1%.

What does that have to do with Davos?

Davos is the capital of the McResistance.



If you are looking for the central hub or nexus of opposition to Donald Trump's presidency and insight into the minds of his most vocal critics at home and abroad, look no further than the 2019 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

I have written previously that Davos serves as an annual reminder that the smartest people in the world are actually all morons. This was putting it too kindly.

That covers the fake #Resistance, but what about the fake populism?

Well, Davos has that covered too.



So when Schwab publicly throws globalism under the bus, sounding like a leftist university professor while he’s at it, it’s worth paying attention. In the run-up to the 2019 World Economic Forum, Schwab wrote an article in which he declared that “Globalism is an ideology that prioritizes the neoliberal global order over national interests.” Schwab, like the broader Davos set, is trying to adjust to the age of populism. But that’s not to suggest they’re surrendering to it. Quite the opposite: Schwab’s anti-globalist shift is a hijacking attempt. It shows how corporate elites are trying to accommodate nationalist populism while still maximizing their own personal gains—which, of course, come at the expense of the very masses they’re attempting to appeal to.

The theme of WEF is “Globalization 4.0”.

Do you think these people have any interest at all in compromise? In sharing a tiny share of their wealth?

As professor Mark Blyth explained, the Hamptons are not a defensible position.