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The New Upper Class and the Real Reason We Dislike Them
Time ^ | 2/7/2012 | Charles Murray

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 isn’t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isn’t what sets them apart or creates so much animosity toward them.

Let’s 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%; he’s in the top fraction of the 1% — but he’s not part of the new upper class. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didn’t complete college at all. He grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didn’t complete college. He now lives in a neighborhood with other rich people, but they’re 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 doesn’t 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. He’s 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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: charlesmurray
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To: mojito
This is nothing new. We all watched Caddyshack and loved the brash, self made, Rodney Dangerfield character and hated the entitled, ivy league, Ted Knight character. There is respect for those who earned their money through hard work. And contempt for those who got it from political favoritism or inheritance.

It may be more pronounced now than any time since the industrial revolution created the first self made men. But it is nothing new.
21 posted on 02/07/2012 12:44:29 PM PST by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: ClearCase_guy
But they attend nice schools, where they get a degree (or three) in "government", or "public administration", or "political science", or some such thing ...

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.

22 posted on 02/07/2012 12:46:24 PM PST by ArrogantBustard (Western Civilization is Aborting, Buggering, and Contracepting itself out of existence.)
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To: mojito
Most of the wealthy folks are educated in social, environmental, animal worship, administrative fields, etc., while they invite rich foreigners to saturate engineering programs (working class men discouraged in universities). Family-busting social programs and regulations against new, small, remote manufacturing starts and owner-builders are for the purpose of preventing new competition from rising.

America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print

The Fragmenting of the New Class Elites, or, Downward Mobility
http://volokh.com/2011/10/31/the-fragmenting-of-the-new-class-elites-or-downward-mobility/

Environmentalism and the Leisure Class
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2835601/posts


23 posted on 02/07/2012 12:52:32 PM PST by familyop (We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of rotten politics smelled around the planet.)
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To: dfwgator

How did I get here?


24 posted on 02/07/2012 12:53:12 PM PST by Wu (Excuse me while I kiss the sky......)
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To: Wu

My God, What Have I Done?


25 posted on 02/07/2012 12:55:04 PM PST by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
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To: Eldon Tyrell; mojito; MrB

“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


26 posted on 02/07/2012 1:02:39 PM PST by Matchett-PI ("One party will generally represent the envied, the other the envious. Guess which ones." ~GagdadBob)
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To: July4

Pay attention to this one. This is the guy who wrote The Bell Curve, a book full of inconvenient truths for our modern Left.


27 posted on 02/07/2012 1:05:54 PM PST by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Intolerant in NJ
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

In a country with a growing economy there are enough self made "new rich" to inject sanity into the upper class. One hundred years ago the DuPont's, Rockefeller's and the Astor's were just as rich, elitist and even more powerful than today's upper class. However they were balanced by men like Ford and Edison who came from humble beginnings to found empires of their own.

We no longer have the empire builders of that sort to balance the equations. The closest we come is Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. But they built their empires in the 1980's, Three decades in the past. There hasn't been much of anything since.
28 posted on 02/07/2012 1:08:49 PM PST by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: mojito
Very true.

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.

29 posted on 02/07/2012 1:23:33 PM PST by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: Eldon Tyrell
Mke a list of those you have trouble with - and then write down their majors. it is not for nuthin they wil lmostly be “pre-law”.

Heck - few will even be “business”.

Or both, in the case of Mittens.

30 posted on 02/07/2012 1:23:54 PM PST by cynwoody
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31 posted on 02/07/2012 1:26:02 PM PST by TheOldLady (FReepmail me to get ON or OFF the ZOT LIGHTNING ping list)
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To: mojito

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


32 posted on 02/07/2012 1:31:22 PM PST by Cymbaline ("Allahu Akbar": Arabic for "Nothing To See Here" - Mark Steyn)
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To: ClearCase_guy

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.


33 posted on 02/07/2012 1:31:22 PM PST by Blue Ink
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To: ClearCase_guy
And, overwhelmingly, they will think, "How did I get here? I don't really deserve this."

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!

34 posted on 02/07/2012 1:47:08 PM PST by cynwoody
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To: ClearCase_guy

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.


35 posted on 02/07/2012 1:58:30 PM PST by JerseyHighlander
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To: GonzoGOP
Mark Zuckerberg?
36 posted on 02/07/2012 2:10:12 PM PST by Inspectorette
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To: mojito

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.


37 posted on 02/07/2012 2:14:46 PM PST by bvw
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To: mojito

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.


38 posted on 02/07/2012 2:24:15 PM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: Inspectorette
Mark Zuckerberg?

Not a great example. He was at Harvard when he invented facebook. Both parents doctors in upstate New York. He was already part of the elite even before he invented Facebook.
39 posted on 02/07/2012 2:39:32 PM PST by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: mojito
Bill Bennett interviewed the author on this topic (24 minutes). Apparently Bill and the author had considered collaborating on the book before Murray ultimately decided to write it by himself.
40 posted on 02/07/2012 2:48:05 PM PST by cynwoody
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