The rich have found a new way to get one up on other rich people: parading their social consciences and insisting that the government takes their money

The wealthy have a new dominant image. It is caring, responsible and even angry about poverty, especially in developing countries. This image is often out of kilter with reality: most wealthy people want to increase, guard and pass on their wealth undisturbed. But, at present, the vogue is for saying and even doing the opposite.

There are many people who are now wealthy: the number of billionaires in the UK has gone up two and a half times in the past decade, the number of millionaires ten times. Many middle-class families, especially in London and the surrounding regions, who do not feel themselves to be rich, are worth a million or two because of property values and investments.

They no longer have a very obvious enemy. Twenty years ago, they did: in the form of organised labour, and a leftist-inclined Labour Party. The failure of the labour movement to cohere around a credible programme of reform in the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a period in which wealth and its rights were aggressively promoted.

The public figures of that time, who bore the heat of the ideological conflict - especially in the heroic, early years of the Thatcher governments - were people such as Walter Goldsmith and John Hoskyns of the Institute of Directors; Ralph Harris of the Institute of Economic Affairs; Keith Joseph, the most ideologically aware member of the cabinet; Lord (David) Young, drafted into the cabinet to bring a more businesslike approach; and Ian McGregor, drafted in to downsize British Steel and the National Coal Board.

Nearly all were or had been business people who had battled with the unions. They believed that the state was best smallest; that wealth needed more incentives than then existed to be thought worth making; and that, if it was set free, it would create rapid growth, which would benefit everyone. Implicit in this was that the wealthy would benefit disproportionately; but it was genuinely felt by many that only in this way could wealth increase for all.

It is difficult to tell if they were right, and it may never be wholly possible. Poor people may have seen modest increases in their living standards; but the rich saw large increases, and as for the very rich, they were and are in paradise. In the best study done on this, in the US at the end of last year, the Institute for Policy Studies' Executive Excess shows that pay for chief executives grew by 535 per cent in the 1990s, compared to a 297 per cent rise in the stocks of the top 500 companies, a 116 per cent rise in corporate profits and a 32 per cent rise in workers' pay (before inflation).

"If average pay for production workers had grown at the same rate as it has for CEOs during this boom," comments the report, "instead of barely outpacing inflation, their 1999 annual earnings would have been $114,035 instead of $23,753. If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay, it would now be $24.13 an hour, instead of $5.15."

This bonanza, which has been broadly the case throughout the rich world (though with striking differences between states) has had one marked, and partly perverse, effect. It has made some of the rich feel guilty. Put less pejoratively, it has made them aware of social responsibilities and given them resources with which to serve these; put more pejoratively, it has suggested to them a different way of creating envy in others, above all, other rich people.

As Thorstein Veblen wrote in his Theory of the Leisure Class: "The motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation. . . "

It has long been the case that, during certain periods, the wealthy look for a distinction based not on status and the trappings of wealth, but on good works. This was particularly true of early-20th-century America - and is true again today.

A shaft of light was shone upon this world recently at a presentation to an audience of advertising executives and media researchers of the latest "VIPer research" - research, that is, for very important (and rich) people. These are the people whom advertisers seek most avidly: the VIPer research, using an array of increasingly sophisticated devices derived from Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis, seeks to give them a differentiated picture of the people who make up some 17 per cent of the population, 3 per cent being As (these would include an admiral, a bishop, the head teacher of a large school, a chief executive) and some 14 per cent being Bs (who would include a bank manager, a detective inspector or a middle manager).

A survey done of some 2,000 "VIPers" showed that they were a caring bunch. When questioned on their attitudes, 60 per cent were critical of the present government, but more thought the opposition was worse; 66 per cent said they would pay more tax for the National Health Service; and 70 per cent said they would pay more for the environment.

A video of exceptional banality screened to the advertising people showed a number of VIPers saying things like: "I get a lot of money, but the most important thing is to look after my family" or "You can only live in one house and drive one car - perhaps the excessive consumerism of my thirties and forties has been ditched."

In discussions with VIPers, the market research company SBA Associates found that the "ultimate aim of this group is not to be unconditionally wealthy, but to get a balance, and to have mental wealth, seen as more important than material wealth".

When the AB group was broken down by the latest research tools - including a system called Semiometrie, which uses psychological techniques to elicit a "mental map" of the respondents - it was found that a substantial group were in the so-called "successful with a conscience" category, which (unlike many of their high-earning fellows) eschewed over-conspicuous consumption in favour of a sometimes feverish search for good works to do.

Wealth was no longer seen as bolstering a certain status; class was no longer automatically middle or upper, since many had working-class roots; work, at least in the earlier to middle years, inspired an almost religious dedication; voting habits were no longer automatically to the right. Indeed, on most social/sexual issues, the attitude was liberal, even libertarian. Strong Conservatives were largely confined to a sub-group named "country casuals" - who lived out of London, worked less than the rest, had wealth in the family and disliked much of modern life.

This liberal, comfortable group has sustained and produced from its ranks the New Governing Class - not just the government, but the people who are its strongest supporters and backers, the people who are chosen for its committees and who believe in and develop its projects. In his pamphlet The Great and the Good?, Martin McElwee of the Centre for Policy Studies showed how the worlds of the law, media, the arts, academia and some service and financial sectors had produced cadres and sponsors for new Labour who were "influential, high-profile, intelligent and impressed always by the 'new' ".

