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 ...
As you point out, this is a co-optation move, an attempt to stay in front of the dissemination of powerful ideas and technologies, to co-opt the leaderships of the societies that will grow in power and capability and prosperity by adopting them. They want to make sure the clerisy populations in other countries and in outgroup communities within the United States all have influential ringknockers they can go to, to pull a string when needed.
BookMark
I don't think it's guilt that drives them -- it's insecurity.
They realize that there are people in the middle class who are much smarter than them. So how do they make their positions (and their kids positions) more secure against competition from middle-class kids who may try to displace or supplant them?
Step one is to cripple the public school system, so that the smartest kids are never really educated to their full potential.
Step two is to create a maze of rules and regulations, so that it is harder to become wealthy if you are not connected into the network of people who understand the complexities, know all the loopholes, and have long-term relationships with the politicians who have the power to create exemptions to the rules, in exchange for a return favor at a later date.
Step three is affirmative action -- create a class of people dependent on the continuation of the big-government system that the upper class controls so well.
The new upper class are the people who deposited all of our tax dollars via the bailout into their bank accounts. That’s why we are angry at them. “Hank” didn’t get millions of dollars in bailout money. That’s the difference. Hank isn’t a self-entitled, manipulative, greedy a$$hole.
The people I despise are government bureaucrats who are living like kings off their fellow citizens.
I suspect that many of the rioting "anarchist" young people are the children of government bureaucrats who are still dependent upon their parents and had ideas of joining the governmental ruling elite. They are now VERY upset at the idea of having to reduce government spending (and thus government power).
I LIKE the way you think.
Ooh wow, great smackdown. That was so satisfying to read. And I enjoyed your post.
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