The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
theatlantic.com
The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#2Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the much of the wealth in the 9.9 is going to actually be in that top .9.
In other words, the author just divides the top 1% into two pieces, and lumps one of them in with “the 9.9”.
Edit: I did a little research and math. The top 1% holds 40% of US wealth. The top 10% holds 77%. That’s 37% to “the 9%”. I would hypothesize that even within this 9% we’d find the wealth concentrated at the top in the “2nd 1%”, i.e., the top 2% likely make the middle class look mostly irrelevant.
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#3Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the…
Right, it obfuscates class distinctions between those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money. I'm somewhat cynical but I think this is an intended obfuscation.
It's important for petit bourgeois and wealthy skilled workers to understand their position in the class hierarchy, but calling a class whose power is dwarfed by the capitalist class an aristocracy is fluffy rhetoric.
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#4Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the…
If you can't afford a superyacht, you are probably not Aristocracy.
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#5I couldn't help but think of Eyes Wide Shut when reading this. For those who have seen the film, the leading character, a physician who lives in Upper East Side in Manhattan, easily fits the bill (npi) of being a 9.9%er. But as Kubrick makes it clear, he is merely a well paid servant of the true hidden aristocracy, and very much preoccupied with matters that are of no concern to the aristocratic class.
I agree with the other commentators' critique of OP here. The 9.9%ers are the new Social 'Thin Blue Line' [1].
Here's the recruitment advert in case you are interested :) https://youtu.be/LHtNFZ6K0pE
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#6Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the…
Right, it obfuscates class distinctions between those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money. I'm somewhat cynical but I think this is an intended obfuscation. It's important for petit bourgeois and wealthy skilled workers to understand their position in the class hierarchy, but calling a class whose power is dwarfed by the capitalist class an aristocracy is fluffy rhetoric.
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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#7The top 10% is 120k in income or 1.2m in net worth -- would be nice to see the demographics. In any case, 1.2m in net worth is a house with some retirement money, not exactly what I would call aristocracy.
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#8Rebuttal from Slate:
https://slate.com/business/2018/05/forget-the-atlantics-9-9-...
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#9The top 10% is 120k in income or 1.2m in net worth -- would be nice to see the demographics. In any case, 1.2m in net worth is a house with some retirement money, not exactly what I would call aristocracy.
And yet it's more than 90.1% of the population posesses...
Interestingly, some estimates of (formal) Polish aristocracy in the 17th century place it around 10% of the population. Maybe this is just some natural distribution of socio-econo-political status of human groups.
Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
#10This headline feeds into knee-jerk tendency to assign a simple social class category to some combination of money, prestige, agency (ability to drive change) and status; from the ground-view, reality is nothing like that now. There is no simple formula for any of those things, being very well decoupled.