Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich
Richard V. Reeves
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich.html
A couple years old now, but solid article. I liked the comparisons with England, and think there are lessons there.
I'll just quote a couple good paragraphs:
"The rhetoric of “We are the 99 percent” has in fact been dangerously self-serving, allowing people with healthy six-figure incomes to convince themselves that they are somehow in the same economic boat as ordinary Americans, and that it is just the so-called super rich who are to blame for inequality."
And the idea of legacy:
"The United States is the only nation in the world, for example, where it is easier to get into college if one of your parents happened to go there. Oxford and Cambridge ditched legacy preferences in the middle of the last century. The existence of such an unfair hereditary practice in 21st-century America is startling in itself. But I have been more shocked by the way that even supposedly liberal members of the upper middle class seem to have no qualms about benefiting from it."
I don't recall it discussing how easy it is for rich folks to look at the super-rich and feel like they are the real problem, and how, as I've read in another article, even the rich feel their status is threatened due to growing inequality, but still plenty of food for thought.
Richard V. Reeves
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/opinion/sunday/stop-pretending-youre-not-rich.html
A couple years old now, but solid article. I liked the comparisons with England, and think there are lessons there.
I'll just quote a couple good paragraphs:
"The rhetoric of “We are the 99 percent” has in fact been dangerously self-serving, allowing people with healthy six-figure incomes to convince themselves that they are somehow in the same economic boat as ordinary Americans, and that it is just the so-called super rich who are to blame for inequality."
And the idea of legacy:
"The United States is the only nation in the world, for example, where it is easier to get into college if one of your parents happened to go there. Oxford and Cambridge ditched legacy preferences in the middle of the last century. The existence of such an unfair hereditary practice in 21st-century America is startling in itself. But I have been more shocked by the way that even supposedly liberal members of the upper middle class seem to have no qualms about benefiting from it."
I don't recall it discussing how easy it is for rich folks to look at the super-rich and feel like they are the real problem, and how, as I've read in another article, even the rich feel their status is threatened due to growing inequality, but still plenty of food for thought.
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