The Concierge Class consists of four categories. They’re the Magicians, the Fixers, the Pushers, and the Suppliers.
To understand this more easily, see the image at the bottom of this page.
1. The Magicians.
At the very start of the process are the magicians.
They can transport revenues across thousands of miles so that sales made in Britain seem to have happened in Luxembourg. Tiny costs can bloom when a tax loss needs to be made. Profits made on the sale of houses or business can magically disappear, and someone who lives in a big house in Chelsea can apparently be living in the tax haven of Monaco.
The magicians are lawyers, accountants and market traders. They’re the people who, charged with coming up with clever ideas to evade tax, produce methods and processes that are just within the law, and find ways to get around the laws that have been created to ensure that everyone pays their fair share.
Their impact is the biggest of all the categories, because they work ensures that massive sums of money that would otherwise go to pay for roads, hospitals, police officers and teachers and doctors get salted away into the pockets of the corporations and the wealthy.
2. The Fixers.
But corporations and the rich need structures that permit them to operate. So the next group in the concierge class are the Fixers. These are the governments that pass legislation that benefits corporations and the rich, the tax havens who drop their taxes for such people, and the bankers who smile as the core deposit their money in offshore funds.
Tax havens are particularly invidious, because they exist solely to allow the wealthy and corporations to avoid paying taxes.
Meanwhile there are the bankers, a busy bunch of people, whose daily job involves helping corporations and the wealthy to manage their money. It’s a service no one can do without. And since the banks take a thin (and sometimes not so thin) salami slice off every transaction and ever bank account, they could sleep all day and still make money.
3. The Pushers.
But all of these would be to no avail if public opinion was not in favour of the rich. So they recruit an army of pushers, whose job it is to persuade governments and public opinion that the needs are the rich and the corporations are paramount.
They spread the word that the rich have worked hard and therefore deserve to keep their money. They promote the values of dog-eat-dog, and deride the idea of community or mutual support, as these would expose the selfish behaviour and goals for corporations. The pushers include the media, the economists, and the trade associations.
It has the curious effect of persuading people, including those on the breadline, that somehow their best interests, are to support those with the most money. The pushers include the think tanks, who consist typically are bright, well educated, right-wing young men who, through selective use of research and statistics, suggest policies that benefit the needs of the rich.
Alongside them are the lobbyists, who cosy up to governments, whispering in the ears of politicians at party conferences and over private dining rooms, that they should ignore the needs of the poor and needy, and instead provide handouts to corporations.
The politicians are another group of pushers. Breathing in the rarefied air found in private members’ clubs and luxury hotels, they adopt the beliefs of the rich, and enticed by free ‘fact finding’ trips the sense a job when they leave politics. Whether in government or opposition, they speak in meetings and in debating chambers, pushing the needs of the rich.
Below this group are the ‘useful fools’ who, by accepting donations from the wealthy, serve to burnish their image. This group includes the museums and galleries, and the universities who put the names of the rich on their new campuses. Bye doing so, the often-ugly activities of the ridge, such as tax evasion, are mitigated by their apparent philanthropy, even though the rich often end up spending money on operas and art galleries.
Some scientists, too, also work on behalf of the rich, producing research reports that benefit the cause of the wealthy. The old saying ‘He pays the piper calls the tune’ is never truer than when applied to the scientists who over the decades have sought to demonstrate that smoking is harmless, that vaping is good for you, that alcohol is no more than a pleasant treat, and that pesticides are safe.
And finally the media listens to the siren voices of those that I’ve mentioned, and they package and trumpet them to their millions of readers and viewers.
4. The Suppliers
And finally, there are the Suppliers.
Being wealthy, the rich like to buy things. And so the dealers sell them fast yachts, private aeroplanes, and hulking great cars that can travel at 300 miles an hour.
They include the estate agents who sell £25 million properties in London, the retailers who sell $25,000 handbags, and the security firms who will charge you $250,000 a year to protect your family.
That’s at one end of the spectrum. At the other end, the murky world of the platform managers do home corporations in the well scene can hire workers to do one of jobs, just as the dock owners did in the Edwardian era.
And it includes the recruitment agents, who hire many of the people who will work for the rich. And sadly, the greatest number of these are the low paid people whose jobs are precarious, such as the domestic staff who are paid £10 an hour to work long days, worried that a single word or look could lead to their dismissal by the truculent business owners and employers.
These then are the four quartets of the concierge class, people who knowingly everyday benefit the corporations and the wealthy to the disadvantage of you and me.
This then is the concierge class, a disparate group who, despite being disparate, work in the service of the rich and the corporations.
They’re a machine that provides the labour, the publicity, and the labour to service and supply the needs of the wealthy.
Click the image to enlarge it.
