And is the left's focus on income inequality just a manifestation of their intensifying caste status seeking? Is it the desire to pull down the 'unworthy' super rich because the are being outbid for dinner reservations at Spago by some Hedge clown? Or they can't afford the mega mansion that the philistine built down the road? Because at the same time our elite is all atwitter about 'income inequality' they have never demonstrated a more rigorous commitment to 'social inequality' in their status seeking.
For example, the Obama administration is the most academically elitist in history with more of its top 250 staffers attending Oxford than any state university system and the vast, vast majority of them coming from the northeast Ivy ghettos.
Or the finding that the phenomenon of 'assortative mating' is intensifying in America with elites marrying elites more and more often.
Or the fact that elite colleges have never been harder to get into an that the great majority of those in them are descended from other (mostly affluent) graduates of elite institutions. There are a whole bunch of other data points discussed at this link. Worth a gander.
So what do you do in a winner take more world where lower wage occupations are subject to global competition while higher status people who can horn in on the government rent seeking scene earn more and more? I guess you could punish the whole society by instituting punitive marginal tax rates or confiscating wealth and handing it to the oh so productive government for destruction but at the end of the the day the top will still be the top and the bottom won't really benefit (any gains the get in income redistribution will be sapped away by slower growth and the added chaotic rent seeking that politicians are able to do by buying the lower income votes with all that extra redistribution). No the key lies elsewhere.
The solution? Make middle class both viable and honorable again for the great majority of Americans. How will we know we've done so?
1. When people on the coasts face a middle class cost profile relative to their incomes like that which exists in TX or GA today. Can most if not all Americans live decently on the fruits of their own labor without subsidies for housing, healthcare, education and so on? For this to happen blue elites will need to stop pursuing elitist goals like green or smart growth and side with the little guy. Even at the cost of sacrificing charm, style or 'Nirvana'. (Incidentally, the latest census income data by zip code show that the greatest rich isolation is in the northeast and California where the great majority of the rich zips are. In flyover places like MN or TX the rich live much closer to the poor and middle class. No doubt due to lenient zoning laws and incompetent lawyers - no one of refined taste should be forced to see the hoi polloi before 9am when they get to their challenging job bringing light, joy and regulation to the little ones).
2. When elites show as much respect for doers with modest educational credentials as 'thinkers' with prestige credentials. For example, when 2008 Sarah Palin is afforded as much status for her real accomplishments (mom of 5, Idaho State, successful business builder, rapidly growing suburb mayor, successful corruption fighter against her own party's machine, state governor). As Barack Obama was for his much more conceptual ones (dad of 2, Columbia, Harvard Law, Head of Law Review, law associate, untenured law lecturer, state senator who cosponsored one law - banning the death penalty in a state that hadn't executed anyone in a century, solipsistic author of two (!) memoirs before he was 40, US Senator who gave a popular prime time speech)*.
In other words, when the elitists who utterly dominate the Democrats and poison the upper ranks of the Republicans and independents can have as much respect for Harry Truman or LBJ as they had for FDR or JFK. Because the key to social equality and living in peace with each other depends upon mutual respect. The Andy Jackson and Harry Truman Democrats understood that, even Bill Clinton did. But Hillary! and Barack and their entitled, credentialed minions? Not so much.
*For those who really want to get into this Palin-Obama thing and boy do I, try this on for size: Imagine BHO grew up in Moscow, Idaho, as a white boy with a serious multi-year choom habit, attended Moscow High and Idaho State. Does he make Harvard Law? President of the Law Review (remember, he wouldn't be the first 'black' one any more), be paid a $100K advance in today's money to write a graduate 'memoir'? Or would he have started a successful fishing business, gotten elected to the school board, as mayor of his rapidly growing suburb, planned and implemented a major water and sewer bond issue? Given a plum patronage post on a state board would he have gone against the chairman and party and accused him of corruption, getting him fired and convicted? And then running against the enraged party establishment won election as governor of his state? Or would he be managing the Ketchikan Krispy Kreme?
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