Live Q&As

Things would look even worse if I'd brought in Latino, Asian, Black, etc., aspects of American life about which the New Elite is clueless.

The problem lies in the extraordinary segregation of certain groups from other groups that goes far beyond everything we've ever known. A Virginia aristocrat in 1780 had far wider experience of different kinds of people than many residents of Georgetown today. The Big Sort by Bill Bishop is an excellent book on this, well worth reading.

I'd kind of hoped that people would realize the quiz was tongue-in-cheek. Sounds to me like you actually scored pretty high on the quiz, but, let me repeat, the quiz is not psychometrically up to snuff. Heuristic was the intention

Think about the entire experience of life--affluent suburb as a child, to a selective college, on to law school, immediate big income--it's an incredibly restricted experience of American life.

Actually, the first Bush was an exception. Think of the life histories of Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Carter--all people with working class or middle class backgrounds

I don't think there is any one behavior that a large majority of Americans share. The issue is the extent to which you've been exposed to a lot of things that your fellow Americans do. Do you have any personal experience, for example, with blue collar life in the US? If no, you've got a big gap in your experience.

Most of the people I know in the New Elite are doing a pretty good job of passing success along. I know a whole lot of their children who are making out like gangbusters, and very few who are not going to replicate their parents' success.

You'll see a book with all those nos in about a year or so--that's where the article came from, but journal articles are not what the Post publishes in Outlook.

Sure. Blue collar was a short-cut. You've just gotta know some people who have jobs where their feet hurt at the end of the day. If you don't, and you've never held such a job yourself, you've got a problem.

The antidote has to come from within. The New Elite have got to make sure that their children get out of the bubble. They are really the audience to which I am preaching.

The politics are important, but people fixate on it. Stopped and realized that all the thoughts I want to add to that are way too long to deal with in this format.

Actually, I've come to have a fondess for Bill, after having been, let's say, not on his side during the 1990s. If you grow up as he did, you never leave that part of your experience behind.

All I can say is that I've propagandized my own children. The saying around the Murray house by one of my daughters is "Dad's idea of the perfect summer job is to work at McDonald's by day and clean toilets by night."

I'm on record as being not a Glenn Beck fan.

I'm already two-thirds of the way through the book. I would give a lot to have access to all the proprietary data that advertisers have about market segments, when it comes to lifestyle distinctions, but there's a fair amount of data in the public domain.

No. Just taking a few days off to prepare this article was a luxury. I'm up against a deadline I'm going to have a hard time meeting.

Yes. But it doesn't make much difference to public policy when a factory worker doesn't know much about life in Potomac, MD. It makes a big difference when the people in senior positions don't know about life a working-class neighborhood.

The universities are squeezed (though I don't have much sympathy for them). They are so aggressive about ethnic diversity, that they don't have a lot of slots for socioeconomic diversity. Summers was openly worried about this as president of Harvard, but I don't see much being done about it.

Well, I did grow up in Newton, Iowa, with a father who had only a high school education, and have lived for the last 20 years in a little blue-collar/farming town in Maryland (we're not talking horse country here), sending my kids to local public schools. I'm not COMPLETELY out of touch.

It depends on which aspect of the elite you're talking about. The academic and intellectual elites are extremely secular, but not business elites.

Yes, I suppose having to punch the community service part of your application to Harvard is better than nothing. But there's a Lady Bountiful aspect to a lot that (Thursday night, 6-7:30, soup kitchen).

One of the worst things about current HS education is that it tells kids that they can either be lawyers or work at McDonalds, and never talk about the many interesting and well-paying jobs that are out there. I think the TV show Dirty Jobs is one of the great public service shows out there.

As I said in another post, I want the New Elite to start questioning the choices they're making for themselves and their children. Do they really want their kids to grow up in a hothouse? Do they really want to live in gated communities (gated figuratively or literally)? Is that the way to a satisfying life?

