Upper Class Inequality

Progressives:  We must break the cycle of privilege where lucky, wealthy businessmen bestow the means of production onto their children.
Mike:  Instead, wealthy politicians and bureaucrats will bestow their connections and access to prestigious schools onto their more worthy children.
  Notice how often the children of politicians enter politics. Just name recognition, I guess.

Upper Class InequalityRead the whole thing
01/30/13 - ChicagoBoyz by David Foster  [edited]

Progressivism is not about equality. It is about shifting the distribution of power and wealth in a way that benefits those with certain educational credentials and connections.

Many progressives graduated from Ivy League universities. How many of them would eliminate alumni preferences and have their children considered for admission on the same basis as everyone else? An alumni preference is an inter-generational asset in the same way as a small businessman’s store or factory.

Power and connections are convertible into wealth.

• Former president Bill Clinton was paid millions of dollars in speaking fees last year.
• Former government officials leverage their contacts into executive jobs with green energy companies, despite having minimal knowledge of either energy or business.
• There are in-kind benefits, like a university president’s mansion. Residents of the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe know all about those benefits for nominally low-paid officials.
• Today’s progressivism is almost always about transfering power from individuals to credentialed experts who will coerce or “nudge” people to do what they think is best.

The talk about equality is substantially a smokescreen, possibly unconscious, behind which progressives pursue wealth, status, and ego satisfaction.

T.S. EliotThomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born English poet, dramatist, and literary critic (1888–1965).:  Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.