Tom Perkins: "The Creative One Percent Are Threatened"

Tom Perkins
Photo: AP, from sfgate.com

Tom Perkins, something of an eminence grise among Silicon Valley's venture capital set, recently sent a controversial, three-paragraph submission to The Wall Street Journal's Letters to the Editor which managed to cause a media feeding frenzy. In his letter, Perkins alleged that progressive American political attempts to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans were analogous to the Nazi's anti-Semitic activities on Kristallnacht.

Perkins followed up this broadside with an interview on Bloomberg. His comments during the session were quite possibly more alarming than the disturbingly poor judgment Perkins demonstrated in his missive to the Journal.

His most revealing comments included his characterization of the richest Americans as "the creative one percent." I suppose that leaves over 195 million citizens of The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as mindless cannon fodder for the wealthy's wizardry. In that sense, Perkins is very much in tune with big tech's data exploiters, who contemptuously disregard American citizens' right to privacy in the name of "creativity," "progress," and profit. "Creativity" generates its own rights that do not always adhere to the so-called rule of law.

Image: bn.com

Perkins felt strongly that the wealthiest Americans were the nation's principal job creators. At one point, he claimed Silicon Valley had created more than one million jobs. He did not mention the jobs that technological "progress" had wiped out, leaving many millions of Americans facing a diminished standard of living. Perkins did not allude to the tech industry's cynical focus on the globalization of production, which directly led to loss of American jobs to cheaper overseas labor.

Perkins' belief that supremely wealthy individuals generate new employment opportunities was shared by Michael Bloomberg during his twelve years as New York's mayor. This notion was a key conceptual hook in Hizzoner's drive to complete the transformation of classist Manhattan into a cross between Monaco and Las Vegas, while encouraging a Parisian Left Bank-style enclave in Whole Foods Brooklyn. How many jobs did these fabulously rich "citizens of the world" contribute to the Big Apple? Damn few, unless you count takeout delivery coolie labor and underpaid domestics as signs of economic "progress."

The Silicon Valley sage also stated his belief that Silicon Valley's psychological and material bubble was a very desirable state of affairs. Perkins felt that this wealthy, tech-centric, no-holds-barred playpen was essential to any sort of societal "progress." The inference was that high tech's engineers would lead the way into a certainly wonderful future. Other professions (such as medicine), a sense of communal initiative, and of course non-tech thinking simply did not register. What if you were a poet, a surgeon, a social worker, or a small business owner (of course, Valley enterprises are something more than just mom and pops)? Well, tough darts: you were just a ninety-nine percenter -- someone who would need the one percent's Midas touch to lift them into....well, just what?

And there's the rub. Perkins' vision of a just society revolves around getting rich in a world where libertarian ideals rule the day. While it's an alluring vision from the penthouse, it's an unappealing vista from the ground floor. Unfortunately for Perkins, the ninety-nine percenters are not buying his vision. I suppose if Perkins is looking for solace, he can call up Mitt Romney and compare notes.