Well, my answer would be, It certainly seems to have become one (and not for the first time, either). Historian and political economist Francis Fukuyama gives the question full consideration in this exceptionally interesting article.
His conclusions are a bit softer and more tentative than mine would be, especially when it comes to this bit:
At some level, corrupt developing-country elites know they are getting away with murder (sometimes for real); they rarely try to justify their self-enrichment to themselves in moral terms. American elites, however, tend to believe they are helping society as a whole even as they help themselves. Thus the centrality of the efficient market hypothesis: Financiers proudly see themselves as “value creators”, not as highbrow pickpockets of widows and orphans.
I suspect that many of this type do privately see themselves as....well, maybe "highbrow pickpockets" is not the term they would use, but perhaps "clever self-enrichers"? They are true globalists in this sense: The welfare of the United States and its citizens means not a whit to them, except insofar as America is usefully the land where "a sucker is born every minute." They have offshored not only the jobs at their companies but also, to the extent they can, their own money, and their own responsibilities under American laws. In short, I think that they are generally far more cynical than Fukuyama lets on, and that they do not care much about "value creation" except as it applies to their own bank accounts. Of course, promoting concepts such as "value creation," "trickle down, " and Schumpeter's "creative destruction" is helpful to the elite class rhetorically, but we should not be misled by that.
Nonetheless, Fukuyama's essay is an important contribution, and I recommend it strongly.
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