The Birth of the New American Aristocracy

The Atlantic ^ | June 2018 | Matthew Stewart

[proxy_user]

I’ve joined a new aristocracy now, even if we still call ourselves meritocratic winners. If you are a typical reader of The Atlantic, you may well be a member too. (And if you’re not a member, my hope is that you will find the story of this new class even more interesting—if also more alarming.) To be sure, there is a lot to admire about my new group, which I’ll call—for reasons you’ll soon see—the 9.9 percent. We’ve dropped the old dress codes, put our faith in facts, and are (somewhat) more varied in skin tone and ethnicity. People like me, who have waning memories of life in an earlier ruling caste, are the exception, not the rule.

By any sociological or financial measure, it’s good to be us. It’s even better to be our kids. In our health, family life, friendship networks, and level of education, not to mention money, we are crushing the competition below. But we do have a blind spot, and it is located right in the center of the mirror: We seem to be the last to notice just how rapidly we’ve morphed, or what we’ve morphed into.

The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children. We are not innocent bystanders to the growing concentration of wealth in our time. We are the principal accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy. Our delusions of merit now prevent us from recognizing the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents...

[proxy_user]

I cannot do justice to this article in a brief excerpt, so I invite you to read the whole (long) piece before commenting.

It is an excellent summary of the upper-middle-class in the US today, and explains how they use their political power to maintain their status....and how this eventually led to enough resentment to elect Donald Trump.

Read it!

[DiogenesLamp]

The Birth of the New American Aristocracy

I think that all started around 1861. Ever hear of the "Robber Barons"? "Barons". Get it?

[Mariner]

This smug bastard would read far better from the end of a rope.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

This is something that Charles Murray wrote about over a decade ago.

And he was dubbed a racist for doing so.

[Pearls Before Swine]

He’s got a lot of interesting facts and a lot of wrong conclusions.

For one thing, he may be in the 10%, or even in the top few percent, but he’s completely guilt ridden. There was wealth and success in prior generations of his family, some of it wasted. And, he’s rather shallow about his own conduct. “Should I hire an expensive college fixer and tutor for my high school daughter?”

He laments inequality in our society, which has been growing, although it fluctuates over the years. But, his prescription is equality of financial results through high taxes. He resents his ancestors.

Those of us who came from humbler origins and worked and saved our way to a pretty good position suffer from far less guilt.

[Huskrrrr]

I started college with a friend from high school. His lower class father worked hard to offer his son a full ride college education at a state school. As did mine. Neither of our parents had ever attended college. My friend spent his opportunity tuning in, turning on and dropping out. He’s worked the same dead end job for the last 45 years. I chose a different path, which led me to the top 1%. Choices are what it’s all about. No guilt here. Not for a second.

[x]

I read the other day that the academic gap between the rich and the middle class is as large as the gap between the middle class and the poor (and the gap between rich and poor is twice as large as the gap between black and white).

And while the achievement gap between the poor and the middle class has been narrowing, the gap between the middle class and the rich has been widening.

That is very different from how things were not so far back. In those days, the playing field between the middle class and rich was more level and the poor weren't so academically demoralized as they are today.

Fifty or sixty years ago, colleges like Harvard and Yale ceased to be preserves of the rich and idle and opened up to the ambitious of other classes, but over the last twenty or thirty years, the new rich (and what remains of the old rich) have retaken the elite institutions and become a self-perpetuating class.

Of course, it's not wholly unearned. The elite work. They prepare. But they have more opportunities and take advantage of them. It seems like others lower down are too stressed and burnt out to compete with the privileged.

[Sequoyah101]

Same. Left home with an education i paid for by working at all the jobs i could find, everything i owned in the toolbox of my pickup and passenger side and about $300.

I dont owe anybody a thing, never had to backup for my pay, never took a thing i did not earn first, never compromised ethics or morals, never stooped for anybody. I am grateful for good parents and opportunity.

Too old soon to late smart on some things but no regrets. Ive learned a lot.

[nopardons]

Okay, I read it...READ ALL OF IT, and this supercilious SOB is just full of it! The is unalloyed HORSESHIT, written by someone who is actually a little NOBODY with a vastly inflated ego, who may have gone to school for far too long, but is still an uneducated boob, who has less than no idea what an old fashioned governess actually did; which was basically a "private" tutor/teacher!

This misguided and specious spew, is just PC "virtue signalling" garbage !

[nopardons]

You're wrong and really don't know what you're talking about.

Oh yooooooooo hooooooooo...AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!

