Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: The Fascist Philosophy Behind Private Equity’s Leveraged Buyout of Everything

It’s been the same head­line for months now:
* April of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires have got­ten $280 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic
* May of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $434 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* August of 2020: Amer­i­can bil­lion­aires got $637 rich­er dur­ing the pan­dem­ic
* Sep­tem­ber of 2020: U.S. bil­lion­aires got $845 bil­lion rich­er since the start of the pan­dem­ic/Wealth of US bil­lion­aires ris­es by near­ly a third dur­ing pan­dem­ic
* Octo­ber of 2020: US bil­lion­aires saw their net worth rise by almost $1 tril­lion between March and Octo­ber — Jeff Bezos remains the rich­est, a study says.

From near­ly the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic it’s been clear that the pub­lic health dis­as­ter was­n’t a dis­as­ter for every­one, with the wealth­i­est indi­vid­u­als being not only large­ly insu­lat­ed from the eco­nom­ic lock­down but in many cas­es well posi­tioned to prof­it from it. The pan­dem­ic was turn­ing into a giant upward trans­fer of wealth. And as we’re going to see, giant upward trans­fers of wealth are essen­tial­ly what the pri­vate equi­ty indus­try is all about. The rise of ‘sup­ply-side’ eco­nom­ics in the 1980s coin­cid­ed with the rise of pri­vate equi­ty and that’s no coin­ci­dence. The phi­los­o­phy behind the pri­vate equi­ty move­ment is the phi­los­o­phy of sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics. An anti-New Deal phi­los­o­phy, where ruth­less­ness is a virtue, that fueled a 40 year giant fas­cist lever­aged buy­out of soci­ety.