The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right. By Charles Murray Sunday, October 24, 2010
The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite.
"On one side, we have the elites," Fox News host Glenn Beck explained last month, "and the other side, we have the regular people." The elites are "no longer in touch with what the country is really thinking," Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle complained this summer. And when Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell recently began a campaign ad by saying, "I didn't go to Yale," she could be confident that her supporters would approve.
All this has made the New Elite distinctly touchy (see Maureen Dowd's "Making Ignorance Chic"), dismissive (see Jacob Weisberg's "Elitist Nonsense") and defensive (see Anne Applebaum's "The Rise of the 'Ordinary' Elite").
"Elite?" they seem to be saying. "Who? Us?"
Why are the members of the New Elite feeling so put upon? They didn't object back in 1991, when Robert Reich said we had a new class of symbolic analysts in his book "The Work of Nations." They didn't raise a fuss in 2000 when David Brooks took an anthropologist's eye to their exotic tribe and labeled them bourgeois bohemians in "Bobos in Paradise." And they were surely pleased when Richard Florida celebrated their wonderfulness in his 2002 work, "The Rise of the Creative Class."
That a New Elite has emerged over the past 30 years is not really controversial. That its members differ from former elites is not controversial. What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans.
Let me propose that those allegations have merit.
One of the easiest ways to make the point is to start with the principal gateway to membership in the New Elite, the nation's most prestigious colleges and universities. In the idealized view of the meritocrats, those schools were once the bastion of the Northeastern Establishment, favoring bluebloods and the wealthy, but now they are peopled by youth from all backgrounds who have gained admittance through talent, pluck and hard work.
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That idealized view is only half-right. Over the past several decades, elite schools have indeed sought out academically talented students from all backgrounds. But the skyrocketing test scores of the freshman classes at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and other elite schools in the 1950s and 1960s were not accompanied by socioeconomic democratization.
On the surface, it looks as if things have changed. Compared with 50 years ago, the proportion of students coming from old-money families and exclusive prep schools has dropped. The representation of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans has increased. Yet the student bodies of the elite colleges are still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper middle class. According to sociologist Joseph Soares's book "The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges," about four out of five students in the top tier of colleges have parents whose income, education and occupations put them in the top quarter of American families, according to Soares's measure of socioeconomic status. Only about one out of 20 such students come from the bottom half of families.
The discomfiting explanation is that despite need-blind admissions policies, the stellar applicants still hail overwhelmingly from the upper middle class and above. Students who have a parent with a college degree accounted for only 55 percent of SAT-takers this year but got 87 percent of all the verbal and math scores above 700, according to unpublished data provided to me by the College Board. This is not a function of SAT prep courses available to the affluent -- such coaching buys only a few dozen points -- but of the ability of these students to do well in a challenging academic setting.
Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them -- which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble of privilege. Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live.
When they leave college, the New Elite remain in the bubble. Harvard seniors surveyed in 2007 were headed toward a small number of elite graduate schools (Harvard and Cambridge in the lead) and a small number of elite professional fields (finance and consulting were tied for top choice). Jobs in businesses that provide bread-and-butter goods and services to individual Americans, which make up the overwhelming majority of entry-level openings for aspiring managers, attracted just 1.7 percent of the Harvard students who went to work right after graduation.
When the New Elite get around to marrying, they don't marry just anybody. One of the funniest and most bitingly accurate parts of "Bobos in Paradise" was Brooks's analysis of the New York Times's wedding announcements. Go back to 1960, and the page was filled with brides and grooms who grew up wealthy but whose educations and occupations did not offer much indication that they were going to set the world on fire. Look at the page today, and it is studded with the mergers of fabulous résumés.
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Three examples lifted from last Sunday's Times: a director of marketing at a biotech company (Stanford undergrad, Harvard MBA) married a consultant to the aerospace industry (Stanford undergrad, Harvard MPP); a vice president at Goldman Sachs (Yale) married a director of retail development for a financial software firm (Hofstra); and a third-year resident in cardiology (Yale undergrad) married a third-year resident in pathology (Columbia undergrad, summa cum laude).
