Intellectuals have always disdained the middle class and its so-called bourgeois values, especially intellectuals who came from the middle class, such as Karl Marx and many of his intellectual progeny.  Now, by teaming up with the New Aristocracy, intellectuals are finally succeeding in disempowering and shrinking the middle class.

What is the New Aristocracy?  It is high-income professionals who attended the best k-12 schools, worked hard in those schools to be admitted to elite universities, worked hard in those  universities to be hired by the highest-paying companies in the wealthiest cities, worked hard to rise in those companies and cities, married spouses with the same values and ambitions, moved to enclaves of likeminded people, and now continue to work hard to keep their place in the pecking order and to instill the same values in their children, so that the cycle continues.

Many of them were born into the New Aristocracy and thus began life with advantages, but many were not.  Either way, they advanced from their starting point through hard work, or merit.

What's wrong with advancing through merit? 

On the surface, nothing.  After all, that's what this writer did—or likes to believe he did—in working his way out of the lower end of the middle class, or more specifically, the blue-collar or working-class end.  But below the surface of today's version of meritocracy are fault lines resulting from the separateness of the New Aristocracy from the middle class.  As the classes have split apart physically, culturally and psychologically, social, economic and political tremors have reverberated throughout the nation, as will be seen momentarily in sobering statistics. 

The nouveau aristocrats are not only in professions that are insulated from globalism, from the financialization of the domestic economy, and from the ever-growing regulatory state, they also benefit tremendously from these trends—unlike the middle class.  Many are tax attorneys, estate attorneys, tax accountants, bankers, financial advisors, regulatory consultants, trade specialists, lobbyists, or executives with companies that are highly regulated and have to appease their regulatory masters to stay in business or use regulations as a competitive weapon against smaller companies that can't afford compliance costs.

Government regulators often gain entry to the New Aristocracy by moving to the private sector, to be highly-paid compliance officers or consultants.  Likewise, members of Congress gain entry by becoming lobbyists.  To this point, only 3% of retiring congressional members became lobbyists 50 years ago.  Today, the percentages are 42% for the House and 50% for the Senate.

All of the foregoing elites have a vested interest in big government and thus tend to vote accordingly.  And since money influences politics, they have disproportionate political power.

The New Aristocracy increasingly includes physicians, who used to be diehard Republicans, esteemed members of their town or neighborhood, and, as independent practitioners, fervent believers in free-markets.  Now the majority are Democrats, due to becoming employees of hospitals and large corporate practices, due to younger docs having been indoctrinated in the prevailing progressive ideology in college, and due to their migration to large cities to be near other members of the New Aristocracy.

Speaking of cities, those with the highest concentration of the New Aristocracy have the most income inequality.  And, ironically, of the 15 cities with the most income inequality, 12 are controlled by the Democrat Party, the party that supposedly cares the most about income inequality.

Much of this is detailed in the new book, The Meritocracy Trap, by Daniel Markovits, who is a Yale professor and tends to see the world from that perspective.  His left leanings surface periodically in the book, but his analysis is scholarly, compelling, credible, and mostly nonpartisan.    

He repeats statistics reported elsewhere but also cites new statistics, showing the chasm between the middle class and what I'm calling the New Aristocracy—not only in income but also in the quality of their respective k-12 schools, in medical care and health outcomes, in mortality rates, in physical fitness, in substance abuse, in divorce rates, in single-parenting, and in other social measures.

It's as if the middle class and the New Aristocracy live in different countries.  Judging by income, they do.  To quote from The Meritocracy Trap:

At the middle of the last century, the economic distribution in the United States broadly resembled that in other rich democracies, including Canada, Japan, and Norway.  Today, income inequality in the United States exceeds that in India, Morocco, Indonesia, Iran, Ukraine, and Vietnam . . . Fairfield County, Connecticut, for example, suffers greater economic inequality than Bangkok, Thailand.

The book goes on to say that "The top 1 percent of households now captures about a fifth of total income, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent captures about a tenth of total income."

