[Intolerant in NJ]

The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country.... What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country...maybe because they didn't get where they are the old fashioned way - by earning it through merit - but because of who they knew or are related to - like the old aristocracy of Europe - they end up where they are because they went to school with somebody or knew somebody's uncle or were someone's cousin - often what they don't know is how to do their job effectively and competently - they're worthy of contempt.....

[ClearCase_guy]

I noticed that with some of the Facebook IPO coverage. NPR did a story on people who had been roommates with someone years ago, or who had spray-painted murals at Facebook HQ in the early days. These folks had been paid in Facebook stock. Now -- suddenly -- they were worth tens of millions of dollars.

The message was pretty clear: all rich people are lucky. Hard work has nothing to do with it. Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? Just luck. You know, I could be a billionaire too, if a billion dollars fell into my lap. But, sadly, the billion dollars didn't fall into my lap, it fell into someone else's lap.

Much Liberal thinking is that "no one deserves to be rich", and the other component is "My family is better than your family, I attended better schools than you did, I have super cool friends -- that's why I should be the boss of you."

[GonzoGOP]

The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country.... What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country

In a country with a growing economy there are enough self made "new rich" to inject sanity into the upper class. One hundred years ago the DuPont's, Rockefeller's and the Astor's were just as rich, elitist and even more powerful than today's upper class. However they were balanced by men like Ford and Edison who came from humble beginnings to found empires of their own.

We no longer have the empire builders of that sort to balance the equations. The closest we come is Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. But they built their empires in the 1980's, Three decades in the past. There hasn't been much of anything since.