Can you ever really trust rich people?

Sure, there are some around who tread carefully, sound socially responsible and don't go nuts.  

But - Elon Musk, obviously.

And now, I'm wondering about this Scott Bessent, (worth about half a billion, apparently) who I knew nothing about until this tariff meltdown.

I mean, Wikipedia indicates that he used to have decent Democrat supporting credentials (originally worked for Soros, supported by donations Gore, Hilary Clinton and Obama.)  Now he works for Trump.

Despite rumours (JC at New Catallaxy referenced them, but I think I have seen it said online too) that he's privately freaking out about how Trump has dealt with his tariff scheme, there is no indication of that at all in his public appearances - he went on Tucker Carlson to defend the whole scheme, talking about the need for a complete recreation of American trade, etc.   And look at the reference to him in this article from WAPO, about how the MAGA Right has gone all Maoist:

Recently, a viral meme in MAGA circles captured the moment, featuring a cartoon Trump addressing a faceless American: “Your great grandfather worked the mines, your grandfather worked in a steel plant, and you thought you could be a ‘product manager’ ???” It’s a joke, but it’s also a worldview — one where white-collar ambition is seen not as a step forward, but as a fall into decadence. The meme doesn’t just mock digital work; it exalts physical labor as the only authentic form of contribution. 

What we’re seeing is a kind of MAGA Maoism, remixed for the algorithm age. Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology. As one MAGA influencer put it, “Men in America don’t need therapy. Men in America need tariffs and DOGE. The fake email jobs will disappear.”

This style, what some might call online pastoralism, is no longer fringe. It is a governing strategy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently hinted to Tucker Carlson that the administration plans to restock America’s factories with recently fired federal workers. It’s a sharp evolution of the old MAGA line, which claimed elites abandoned the working class by offshoring jobs and hoarding the degrees that powered the new economy. Now, those same college-educated liberals once seen as the future of work are being recast as its obstacle.

This new turn is also punitive: It challenges the idea drilled into millennial and Gen Z brains — especially immigrant families, like my own — that education and meritocracy are the path to the American Dream. It says not only that you were left behind, but that you were wrong to try to get ahead. Populists used to share memes about miners who were condescendingly told to “learn to code” while their towns struggled. The coders, in this updated version, need to be thrown back in the mines.

I don't trust him in the slightest.