Interviewed as part of an extraordinary New Yorker investigation into growing anxiety among America\u2019s corporate elite<\/strong><\/a> over the potential for anarchic social collapse<\/strong>, Institute President Robert Johnson<\/a> saw his peers\u2019 talk of bolt-holes in New Zealand as reflecting a deeper crisis.<\/strong><\/p>\n Johnson told writer Evan Osnos of the mounting anxiety he had encountered among hedge-fund managers and other wealthy Americans he knew.<\/p>\n \u201cMore and more were saying, \u2018You\u2019ve got to have a private plane,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cYou have to assure that the pilot\u2019s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Osnos writes:<\/p>\n \u201cBy January, 2015, Johnson was sounding the alarm: the tensions produced by acute income inequality were becoming so pronounced that some of the world\u2019s wealthiest people were taking steps to protect themselves.<\/strong> At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Johnson told the audience, \u2018I know hedge-fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.\u2019 \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Johnson bemoaned the lack of a \u201cspirit of stewardship\u201d and openness to more aggressively redistributive tax policy among the wealthy.<\/p>\n \u201cTwenty-five hedge-fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined,\u201d he told the New Yorker.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cBeing one of those twenty-five doesn\u2019t feel good. I think they\u2019ve developed a heightened sensitivity.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n If anything, Osnos wrote, inequality is widening, noting recent statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research that showed that while incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans have nearly tripled, half of the population was earning at the same level they did in 1980, comparing America\u2019s wealth gap to that seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we had a more equal distribution of income, and much more money and energy going into public school systems, parks and recreation, the arts, and health care, it could take an awful lot of sting out of society,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe\u2019ve largely dismantled those things.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He saw elite anxiety as an indicator America\u2019s social crisis. \u00a0<\/strong><\/u><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhy do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?\u201d<\/strong> Johnson said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWhat does that really tell us about our system? It\u2019s a very odd thing. You\u2019re basically seeing that the people who\u2019ve been the best at reading the tea leaves\u2014the ones with the most resources, because that\u2019s how they made their money\u2014are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/user3303\/imageroot\/2017\/01\/23\/20170125_NZD1_0.png\")
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