The G.I. Bill is what got many more people, of the middle class, into the IVY LEAGUE and other colleges than anything before!

Until the '60s, the vast majority of jobs didn't require a person to have a college degree to get one and/or rise in a company/career!

Most people, even those from the 0.0001% didn't go to college, until BABY BOOMERS came along and their parents were encouraged to send their kiddos to college.

The wealth gap, between the wealthy and even the upper middle class, has been GIGANTIC...for most of the history of this nation; it is NOT a "recent" development.

[reed13k]

I have done better than most in my HS class. I worked hard, kept my nose clean, and took every opportunity that presented itself.

But I did rub elbows with those from a higher social rung that demonstrated very clearly they received preference and breaks that others were not afforded.

At USNA I watched as admirals kids were let off with restriction when others were booted out of school. On active duty saw officers afforded opportunities due to connections for which others were better qualified.

In civilian life I’ve seen similar with internships going to connected kids, promotions to ‘yes men’, and the crappy jobs going to the ones who get things done while the leadership knows he won’t be promoted but only relied on.

I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve set my kids on a path to success but with an understanding I didn’t have to approach the world with your dreams - and a healthy dose of cynicism. They’ll do better than I.

[Sequoyah101]

Writers write and talkers talk. It is all about money.

I got real tired of reading this real fast.

No sale.

[blueunicorn6]

Aaaahhhhhh.....

The Atlantic.

The Atlantic is filled with garbage and sewage and old crabs.

It’s also the name of an ocean.

[Sequoyah101]

Sounds like youve lived a healthy realistic life.

I know the life of one who gets things done reliably. I finally got the guts to create my own job, system, rules and company. People who need things done will pay well to have them done over and over well and reliably. Staying in corpocracy is the life of a comfortable, unhappy, unfulfilled lackey.

[Huskrrrr]

Yes, good points. I don’t deny that there is seldom a level playing field. I was fortunate to work for a boss who promoted based on merit, not just based on an ivy league pedigree identical to his. For most companies I’ve worked for, those who create wealth for the company are guided to the fast track. Idea men not yes men make it to the top. I wish that was true everywhere

[beef]

What is this guys point? That it is a bad thing that parents love their kids and want them to do well? What is hell is he going to do about that?

I think it is pretty clear that our problem is the breakdown of the traditional family. If EVERY kid had a mother and a father that gave a sh!t i.e. parents that want them to do well, we would be so much happier and so far ahead of the rest of the world that it would not be funny. As our President would say, we would be sick of winning. There are certainly other issues (the disproportional influence of the Ivy League being one), but if that one problem could be fixed, solutions would be found for the rest. I really believe that.

[Pollster1]

Same here. I created a company from scratch. This snob may say, “you didn’t build that”, or was that another elitist snob’s phrase? But I did build it. I worked 12 hour days on my weekends, with a whole lot of 16 hour days on weekdays for a decade. I built that. No guilt. No luck involved. Just hard work and taking responsibility for top-quality results and meeting deadlines.

And my kids? Very good schools. Good colleges, where they earned their admissions. Good jobs, where I never pulled strings. I was not going to raise princes and princesses. I raised Americans. They can all shoot. They can all change a tire and their own oil. They are all conservatives. I am proud of them.

[marktwain]

Complete B.S.

It talks all about percentages, without considering absolutes.

If everyone is better off, who cares if the top is much higher?

I strongly suspect that a significant amount of gap from lower to higher economic wealth is necessary for innovation and increases in efficency.

You cannot have the great innovations and efficiencies in an age such as ours without allowing people to gain significantly.

The article is thinly disguised socialist zero sum game B.S.

[marktwain]

Here is my essay on how to become a member of the new nobility, written in 2013.

I think it offers more helpful advice:

https://www.ammoland.com/2013/10/how-to-become-a-member-of-the-new-nobility/

[Lysandru]

There are some nuggets of insight here. But he reaches some dubious conclusions.

Let's look at family structure. The 9.9% usually have healthy nuclear families (per this guy's own numbers)--not "alternative" families. And we have taken away the moral shame with single motherhood. So, as another article that I read years ago put it, "why isn't the upper middle class preaching what it practices?"

Frankly, the trades are a good spot in my view right now. Lots of people are going deep into debt for diplomas in bogus disciplines. But go become a plumber or electrician and you can make decent money without the debt.

By the way, how many of these Ivy League attorneys and brokers and doctors majored Womyn's Studies or Racial Pandering?

At least the writer had the wits to understand that the Average Joes out there are tired of being the losers in The New Economy. What he missed is how they also despise how their "betters" lecture them.