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The Top Fifth


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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich.html

 

Articulates what I've tried to do less well on several occasions. This isn't to say that within the top fifth, the lower 15% doesn't have many more burdens and risks than the upper 5%, for example. But class consciousness is a good thing to stop eschewing.

 

 

 

Progressive policies, whether on zoning or school admissions or tax reform, all too often run into the wall of upper-middle-class opposition. Self-interest is natural enough. But the people who make up the American upper middle class don’t just want to keep their advantages; armed with their faith in a classless, meritocratic society, they think they deserve them. The strong whiff of entitlement coming from the top 20 percent has not been lost on everyone else.
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BRB- you should read the article. It is not about how horrible rich people are. But I understand thinking that's where it was going based on the snippet.

 

Although it does leave me wondering how things could be any different than they are. If the only thing to be gained is the upper 20% realizing that some of their fortune is the result of circumstance rather than just their own hard work, what does society really gain? Possibly a more charitable upper class and one more willing to support social programs. This may slightly elevate the lower classes and begin to slow the top from running away from the pack but that's probably the extent of it. Nobody is going to willingly give up their leg up on others. Humans just don't operate that way. So yeah, I pretty much agree with the article but I am failing to see any substantial benefit of these people actually realizing much of their fortune was not arrived at meritocratically.

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I think it's a plea to people who consider themselves progressive to not just ask for handouts from the Top 1%. When we fight for social programs we should be targeting them at the truly needy ... and if we advocate for downward redistribution of wealth, then some of this is going to mean from the Top 20%. And that's a hard sell. We're happy to redistribute wealth when it belongs to other people and we're getting most of the benefits. We're especially happy when we can also tell ourselves this is in keeping with our progressive, egalitarian, meritocratic society.

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Perhaps so, and sorry if I came off sharp. I'm somewhat frustrated by the perception that people just have it out for the rich, though. I don't think that's true a lot of the time. I think this was just general commentary on how rigidly we're stratified by class in the US even while telling ourselves that this is not the case.

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It's not true for many.

 

But with money comes power. And if 5% of the wealthy are a$$hole$, they stand out. They stand out more than other people who are a$$hole$ because they have the means to negatively affect a lot more people than do the non-wealthy a$$hole$.

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Perhaps so, and sorry if I came off sharp. I'm somewhat frustrated by the perception that people just have it out for the rich, though. I don't think that's true a lot of the time. I think this was just general commentary on how rigidly we're stratified by class in the US even while telling ourselves that this is not the case.

 

 

You don't see how this quote from the article you used promotes that?

 

Progressive policies, whether on zoning or school admissions or tax reform, all too often run into the wall of upper-middle-class opposition. Self-interest is natural enough. But the people who make up the American upper middle class don’t just want to keep their advantages; armed with their faith in a classless, meritocratic society, they think they deserve them. The strong whiff of entitlement coming from the top 20 percent has not been lost on everyone else.
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No.

 

It's pointing out that the Top 5th's advantages are calcified precisely because they work so hard to lock them in. They are buoyed by a myth of meritocracy -- i.e, they gained these advantages through deserved effort and not through holding outsize power over policy in order to benefit their caste. As a result, public policy functions to serve their interests at the expense or ignorance of those below, a fact that does not elude those below the upper middle. This is a natural source of resentment and allowing the cycle to continue is dangerous.

 

"This is offensive" has always struck me as an odd way to dismiss a valid point.

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I don't think there is much of any difference between the entitlement of the upper quintile and the entitlement of the lower two quintiles. Both groups feel somewhat entitled, one to the money they earn (even though some of it is due to outsize influence) and the other to others people's money. It's pretty much two sides of the same coin. Once again, the people that don't have a side on that coin, the middle class. They don't reap the benefits of the rich and they don't get the handouts of the poor. It's utopian wishing to think things could be much different.

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I don't think that's really comparable. We're talking about one group feeling entitled to the lion's share of public benefits and another group being 'entitled', if you can call it that, to basic necessities and opportunity. If these are two sides of the same coin, it's one heck of an oddly-shaped coin.

 

A fair chunk of the middle class is included in the top quintile, which I think is the point of this article: to say the fairly unpopular thing that much of the middle class does reap public benefits. It's also not wishful thinking to say things could be different, because things are quite different in many places that aren't the United States. This, again, is the point: it does not have to be this way. Equality of opportunity means not locking in the top 5, or 10, or 20% across generations and making it increasingly harder for anyone else to get there.

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