Evan Osnos, Author Talks New Book

Evan Osnos, author and New Yorker staff writer, discusses his new book "The Haves and Have-Yachts." The New York Times bestseller breaks down how the ultra-rich hold more of America's wealth now than they ever did, and how a world of superyachts, luxury bunkers and political donations are ushering in a new Gilded Age with staggering disparities of wealth and power. He speaks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene and David Gura.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Evan Asto is great
to have you with a staff writer the New Yorkers.
Tom alluded to there. The new book is called The
Haves and Have Yachts Dispatches on the Ultra Rich. Congrats
on the book. Congrats also on the title, which is excellent.
Let's start with the warning that we heard from former
President Biden has prepared to leave office, he said today,

(00:22):
and oligarchy is taking shape in America, of extreme wealth,
power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our
basic rights and freedom. He sounded the alarm as he
was making his way to the exit. What has changed
when it comes to wealth inequality in this country over
the last five six months.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thanks guys, by the way, Tom, you made my day.
We live in a world, John McPhee made. I'll say
that what President Biden was getting at it is something
really important to a lot of folks. Frankly, it sounded
almost belated. Look, the good news is this country has
never been wealthier in so many respects. We are build
holding companies, were on the cusp of a new era

(01:02):
of technology and all the ways you talk about on
the show every day whether it's AI and robotics, and
yet at the same time, as you know, there are
about half of American adults who will tell you that
they don't have one thousand dollars to spend on an
emergency expense. We are at a point now. It's really
sort of similar to where we've been at moments in
our history where we have tremendous technological opportunity, huge wealth creation,

(01:26):
and we're also facing a fork in the road to
make sure that that is also not steering our government
down a path that Henry Ford used to say that
he wanted to make sure that his own employees, his
own workers, could afford the cars he was making. And
those are some of the decisions we have to be
making now.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
This is clearly a theme that has animated a lot
of your work. I look at the Osmos Ooh for
going back to your first book, Age of Ambition, Chasing Fortune,
Truth and Faith in the New China, which I read
on my first trip to Shanghai, and you re mark
then on just the abundance the amount of wealthy excitement
about wealth and upper mobility in China. As you look
at this particular book, are we looking at something that's

(02:04):
uniquely American, or has this rise of the ultra rich
and sort of shared globally.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, it's a fascinating parallel in many ways, David. I
mean I first started reading in a sense about the
American guilded age when I was living in China, because
I was trying to understand what was happening. We were
seeing railroads built at a pace we hadn't seen since
America in the nineteenth century. It's fitting in some ways
that I used The Great Gatsby when I lived in
Beijing to conceptualize it. Here we are, it's twenty twenty

(02:32):
five hundredth anniversary of that book. There are a lot
of lessons in there about how do you take that
sense of cultural energy that we might have had at
certain moments in the Roaring twenties, but also the awareness
that without making really smart choices, we're not going to
make sure that this money gets into the hands of
people who can rise with the tide.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Evan, you grew up in the crucible this Grantwich, Connecticut,
where I'm sure three kids down the street did have
Hinckley picnic boats.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
You didn't.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Your father was acclaimed within journalism, But what does the
crew do below the fancy people to try to get
their kids to motivate and have a good life and
even aspire to be richer.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I mean, this is.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Topic one right now, between the buffeting of AI the
decline of liberal arts. What do the kids do just
below those with the super yachts.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, you know, I face these questions myself. I'm a dad,
I've got two kids. I think about the challenges of
people coming out of school today and how hard it's
going to be to get those first jobs. But here's
the thing, you know, we have some pretty great models
to inspire us in terms of how to think about
being energetic, being creative. I think about Warren Buffett. He's
on our minds a lot, all of us these days.

(03:49):
You know. He talks about how much he left, how
much he will leave to his kids. He likes to say,
as you know, Tommy says, I want to leave them
enough that they can do anything, but not so much
that they can do nothing. I try, as I think
about the opportunities that are coming to say to people, Look,
it's not enough for us to just say. Elon Musk
has now crossed the four hundred billion dollar threshold We've

(04:11):
never had somebody with that kind of prosperity. Isn't that
a sin of strength? No, we have to be saying
to people, if we don't make smart choices, it's going
to end up with too many musks and perhaps not
enough buffets. And I think that's an important thing to
keep in mind.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Spare a teer for the billionaire class. But I am
interested in this element of loneliness that comes through in
your book. So if you have billionaires buying these super yachts,
they can be in isolation on the open seas. You
have another chapter or another piece that you've written about
Silicon Valley billionaires who are looking to remote New Zealand
as a place where they can go. Whether the storm,
if that's a nuclear disaster or something that's a natural disaster,

(04:48):
what explains it? And just I think the contrast is
so starked to what you were talking about a moment ago,
which is during the Gilded Age, you had billionaires, had
multi billionaires, I should say, maybe not billionaires who are
interested in philanthropy and in helping the wider population and
building libraries in towns across America. It seems like there
is a stark contrast that exists now between the aspirations
of a lot of these ultra wealthy than what we

(05:08):
saw before.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Yeah, David, you know, for the reporting for this book,
I went to New Zealand, I went to Monico. Hardship
pay was not forthcoming despite my insistence, And it was
a fascinating way of getting into the minds of people
who have succeeded. And I think what you find in
a lot of cases, and this is the surprise, is
a sense of fear. Frankly, a sense of verdigo. You know,
a lot of people will say, look, you've made all

(05:31):
the money in the world, what are you afraid of?
Why do you need to stand on the stage with
a president who you may not even necessarily ideologically agree with.
And I think what that tells us is that the
higher you get, you actually can end up feeling quite vulnerable,
quite exposed. I mean, as Silicon Valley CEO said to me,
I keep a helicopter gassed up all the time, and
I have a bunker with an air filtration system. And

(05:52):
I think that is Another former hedge fund manager said
to me, Look, there are twenty five hedge fund managers
in this country who make it more money, and by
and then all of the kindergartener teachers, and he said,
and it doesn't feel good to be one of those
twenty five. That's the vertigo