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The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

theatlantic.com

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Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#11

Post by dgreensp »

Wait, so 10% of the county is millionaires (more or less, if 9.9% are 1.2-millionaires), and these people have such “good family, good health, and good jobs” that they might as well be a different species? If I tell you how “good” someone’s family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not?

I think the author’s intent was to acknowledge privilege, but the article is just making more weird caricatures. I think it’s better to put a spotlight on particular ways people might not be able to advance themselves as much as the usual narrative would suggest.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#12

Post by mozumder »

Class differentiation is the central meaning of life. The struggle is the point. You get up and wear nice clothes in the morning so that you're better than the slob that doesn't. Nobody wants to be the same as everyone else.

If everyone was equal, then there would be no point in your existence. You become a bag of mostly water.

Celebrate the fact that a few billionaires and royalty and celebrities exists. Life is more interesting and surprising that way. Can you imagine how terrible and pointless everything would be if everyone was middle class?

We should focus on the very bottom, not the very top.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#13

Post by leetcrew »

> Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below.

this statement is literally true, but aside from "in relative terms", the wording of the whole sentence seems to evoke a zero sum game. I see this type of writing in most articles about inequality and I wish the authors would strive to be more explicit. it's an important distinction, even if we agree that relative gains are just significant as absolute gains.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#14

Post by zaroth »

anbende wrote: post #2

Some 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…

Not surprisingly, every time you zoom into an exponential distribution you will find... an exponential distribution.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#15

Post by dv_dt »

anbende wrote: post #2

Some 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…

Divide and conquer. I think someone finds it convenient to break up the 99% narrative. It's very similar to the excoriation of public employees unions who negotiate solid living wages for their members - it makes too much of a contrast for many who are on basically a subsidence living in the private industry

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#16

Post by seibelj »

I believe very strongly in equality of opportunity, and the liberal tendency to zone everything to prevent development and keep out the poors is a glaring example of hipocrisy. I don’t know if charter schools are the answer, but certainly letting the family choose where to stick their education dollars could alleviate the vast difference in K12 education that keeps the “9.9%” in continuous power.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#17

Post by gaius »

mrybczyn wrote: post #9
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #7

The 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.

And yet it's more than 90.1% of the population posesses...

These analyses tend to overlook the age dimension. It is entirely normal that a 65-year-old about to retire would have accumulated more assets than a 22-year-old who has just graduated with student debts. So is the proportion of the population holding the wealth also the proportion of the population who has been working and saving for 30-40 years already? If so there is nothing to see here, move along...

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#18

Post by tscs37 »

mrybczyn wrote: post #9
matthewaveryusa wrote: post #7

The 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.

As another comment here pointed out;

90.1% possess about 30% of the wealth.

9% possess another 30% of the wealth.

The remaining 0.9% possess the rest.

Is the 9% to blame for inequality?

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#19

Post by nordsieck »

danharaj wrote: post #3
anbende wrote: post #2

Some 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.

> those who control capital and policy versus those who just have money

Controlling policy is one thing.

Who "just has money" and doesn't control capital? Anyone who has money actually has some sort of capital or an equivalently powerful financial instrument be it stocks, loans to other companies, government bonds, a house, etc.

Re: The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

#20

Post by beager »

anbende wrote: post #2

Some 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…

I think the point TFA was making is that the 9.9% hasn’t experienced a decline in wealth in order to feed the accretion of wealth in the top 0.1%, and that such a situation creates an aristocratic attitude among that 9.9%, dulling any motivation to fix wealth inequality or economic immobility in the bottom 90%.

I believe that the term 9.9% is a slogan though.

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