The New Elite marry each other, combining their large incomes and genius genes, and then produce offspring who get the benefit of both.
We are watching the maturation of the cognitive stratification that Richard J. Herrnstein and I described in "The Bell Curve" back in 1994. When educational and professional opportunities first opened up, we saw social churning galore, as youngsters benefited from opportunities that their parents had been denied. But that phase lasted only a generation or two, slowed by this inescapable paradox:
The more efficiently a society identifies the most able young people of both sexes, sends them to the best colleges, unleashes them into an economy that is tailor-made for people with their abilities and lets proximity take its course, the sooner a New Elite -- the "cognitive elite" that Herrnstein and I described -- becomes a class unto itself. It is by no means a closed club, as Barack Obama's example proves. But the credentials for admission are increasingly held by the children of those who are already members. An elite that passes only money to the next generation is evanescent ("Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations," as the adage has it). An elite that also passes on ability is more tenacious, and the chasm between it and the rest of society widens.
What Herrnstein and I did not fully appreciate 16 years ago was how relentless this segregation would be. It is hard to get numbers -- no survey has samples large enough to calibrate precisely what's going on with the top percentiles of the population that I'm talking about -- but the numbers we do have, combined with qualitative data provided by observers such as Brooks, Florida and Bill Bishop, in his book "The Big Sort," are persuasive.
We know, for one thing, that the New Elite clusters in a comparatively small number of cities and in selected neighborhoods in those cities. This concentration isn't limited to the elite neighborhoods of Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. It extends to university cities with ancillary high-tech jobs, such as Austin and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle.
With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows -- "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago. But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end.
Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous
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Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.
They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).
They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn't be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.
There are so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.
Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth in the accusation.
Part of the isolation is political. In that Harvard survey I mentioned, 72 percent of Harvard seniors said their beliefs were to the left of the nation as a whole, compared with 10 percent who said theirs were to the right of it. The political preferences of academics and journalists among the New Elite also conform to the suspicions of the tea party.
But the politics of the New Elite are not the main point. When it comes to the schools where they were educated, the degrees they hold, the Zip codes where they reside and the television shows they watch, I doubt if there is much to differentiate the staff of the conservative Weekly Standard from that of the liberal New Republic, or the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute from those of the Brookings Institution, or Republican senators from Democratic ones.
The bubble that encases the New Elite crosses ideological lines and includes far too many of the people who have influence, great or small, on the course of the nation. They are not defective in their patriotism or lacking a generous spirit toward their fellow citizens. They are merely isolated and ignorant. The members of the New Elite may love America, but, increasingly, they are not of it.
Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality."
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OCTOBER 25, 2010 Outlook: The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.
ABOUT THE HOST
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES:
I'm Charles Murray, looking forward to chatting about yesterday's article on the New Elite. It's my first time with this format and software, so don't be surprised if there is a glitche or two at the beginning.
– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM
WHO IS "OF AMERICA"? Why is it that the qualities, traits, and tendencies you cite as being central to mainstream America have so little to do with, say, Latino or African-American culture? Are they elites as well--or just not Charles Murray American? Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American – October 25, 2010 10:34 AM Enterprise Institute and author of 'Real Education: Four CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Simple Truths for Bringing Things would look even worse if I'd brought America's Schools Back to in Latino, Asian, Black, etc.,aspects of Reality. American life about which the New Elite is clueless.
– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM
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NEW ELITE? I grew up in rural northern Wisconsin. I was raised an evangelical Christian. I went to college at a state university. I live in the metro D.C. area, and am financially secure. This was the "American Dream" we all aspired to. Now, because I don't follow NASCAR, like country music or recognize soybeans (I grew up in dairy country), I'm no longer a real American? By your own admission, only 1/3 of Americans still live in rural areas or small towns. Why do they get to be the real Americans? Why are their values and experiences more "American" than mine?
