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| The New American Aristocracy |
| 2018-05-18 |
| h/t Instapundit ...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. We tend to think that the victims of our success are just the people excluded from the club. But history shows quite clearly that, in the kind of game we’re playing, everybody loses badly in the end. ...It is in fact the top 0.1 percent who have been the big winners in the growing concentration of wealth over the past half century. According to the UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the 160,000 or so households in that group held 22 percent of America’s wealth in 2012, up from 10 percent in 1963. If you’re looking for the kind of money that can buy elections, you’ll find it inside the top 0.1 percent alone. ...Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below. But not everyone in the 99.9 percent gave up a slice. Only those in the bottom 90 percent did. At their peak, in the mid-1980s, people in this group held 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Three decades later that had fallen 12 points‐exactly as much as the wealth of the 0.1 percent rose. In between the top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent is a group that has been doing just fine. It has held on to its share of a growing pie decade after decade. And as a group, it owns substantially more wealth than do the other two combined. In the tale of three classes (see Figure 1), it is represented by the gold line floating high and steady while the other two duke it out. You’ll find the new aristocracy there. We are the 9.9 percent. So what kind of characters are we, the 9.9 percent? We are mostly not like those flamboyant political manipulators from the 0.1 percent. We’re a well-behaved, flannel-suited crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists, mid-level investment bankers, M.B.A.s with opaque job titles, and assorted other professionals‐the kind of people you might invite to dinner. In fact, we’re so self-effacing, we deny our own existence. We keep insisting that we’re "middle class." ...One of the hazards of life in the 9.9 percent is that our necks get stuck in the upward position. We gaze upon the 0.1 percent with a mixture of awe, envy, and eagerness to obey. As a consequence, we are missing the other big story of our time. We have left the 90 percent in the dust‐and we’ve been quietly tossing down roadblocks behind us to make sure that they never catch up. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 The economy is beginning to move so things can change for the bottom 90%. |
| Posted by: ClemKadiddlehopper9000 2018-05-18 22:03 |
| #3 BP, isn't it more basic then that: 'wealth' and 'money' are two entirely separate things. 'Wealth' produces more... things. 'Money' is just something that you hope that can be exchanged for something that you want after you find a buyer. Giving money to rent-seekers is as futile as burning it... |
| Posted by: magpie 2018-05-18 12:32 |
| #2 It will be a problem when you skipped Western Civ and that little experience of the French Revolution. |
| Posted by: P2kontheroad 2018-05-18 07:35 |
| #1 Confusing / Conflating wealth generation and rent-seeking is a terrible mistake that should not be committed by anyone who's actually read any economics from say Adam Smith or Ricardo. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2018-05-18 05:55 |