The richer among them - such as Lords Alli, Gavron, Hamlyn, Haskins, Hollick, Levy, Paul, Puttnam, Sainsbury - have given many millions to the Labour Party, and do still; they, and others less rich, serve on a network of commissions and committees. A few among them, such as Lords Paul and Sainsbury, inherited substantial businesses that they expanded; most were self-made. In less than two decades, a large slice of the entrepreneurial sector who are interested in being public figures has swung to, and so far largely remains, Labour.

Within this group, as the VIPer research seems to show, there is a consensus or at any rate, the basis for a consensus on tax: that is, that it should not be decreased further, at least not for them. They agree that more should be spent on public services, and that tax cuts should be targeted at the lower earners - largely the present direction of government financial policy. Most attention is given to the alleged or real gross indecencies of some of the large supporters in this class - such as the Hinduja brothers' lobbying for passports, or Bernie Ecclestone's lobbying for a relaxation on the ban of tobacco advertising for Formula One racing - but these are misleading if taken as an index of a trend. The trend is broadly and mildly social democratic.

The power of this group is in evidence now in the US. George W Bush wants a tax cut of $1.6trn over the next decade. One of the first taxes he has fixed on is one that has long been a bugbear of the right - the estates tax, paid on the transfer of large estates to heirs on the death of their owners, which falls exclusively on the richest 2 per cent of US taxpayers.

This proposal has sparked off one of the most remarkable civic movements yet to appear in the US. It is called the Responsible Wealthy and it sees the estates tax as the central issue in a campaign aimed at reversing some of the gains the rich have made in the past decade - a campaign run by the gainers.

The most prominent activists are small- business owners, or former chief executives; but the group has attracted famous names, including the billionaire financier Warren Buffet and William H Gates Sr, father of the world's richest man. Gates Sr wrote in the New York Times that, ever since "I heard someone was trying to repeal the estates tax, I have been angry".

The fear of growing social division gives the Responsible Wealthy levers other than altruism to back up its campaign. There is a certain amount of self-interest in its attempt to quell the rising anger of the excluded. The emblematic billionaires of the Clinton period were those such as Ted Turner, George Soros and Gates Jr himself, who gave billions to various national and international causes with an anxious dedication worthy of the Rockefellers, Mellons and Carnegies of a century before. They did so in the realisation that society had grown more discerning of their accumulated wealth, and less patient in seeing it as the nature of things.

At the same time, the general rise in executive pay in the private sector is now, in all advanced economies, stripping the public sector of highly motivated managers, especially younger ones. The US Executive Excess 2000 research showed that some 65 per cent of senior civil servants would retire over the next four years - leaving government recruiters with the challenge of tempting people with high skills to come into a sector which the new administration believes should anyway be cut back.

The Responsible Wealthy has no cognate in Britain. There is, at present, no need: the rich with a social conscience are amply rewarded - and they amply reward in turn the present government, which admires their responsibility and relieves them of as much of their wealth as it decently can. But come - at some point - a Conservative victory, it would meet significant opposition from those who would benefit most if the incoming administration tried to institute tax cuts.

It is a far cry from the organised labour movement determined to protect its gains that faced Edward Heath in 1970 and Margaret Thatcher in 1979, when they took office. But at present it is rather more influential, and more frightening, to both right and left.

The power of this group is in evidence now in the US. George W Bush wants a tax cut of $1.6trn over the next decade. One of the first taxes he has fixed on is one that has long been a bugbear of the right - the estates tax, paid on the transfer of large estates to heirs on the death of their owners, which falls exclusively on the richest 2 per cent of US taxpayers.

This proposal has sparked off one of the most remarkable civic movements yet to appear in the US. It is called the Responsible Wealthy and it sees the estates tax as the central issue in a campaign aimed at reversing some of the gains the rich have made in the past decade - a campaign run by the gainers.

The most prominent activists are small- business owners, or former chief executives; but the group has attracted famous names, including the billionaire financier Warren Buffet and William H Gates Sr, father of the world's richest man. Gates Sr wrote in the New York Times that, ever since "I heard someone was trying to repeal the estates tax, I have been angry".

The fear of growing social division gives the Responsible Wealthy levers other than altruism to back up its campaign. There is a certain amount of self-interest in its attempt to quell the rising anger of the excluded. The emblematic billionaires of the Clinton period were those such as Ted Turner, George Soros and Gates Jr himself, who gave billions to various national and international causes with an anxious dedication worthy of the Rockefellers, Mellons and Carnegies of a century before. They did so in the realisation that society had grown more discerning of their accumulated wealth, and less patient in seeing it as the nature of things.

At the same time, the general rise in executive pay in the private sector is now, in all advanced economies, stripping the public sector of highly motivated managers, especially younger ones. The US Executive Excess 2000 research showed that some 65 per cent of senior civil servants would retire over the next four years - leaving government recruiters with the challenge of tempting people with high skills to come into a sector which the new administration believes should anyway be cut back.

The Responsible Wealthy has no cognate in Britain. There is, at present, no need: the rich with a social conscience are amply rewarded - and they amply reward in turn the present government, which admires their responsibility and relieves them of as much of their wealth as it decently can. But come - at some point - a Conservative victory, it would meet significant opposition from those who would benefit most if the incoming administration tried to institute tax cuts.

It is a far cry from the organised labour movement determined to protect its gains that faced Edward Heath in 1970 and Margaret Thatcher in 1979, when they took office. But at present it is rather more influential, and more frightening, to both right and left.

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