– October 24, 2010 11:01 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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
– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM
SO CALLED "ELITISM"... I've heard tea party participants and Republican candidates for office cry about elitism but they point at things like ivy-league college attendance as their evidence. Isn't it a good thing that well-learned people are engaging themselves in the business of the Republic?
– October 25, 2010 10:34 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:01 AM
ROCCI FISCH WRITES: The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.
– October 25, 2010 11:02 AM
WHAT'S NEW ABOUT THIS BUNCH? The wealthy elite have long been accused of being out of touch. ( The George HW Bush flap about the price of milk, and the flap over checkout scanners comes to mind). What makes this bunch even more so?
– October 25, 2010 10:32 AM
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CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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
– October 25, 2010 11:03 AM
MURRAY'S IMAGINARY U.S.A. Time and again, this essay describes as "mainstream" or "quintessentially American" things that the vast majority of Americans don't do: living in a small town (80% of Americans don't), reading Harlequin romances (85% don't), watching The Price Is Right or Oprah (more than 90% don't), belonging to Rotary or Kiwanis (99+% belong to neither.) It isn't just "elites" who don't do these things; the average person doesn't do them. (Nor follow NASCAR.) They're not even majority behaviors among the groups where they're more prevalent: the rural-and-small-town, the poorly educated, the old. So Murray's quarrel is actually with the REAL mainstream America, is it not?
– October 25, 2010 11:00 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:04 AM
FORTUNE'S WHEEL Interesting piece. You suggested that "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" won't apply to the new, genetically superior cognitive elite. Do you really think the "bobo" lineage is on its way to beating Fortune's Wheel forever? I am skeptical. What is the new elite's weakness?
– October 25, 2010 10:52 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:07 AM
WHAT IS "MAINSTREAM"? Several times, your article refers to "mainstream America" and implies that this
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demographic outweighs the "new elite," but no numbers are provided and it is poorly defined within this article. So my question is two-fold: a) what are the criteria for an American citizen to be a member of "mainstream America," and b) exactly how large is this particular demographic and how does it compare to the size of the "new elite" demographic (also not quantified)?
– October 25, 2010 11:01 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:07 AM
BLUE COLLAR JOBS The Blue Collar Jobs are disappearing anyway. To be a "real american" now, shouldn't you have had a service industry job? I'm pretty sure everyone can identify with working at a mall or slinging fries at McDonalds.
– October 25, 2010 11:07 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:08 AM
SO WHAT TO DO Even if there is an elite, are Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell really the antidote to it? – October 25, 2010 11:07 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:09 AM
CHARLES MURRAY: THE NEW ELITE Do you think the world view differential of average Americans versus elite Americans have a bigger impact? Example: Gallup says that 80 percent of Americans identify as non-liberal, whereas you cite 80 percent of elite Americans self-identify as liberal. Is this a bigger factor than their "living in a bubble" as far as you are
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concerned with explaining their "disconnect?" Love your book "The Bell Curve" by the way, it should be a standard College Text!
– October 25, 2010 11:06 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:10 AM
BILL CLINTON Did the Arkansas lawyer Bill Clinton lose his status and become part of the new elite by going to Yale?
– October 25, 2010 11:05 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:12 AM
NO BLUE COLLAR EXPERIENCE? Whoa, wait. So I was supposed to drop out of college and find a manufacturing job in order to gain this precious blue-collar experience? Or more realistically, why isn't a knowledge and respect for those who do those jobs enough?
– October 25, 2010 11:09 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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."
– October 25, 2010 11:13 AM
GLENN BECK Do you think Glenn Beck represents mainstream America? Should he?
– October 25, 2010 11:09 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I'm on record as being not a Glenn Beck fan.
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– October 25, 2010 11:13 AM
INTERESTING THEORY. FOLLOW-UP WITH DATA? I am pre-disposed to agree with you. Recognizing that bias, I was wondering if you were going to take this thought to the next step and support with the sort of data you provided in earlier books?
– October 25, 2010 11:11 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:15 AM
CHARLES MURRAY: THE NEW ELITE; FOLLOW UP I look forward to your book then; in the meantime, do you have any journal articles coming out that can "tide us over?"
