I strongly encourage you to read Michael Lind’s explication of the events of the last several decades in American Affairs which I find credible. In it he turns for inspiration to the “managerial class” analysis of James Burnham. Here’s a snippet:
If the United States is growing less willing to act as “the patsy†(Martin Wolf’s term), offering unreciprocated access to its markets for the goods of mercantilist states at the expense of its own producers, and if no other major nation or bloc is willing to be a similar “patsy,†then the kind of parasitic export-oriented strategy pursued by Japan, the Little Tigers, China, and Germany cannot succeed. At the same time, classic import substitution strategies, like the radical renationalization strategy discussed above, are also rejected by the major economic powers, because they seek markets for goods and services beyond their borders to reap the benefits of scale in increasing-returns industries. By default, then, the economic system in a world of multiple great-power blocs is likely to resemble that of the European colonial empires.
If he’s right Metropolis will look increasingly like current events over the coming years. The residents of the Eternal Gardens much more closely resemble Burnham’s “managers” than they do Marx’s “capitalists”.
What I believe the members of this managerial elite who, presumably, think of themselves as the “creative class” fail to take into account human nature. In the fullness of time they will want their children to inherit everything they have despite their children not being nearly as creative and productive as they. Additionally, maintaining their lifestyles will require incomes far beyond what can be sustained which will withdraw ever-farther into the realms of fantasy.
