Do we have the Davos "elites" on the run?

Not yet. But there are signs.

The transnational corporate and political elite were back in Davos, Switzerland, from January 16-20 for their annual conclave amid the most severe crisis of global capitalism since the founding of the World Economic Forum half a century ago. In earlier years, participants in the exclusive gathering jet-setted into the Swiss resort town exuding confidence in the hegemony of global capitalism. But this time around, uncertainty over their ability to manage the crisis, maintain control, restabilize global capitalism and rebuild fractured consensus in their ranks was on full display.

The World Economic Forum served as a premier clearinghouse and planning body of the transnational capitalist class and its political allies during the heyday of capitalist globalization. But now the ruling groups appear to be in permanent crisis management. The Davos elite are acutely aware that global capitalism faces a series of interlinked crises — what the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risks Report for 2023 termed a “polycrisis.” The world is facing “inflation, cost-of-living crises, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear war,” warned the report. These risks are “amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape, including unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and deglobalization, a decline in human development after decades of progress, rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies, and the growing pressure of climate change impacts.” Together, “these are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent decade to come,” it concluded. - Truthout

The real cost of constantly aggrandizing the ultra-rich

This is part of it. You also have to add in the corporate welfare (including the majority of "defense" spending) and so forth.

Over the next few decades, the richest American families could avoid paying about $8.4 trillion in taxes, or more than four times the cost of the stalled Build Back Better package, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Americans for Tax Fairness report—entitled Dynasty Trusts: Giant Tax Loopholes that Supercharge Wealth Accumulation—urges Congress to fix the federal tax code to address dynastic wealth.

The new analysis details how loopholes have made the payment of estate, gift, and generation-skipping taxes—collectively called wealth-transfer taxes—effectively optional for the "ultrawealthy" and thereby accelerate the "accumulation of dynastic wealth."

"Ultrarich families use dynasty trusts—the term for a variety of wealth-accumulating structures that remain in place for multiple generations—to ensure their fortunes cascade down to children, grandchildren, and beyond undiminished by wealth-transfer taxes," the report explains. - Common Dreams

The big "backlash" vs. tech has unfortunately gone nowhere

There needs to be a lot more, and much better focused, effort.

After three and a half years, the U.S. backlash against tech's biggest firms has failed to dent or daunt them.

The big picture: Today, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook are massively richer, more powerful and more determined to push their products and services deeper into our lives than they were in January 2018, when Axios first used the term "techlash."

Since then, the companies have run a gauntlet of withering criticism and government complaints that they violate users' privacy, dull kids' brains, cheat their competitors, and undermine American democracy. - Axios

We'll see, about "suspended" corporate political donations

You know plenty are thinking this will all probably blow over by 2022, certainly by 2024, and it will be back to shoveling the cash to whoever will follow orders.

The companies withdrawals also mean less in an era when corporate political giving represents a shrinking share of overall political spending: the Center for Responsive Politics estimates that only about 5 percent of money donated in the 2020 election came from corporate PACs, an “all-time low.”

Kelleher says the corporations’ announcements seem more like “a PR stunt” than a consequential stand. The first quarter after a presidential election is typically when corporate political giving is already the lowest, he notes, so it’s unclear just how much money the targeted lawmakers will actually lose. Many of the companies have been unclear about how long their suspensions will last.

And since Kelleher says large companies typically plan their political giving a year or even two in advance, the cut-off lawmakers may not have actually been in the companies’ plans. “They know going into 2021 how much they have estimated they’re going to give, to who, and when. So let them disclose that information, and tell the public exactly which contributions they’re no longer going to make,” Kelleher says. “Until and unless they do that everybody should be deeply skeptical of the genuineness of what is so far a PR campaign.” - Mother Jones

Rich kid admissions scandal shows walloping corporate media double standard

I went to Stanford, back when the odds of getting in were a lot shorter. I doubt they’d let my sorry butt near the place, now. Anyway, what most strikes me about the admissions scandal that broke yesterday is the play it's getting in corporate media. Front page headlines, top of the newscasts. They know it’s a good hook.

Just because a handful of B (at best) list celebrities are involved? I don’t think so. They know damn well the public is sick of being screwed over by the rich man/woman, and this is a chance to play into that.

But when you get into wealth and politics, they’re a whole lot less eager to tell it like it is. How often does the wealth of Congress - and therefore the fact that a large majority thereof, especially in the Senate, from both parties, have little incentive to really change a status quo that has been very good for them - make big headlines? And that affects most people’s lives a lot more than who gets into Stanford or Yale.

Of course plenty of people are giving the plutocracy the attention it deserves, on progressive websites and in books. (Here's a relevant item I happen to have ready to hand.) But those are still not where most people get their information.