The psychological gap is even more pronounced.  No longer living amidst the middle class and having their kids attend the same schools as middle-class kids, today's nouveau aristocrats either ignore the middle class, or treat them with condescension, or look down on them as losers, deplorables, rednecks, jingoists, sexists, Walmartians, and racists.  Of course, this triggers resentment among those on the receiving end of these grossly inaccurate and insulting stereotypes.

Also triggering resentment is the aristocratic religion of diversity and inclusion, in which one of the epistles is that historical forces, socioeconomic structures, and circumstances have held back blacks and other minorities—that they do not have an inherent aversion to industriousness, education, marriage, and other habits and values needed for success.  But according to the Church of the New Aristocrats, working stiffs have inherent character flaws and thus deserve their lot in life.  It's their fault that they have not adjusted to changed economic circumstances, taken advantage of educational opportunities, and moved to a prosperous city.

On a related note, blacks in TV commercials are portrayed as successful, hip professionals who work and recreate with successful, hip professionals who are white.  At the same time, middle-class working stiffs are noticeably missing, an oversight that is noticed by working stiffs.

Adding to their insensitivity and cluelessness, the aristocrats imply that middle-class Americans have nothing to complain about, as most have seen their incomes increase and are able to afford all kinds of consumer goods, entertainment options, medicines, and medical advancements not available just a couple of decades ago.  This demonstrates that someone can graduate from a prestigious university and not understand a damn thing about human nature.

It's no wonder, then, that many middle-class Americans see Trump as a lifeline.  Sadly, however, whether or not he is elected for another term, they will find that they have been tied to an anchor and thrown overboard by the political system.  More than likely, the Republican Party is going to end up wandering the political desert for 40 years, due to changing demographics and to a backlash to Trump.  But even if that doesn't happen, the New Aristocracy of both parties and the intelligentsia of the left will keep the middle class disempowered and disfavored.

Karl Marx's dreams have come true.   

Intellectuals have always disdained the middle class and its so-called bourgeois values, especially intellectuals who came from the middle class, such as Karl Marx and many of his intellectual progeny.  Now, by teaming up with the New Aristocracy, intellectuals are finally succeeding in disempowering and shrinking the middle class.

What is the New Aristocracy?  It is high-income professionals who attended the best k-12 schools, worked hard in those schools to be admitted to elite universities, worked hard in those  universities to be hired by the highest-paying companies in the wealthiest cities, worked hard to rise in those companies and cities, married spouses with the same values and ambitions, moved to enclaves of likeminded people, and now continue to work hard to keep their place in the pecking order and to instill the same values in their children, so that the cycle continues.

Many of them were born into the New Aristocracy and thus began life with advantages, but many were not.  Either way, they advanced from their starting point through hard work, or merit.

What's wrong with advancing through merit? 

On the surface, nothing.  After all, that's what this writer did—or likes to believe he did—in working his way out of the lower end of the middle class, or more specifically, the blue-collar or working-class end.  But below the surface of today's version of meritocracy are fault lines resulting from the separateness of the New Aristocracy from the middle class.  As the classes have split apart physically, culturally and psychologically, social, economic and political tremors have reverberated throughout the nation, as will be seen momentarily in sobering statistics. 

The nouveau aristocrats are not only in professions that are insulated from globalism, from the financialization of the domestic economy, and from the ever-growing regulatory state, they also benefit tremendously from these trends—unlike the middle class.  Many are tax attorneys, estate attorneys, tax accountants, bankers, financial advisors, regulatory consultants, trade specialists, lobbyists, or executives with companies that are highly regulated and have to appease their regulatory masters to stay in business or use regulations as a competitive weapon against smaller companies that can't afford compliance costs.

Government regulators often gain entry to the New Aristocracy by moving to the private sector, to be highly-paid compliance officers or consultants.  Likewise, members of Congress gain entry by becoming lobbyists.  To this point, only 3% of retiring congressional members became lobbyists 50 years ago.  Today, the percentages are 42% for the House and 50% for the Senate.

