Posted on 02/07/2012 12:08:27 PM PST by mojito
The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent poll that tensions over inequality in wealth now outrank tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isnt really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isnt what sets them apart or creates so much animosity toward them.
Lets take a guy call him Hank who built a successful auto-repair business and expanded it to 30 locations, and now his stake in the business is worth $100 million. He is not just in the 1%; hes in the top fraction of the 1% but hes not part of the new upper class. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didnt complete college at all. He grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didnt complete college. He now lives in a neighborhood with other rich people, but theyre mostly other people who got rich the same way he did. (The new upper class considers the glitzy mansions in his suburb to be déclassé.) He has a lot of money, but he doesnt have power or influence over national culture, politics or economy, nor does he even have any particular influence over the culture, politics or economy of the city where he lives. Hes just rich.
The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country....
What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at ideas.time.com ...
And thereby feel that they are enlightened Philosopher Kings fit to dictate the lives of us mere peons who work for a living.
To hell with them.
How did I get here?
My God, What Have I Done?
“You are making a mistake buying into the class warfare seen frequently on FR”
EXACTLY!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2843097/posts?page=21#21
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2843097/posts?page=24#24
Pay attention to this one. This is the guy who wrote The Bell Curve, a book full of inconvenient truths for our modern Left.
I had received a National Merit scholarship and was able to go to a good school. I did not partake of any of the “honor's” classes. The reason? I was a farm boy from Nebraska and didn't belong with the “betters” (my adviser used that term).
Funny thing though, I saw it as a compliment.
Heck - few will even be business.
Or both, in the case of Mittens.
This sounds very similar to Angelo Codevilla’s article in the American Spectator last July about the Ruling Class vs. The Country Class. Very worth reading; Rush spent a whole show back then discussing it.
spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
I couldn’t disagree with you more.
I work with these people in the entertainment industry. They all (secretly) think they’re the smartest person in the room. They haven’t gotten over being labelled “gifted” when they were five years old based on their play-doh balls.
They have no doubts or qualms whatsoever about asserting themselves as the “natural” leaders of the rest of us — because they’re so much better and super-successful. E.g., the government has to take over health care because we’re too stupid to buy insurance on our own.
And that's how guilty Liberals are created. They are just powerful schlubs who think that they are secretly unworthy to exercise power.
I've come across that type.
Some of them may indeed feel (or have felt) guilty, but they are certainly not humble. Their background and education, not to mention their natural greed, leads them to feel better qualified to hold power than the rest of us and that it is therefore their natural role to rule over the rest of us.
They are the Political Class, the class of the government rich and the crony capitalists, as opposed to the free-market, non-rent-seeking rich. And the Political Class is one class against which it is totally legitimate to make war!
Donald Trump wasn’t the best choice for your post, but I understand what you were saying.
Trump is the punchline to the old Steve Martin joke...
Remember that old Steve Martin joke about the secret formula for becoming a millionaire? “First, get a million dollars ...”
I’ve met some people worth high 8 fiugres or even 9 figures in my life, most of which have no real power in DC or Wall St/London banking world. They grumble about most of the same stuff you see posted on FR, and have no effective means to move the national debate.
I’ve met a few people worth only low 8 figures or high 7 figures who have exceedingly large amounts of elitist power/pull due to things like having a father who was a senior State Dept employee under Eisenhower, having a father who was the Shah of Iran’s financier planner, or being the grandson of a Arab sheikh who attended US Ivy Leagues and made connections.
Screwed up world where the entrenched power has become obsessed with building up the entrenching defenses more than any other policy goal.
We see in Greece this week what happens when the entrenchments collapse inward. In my life we’ll see the same in the USA unfortunately for all of us.
Where’s his data? Of is this just based on extrapolation from general loose observations?
My guess: it’s his idle speculations without grounding in data.
The elite used to view themselves as Americans. Wealthier and more successful than others, but still Americans. Now they view themselves as some altogether separate entity looking down their noses at us “bitter clingers”.
Also, too many of them got where they are not by digging in and working hard to build a business, but by heading to Washington, DC to game the system.
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