Donald Trump’s administration will be the most affluent ever. Estimates are imprecise because we don’t even know the president-elect’s true net worth, but the wealth of his cabinet picks so far range from $12bn to $35bn. At the very least, this quadruples that of the Obama cabinet. But more than just representing his friends, loyalists and family, the natural alliances among these people, their hallowed predispositions, will impact the policies they form.



We know the dangers of this skewed power. Before F Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, he published The Rich Boy, a 1924 short story, in which the narrator says: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me ... They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.”



Fitzgerald questioned the moral and ethical vacuity of the rich in his works. His work was first penned in the glitz of the roaring 1920s. Then, the wealthiest citizens clanked champagne flutes to their own good fortunes, while the majority of the population struggled in the proverbial alleyways. Is it really so different today?

Despite all his populist slogans, Trump was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. He understands having money because he never had to understand not having money. He understands bending the rules because he’s made money doing that. He became president doing that. He boasted about it during the election.



He gravitates to people similar to him, billionaires and up and coming millionaires. His cabinet choices are pedigreed and skilled at using the government to their profit advantage. We are supposed to believe that because they know how that game is played, that as public officials they will divert those talents on our behalf. The only fly in that ointment is that they have no reason to do so.



We have Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary nominee, whose hedge fund took over a California bank in 2009 on the cheap, got the government to back the risk of the deal and proceeded to foreclose on 36,000 homes between 2009-2015, reaping a profit for him and his group of around $1.5bn. He’s not going to regulate the industry that handed him that windfall. Then, there’s Commerce secretary nominee Wilbur Ross who made billions taking over flailing steel and other industrial companies, pushing costs like pension payments onto the government and firing people in the process. He’s not about to advocate for unions or higher minimum wages or equal pay for women in the workplace.

Education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos never went to, nor sent her children to, public schools. So you can bet she won’t be advocating for federal funds to elevate conditions for the middle or poorer classes that attend them. Transportation secretary nominee (and millionaire) Elaine Chao is on the board of Wells Fargo which engaged in scamming its customers for years.

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She will likely be given a carte blanche on road and bridge privatization, not necessarily public funding for them, which will enable Wall Street to securitize the profits. It’s said that given her marriage to Senate Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell, she’ll be able to convince him to push for infrastructure spending on roads and highways, but it’s more likely the big industrial and construction companies will get sweetheart government contracts that will somehow come out of our pockets in the process.



The rest of his cabinet either has similar bends or remains to be filled, but the themes can be examined under the auspices of what keeps the powerful in power, and that is simply: not to share it. The deregulation of Wall Street and other industries, reduction of transparency in reporting, the cutting of corporate taxes which push the tax and debt burden onto the rest of the population, are not simply policy choices. They are strategies of a power elite that wants to preserve itself, at any cost to the rest of us.



In the wake of the Great Depression, Fitzgerald, who attended Princeton, but hailed from poorer roots than many of his classmates, went on to say: “I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich, and it has colored my entire life and works.” We won’t be able to forgive the rich in Trump’s cabinet either – especially if they continue to ignore the needs of the 99%.