All of the foregoing elites have a vested interest in big government and thus tend to vote accordingly.  And since money influences politics, they have disproportionate political power.

The New Aristocracy increasingly includes physicians, who used to be diehard Republicans, esteemed members of their town or neighborhood, and, as independent practitioners, fervent believers in free-markets.  Now the majority are Democrats, due to becoming employees of hospitals and large corporate practices, due to younger docs having been indoctrinated in the prevailing progressive ideology in college, and due to their migration to large cities to be near other members of the New Aristocracy.

Speaking of cities, those with the highest concentration of the New Aristocracy have the most income inequality.  And, ironically, of the 15 cities with the most income inequality, 12 are controlled by the Democrat Party, the party that supposedly cares the most about income inequality.

Much of this is detailed in the new book, The Meritocracy Trap, by Daniel Markovits, who is a Yale professor and tends to see the world from that perspective.  His left leanings surface periodically in the book, but his analysis is scholarly, compelling, credible, and mostly nonpartisan.    

He repeats statistics reported elsewhere but also cites new statistics, showing the chasm between the middle class and what I'm calling the New Aristocracy—not only in income but also in the quality of their respective k-12 schools, in medical care and health outcomes, in mortality rates, in physical fitness, in substance abuse, in divorce rates, in single-parenting, and in other social measures.

It's as if the middle class and the New Aristocracy live in different countries.  Judging by income, they do.  To quote from The Meritocracy Trap:

At the middle of the last century, the economic distribution in the United States broadly resembled that in other rich democracies, including Canada, Japan, and Norway.  Today, income inequality in the United States exceeds that in India, Morocco, Indonesia, Iran, Ukraine, and Vietnam . . . Fairfield County, Connecticut, for example, suffers greater economic inequality than Bangkok, Thailand.

The book goes on to say that "The top 1 percent of households now captures about a fifth of total income, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent captures about a tenth of total income."

The psychological gap is even more pronounced.  No longer living amidst the middle class and having their kids attend the same schools as middle-class kids, today's nouveau aristocrats either ignore the middle class, or treat them with condescension, or look down on them as losers, deplorables, rednecks, jingoists, sexists, Walmartians, and racists.  Of course, this triggers resentment among those on the receiving end of these grossly inaccurate and insulting stereotypes.

Also triggering resentment is the aristocratic religion of diversity and inclusion, in which one of the epistles is that historical forces, socioeconomic structures, and circumstances have held back blacks and other minorities—that they do not have an inherent aversion to industriousness, education, marriage, and other habits and values needed for success.  But according to the Church of the New Aristocrats, working stiffs have inherent character flaws and thus deserve their lot in life.  It's their fault that they have not adjusted to changed economic circumstances, taken advantage of educational opportunities, and moved to a prosperous city.

On a related note, blacks in TV commercials are portrayed as successful, hip professionals who work and recreate with successful, hip professionals who are white.  At the same time, middle-class working stiffs are noticeably missing, an oversight that is noticed by working stiffs.

Adding to their insensitivity and cluelessness, the aristocrats imply that middle-class Americans have nothing to complain about, as most have seen their incomes increase and are able to afford all kinds of consumer goods, entertainment options, medicines, and medical advancements not available just a couple of decades ago.  This demonstrates that someone can graduate from a prestigious university and not understand a damn thing about human nature.

It's no wonder, then, that many middle-class Americans see Trump as a lifeline.  Sadly, however, whether or not he is elected for another term, they will find that they have been tied to an anchor and thrown overboard by the political system.  More than likely, the Republican Party is going to end up wandering the political desert for 40 years, due to changing demographics and to a backlash to Trump.  But even if that doesn't happen, the New Aristocracy of both parties and the intelligentsia of the left will keep the middle class disempowered and disfavored.

Karl Marx's dreams have come true.