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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.