[rbranson]

Why do people even pay attention to this drivel? Who is going to dream up their fancy meals, drive their fancy cars, clean their fancy housing, and manage their financial empire? This just touches the surface. Who's going to educate the middle class they depend on for execution, protect their property and legal rights? The rich have more to gain through society, law, and government than any other class.

[kd0amg]

The article's claim isn't that they don't need the middle and lower classes, just that they don't need the American middle and lower classes (instead, what they need from those classes can come from foreigners).

[muhfuhkuh]

I would love to see an American (even a rich one) navigate (for example) China's business atmosphere and not end up stymied.

I'm often reminded, when someone claims to have the "secret" to some other country's vast "untapped" market, to an interview with Jack Welch when he was still at the helm of General Electric.

Much earlier on, he knew of China's burgeoning economy, and wanted GE to be at the forefront of it, marketing products bearing their service mark on all manner of product. They decided to start with light bulbs, and picked out a plot of land in an industrial area of Northern china and started making them. Within just a few years, China went from the typical 4-5 light bulb companies or factories (which Welch indicates is the norm for any market regardless of population) to 2,700. Every mayor of every town in the nearby area decided to poach one worker from GE's factory, replicate the manufacturing process, secured funding from Central Bank for machines to make bulbs from the US, and set to work competing directly against GE.

Somehow, I don't think China is any kind of market for anyone but the Chinese. Call me crazy.