Assembly-line jobs are really boring. In many ways, the skilled jobs out there now are a lot more interesting and rewarding than they used to be--think about all the new technical specialties taht the economy has thrown in the last few decades. But don't get me started about the evils of the role the BA has come to play in Ameircan life....

There's no tension between demanding your children strive for excellence, and also demanding that your children get out of the bubble.

I think such affirmative action would be great.

It's not a binary world.

Sometimes it seems to me that we've constructed an economy that will make the skills lawyers have unreasonably valuable. The amount of talent that we funnel into negotiating the labyrinthine legal and regulatory structures we've created is ridiculous.

Because life in the bubble is sterile and not nearly as textured and interesting as getting out more. Think about all the ways in which life in affluent America is restricted.

What gives the New Elite their edge is largely cognitive ability. Nobody "deserves" that ability. It is as undeserved as the skills that enable people to become virtuoso violinists or NBA stars.

Yep.

I guess the answer comes from readers. To the extent that the examples I gave don't fit your experience or the experience of your friends, you're free to conclude I'm wrong. But the reaction I usually get is that I'm describing something that people worry about it their own lives.

I believe in distributions. But here's an example: Do most of the people in your neighborhood have college degrees--just 50 percent or more? Yes? In the 30,000-odd zip codes of the United States, just 4 percent have that proportion of college graduates among their adults.

You're part of a diminishing minority. You're from the first few generations when there was lots of socioeconomic churning going on, as people got opportunities their parents were denied. That churning is subsiding. That's the problem.

I think America can prosper economically and in terms of national power just fine with the stratified system we're creating. It just won't feel much like America any more.

It's become an artificial gatekeeper for a lot of jobs that has nothing to do with the real requirements for holding those jobs, and has acquired way too much status (or, more accurately, not having a BA has acquired way too much stigma)

Good point. But there's still an asymmetry to the costs of the factory worker's ignorance and the secretary of transportation's ignorance (whoever he or she may be. I don't know offhand).

Could be.

I'm  a big fan of classical education, period, for all sorts of reasons. ED Hirsch is my guy for K-12

I don't think of it that way--moving up or downscale. It's about getting to know who your fellow citizens are.

Elites rule countries by definition. There isn't a society except hunter-gatherers which hasn't been ruled by an elite. You don't want people at the top who are clueless about large numbers of people over whose lives they have so much influence.

I must not have communicated clearly.

I fit the definition of the elite by virtue of my job. I like to think that I'm not in the bubble.

It proves you live in a REALLY unusual neighborhood, statistically. An interesting datum.

If that's the way you think of the people in those 96 percent of Zip codes, I think the correct response from me is, QED.

I suppose it is too glib to say the results of the election next yes. Yes, I'm sure it is too glib. So I won't say it.

I don't know how one would come up with a specific proportion. If you specify the socioeconomic composition of people in various kinds of jobs--where they grew up, where they went to schools, the things they didn't do, etc., you get a portrait of a class. Are there lots of exceptions? Sure.

Harvard grads don't seem to be having much problem.

Maybe two or three times too many.

Okay, if I must get political: The liberal New Elite has attracted a firestorm of opposition that I interpret as being an indirect indicator of not having a real firm grasp on the center-right nature of the electorate.

In a way, the explosion of information sources has made segmentation easier, not harder. People select the sources that they prefer, which means they can avoid (if they wish) everyone who doesn't agree with them.

That would do it indeed.

Can't make this point quickly, but I'm not really making points about how to make better policy in the piece, or in the new book. I'm asking about how we deal with a new class structure that is unlike anything we've seen before in this country, and that is antagonistic to a lot of the things that we've most loved about the nature of our society.

We actually have more resources for that kind of training than most people realize, but high school counselors, for various reasons, think they have to tell everyone they should go to college.

I'm really bemused by the notion that "Am I elite or not?" is a question that has a binary answer.

The answer there is to push a lot of liberal education back into K-12. Shouldn't have to wait for college to get exposure to a lot of that.

Lack of space. But I agree with your point.

Well, it would be a lot better than nothing.

Just gotta write better, I guess. Out of time.