– October 25, 2010 11:13 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:15 AM
NOT JUST THE ELITES? Isn't there an argument to be made for the fact that most people don't know a lot about cultures outside their own? The elites don't understand middle America, middle America doesn't understand inner city minorities, inner city minorities don't understand the elites and so on indefinitely.
– October 25, 2010 11:12 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:16 AM
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ADMISSIONS POLICIES I've always enjoyed your work, Charles. I've read that the group that is truly discriminated from getting into the elite schools are rural and small town whites. That actually the elite schools in their hunt for campus "diversity" fall all over each other to admit students of color on scholarships, whereas white middle-class students have little chance. It seems it's these admissions policies that contribute to and exacerbate exactly the kind of cultural divide about which you are talking. Do you agree?
– October 25, 2010 11:11 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:18 AM
MURRAY MISSES THE MAINSTREAM The bigger question, Dr. Murray, is what do you know about blue collar life and the mainstream? With your quiz, the picture you painted of "ordinary" America is part nostalgia and part a vicious vision of violence and ignorance. Tongue in cheeck indeed. You see mainstream America as undereducated rural/small town veterans who enjoy watching fast cars, brawls, country music and game shows, who are hooked on apocalyptic religion and who join civic clubs. That your idea of humor? You are a Harvard BA and MIT PhD -- according to your article, you are the new elitist.
– October 25, 2010 11:16 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:19 AM
The role of religion I would bet that a great number of the elite are secular and the commoners at least nominally religious. Is a lot of the rhetoric we hear about God from people like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin really a kind of proxy for "our assumptions about how life is supposed to work are not being respected by the people who think we're rubes"?
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– October 25, 2010 11:17 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: It depends on which aspect of the elite you're talking about. The academic and intellectual elites are extremely secular, but not business elites.
– October 25, 2010 11:20 AM
.BREADTH OF EXPERIENCE You claim that the new elite are limited in their experience, which somehow makes them less American than blue-collar workers and low-class citizens. However, virtually all colleges nowadays heavily favor applicants with more well-rounded experience (community service, job experience, athletics, travel abroad, mentoring, etc.), and many of these experiences expose those so-called elites to members of other demographics. Does this somehow "not count," just as poverty-line living in graduate school "does not count"?
– October 25, 2010 11:14 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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).
– October 25, 2010 11:22 AM
BLUE COLLAR VS ELITE I work in Ballston with a bunch of DOD lawyers. Back a few yers ago over at the mall these elitist snobs were turning up their noses at the auto techs from American Service Center. I chimed in they make more than you do. What. Yeah a journeymen level tech gets half the labor so they are making about $60 a hour with bonus for a 40-hour week. No huge student loans paid, etc., and they making about $130k+ and are 27-years-old. That LLB or JD gets you far huh!
– October 25, 2010 11:19 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:23 AM
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POLICY IMPLICATION? What are the policy implications of your thesis? I would guess that a New Elite would be, for example, more likely to send troops into harm's way and less likely to provide useful tax incentives for individuals, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will support a particular troop involvement in Afghanistan or a particular tax cut program (or for that matter a tax increase).
– October 25, 2010 11:21 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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?
– October 25, 2010 11:24 AM
THE NEW ELITE Isn't the real crux of this division in our society traceable to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.? When I was growing up, it appeared that career choices narrowed to two: work hard (trade jobs) or work smart (college, professional or semi-professional jobs). Both seemed to pay well albeit the professional jobs did sit at the top of the heap, at least in prestige. Since we have become a service based economy we no longer have that choice and relative evenness of the distribution of the economic pie is gone. Your thoughts?
– October 25, 2010 11:20 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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....
– October 25, 2010 11:26 AM
ELITE IS BAD? Isn't it natural for me as a parent to want my children to excel to an elite level, whether it is academically, athletically or economically, or should I tell them to be mediocre? When they settle for second best, is that better than being first?
– October 25, 2010 11:22 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: There's no tension between demanding your children strive for excellence, and also
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demanding that your children get out of the bubble.
