I Wonder If The One Percent Knows That They Outnumbered

Richard Reeves’ essay, “The Dream Hoarders: How America’s Top 20 Percent Perpetuates Inequality,” promoting his new book. The upper classes use their social capital — their networks—and cultural capital—such as their knowledge of class codes and of the college admission process—to lock in advantages for their children in the form of internships, educational achievement, and the like. They also create social safety nets for their kids via inter-generational transfers of economic capital. The children of the upper classes can afford to fail. They can finance consumption beyond their income level, including the purchase of houses and other assets.

And here is the difficult part. The popular obsession with the top 1 percent allows the upper middle class to convince ourselves we are in the same boat as the rest of America; but it is not true. However messily it is expressed, much of the criticism of our class is true. We proclaim the “net” benefits of free trade, technological advances, and immigration, safe in the knowledge that we will be among the beneficiaries. Equipped with high levels of human capital, we can flourish in a global economy. The cities we live in are zoned to protect our wealth, but deter the unskilled from sharing in it. Professional licensing and an immigration policy tilted toward the low-skilled shield us from the intense market competition faced by those in nonprofessional occupations. We proclaim the benefits of free markets but are largely insulated from the risks they can pose. Small wonder other folks can get angry