– October 25, 2010 11:27 AM
NEW ELITE VS. PROUD HICKS Would offering more opportunities to lower-income students be a better way to get more diversity in leadership roles than electing people who wave their lack of education around like a badge of honor? Would a socio-economic affirmative action program be out of the question?
– October 25, 2010 11:23 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I think such affirmative action would be great.
– October 25, 2010 11:27 AM
HARLEQUIN ROMANCES One of Harlequin's prolific authors is a sorority sister of mine from the elite University of California at Berkeley. So does that make Harlequin elitist?
– October 25, 2010 11:24 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: It's not a binary world.
– October 25, 2010 11:28 AM
ELITE EDUCATION / LIFESTYLE VS ELITE RESULTS Isn't part of the resentment turned on elites a factor of the stunning failure of the finance and housing markets which followed the downsizing of corporate america during the 80s? Except for the tech boom, which came more from Stanford than Harvard, what tangible results have current elites delivered? The robber barons of the 19th century may have lived opulant life styles but they also built railroads, steel mills, factories and the real J.P. Morgan never asked the government for a bailout. The 21st century elites seem content to pat themselves on the back for their eduction and sophistication while the corporations they run file for chapter 11 and come begging the federal government for stimulus. Meanwhile, the average Joe or Jane who trusted their investments, career, retirement and future healthcare to these self- styled masters of the universe is left to sort through the remains of corporate failure and pay the taxes to fix their mistakes.
– October 25, 2010 11:25 AM
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CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:29 AM
WHERE'S THE INCENTIVE? Interesting article--where's the incentive for the New Elite to make sure that their genetically-blessed offspring know something about the rest of the country? Doesn't it seem as though they would prefer that their children stay elite?
– October 25, 2010 11:27 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:31 AM
MOST OF THE PEOPLE I KNOW IN THE NEW ELITE ARE DOING A PRETTY GOOD JOB OF PASSING SUCCESS ALONG Isn't this the Great American Dream? Sounds like those who didn't succeed are just plain old-fashioned jealous of those who worked hard enough to make it.
– October 25, 2010 11:26 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:32 AM
PRESIDENTIAL ELITES Charles Murray writes: 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 ... By this measure, you must agree that President Obama is among out least elitist presidents ever.
– October 25, 2010 11:30 AM
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CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Yep.
– October 25, 2010 11:32 AM
SO WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE...... that these people are stuck in a bubble and have never met anyone who isn't like them? Just the fact that the tea partiers rail about that? Some of us are educated *and* moderate- or even low-income, you know. But maybe that pokes a hole in your thesis.
– October 25, 2010 11:30 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:33 AM
"IT'S NOT A BINARY WORLD." Exactly. You should take your own advice. You're painting every educated "elite" as ignorant with no data to back it up. I say people who are ignorant of other people, whatever segment of the population they hail from, are problematic. And, as you say, policy-makers should strive to be broadly knowledgeable/experienced. But, "it's not a binary world."
– October 25, 2010 11:32 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:35 AM
POT MEET KETTLE With your background - degrees from two "elite" institutions, probably gained at a time when those degrees were only available to the "elite" - are you one of the "elite" or a "real" American? I ask this as someone with two Ivy League degrees who grew up in a working class town (in a state that has in many ways become synonymous with "Eastern elites") with one parent who did not go to college and the other who worked as a teacher. The Tea Partiers, no doubt, would consider me an elite, but I
16 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
grew up with NASCAR (before it was the flashy spectacle it is today and was colloquially known as the "beer and butts" circuit) and an uncle who was president of the Rotary Club. Does any of the research include evidence on people like me who are perhaps more attuned to small town "real" American life than many Tea Partiers, but who would, based on surface observations and broad generalizations, be labeled "elite"?
– October 25, 2010 11:32 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:37 AM
REVOLUTION Don't you think utimately the result of the elitism is a divide and uprising? Isn't that what you are really worried about for your children?
– October 25, 2010 11:32 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:38 AM
EVIL OF B.A.? Could you give a brief explanation of the evil of a B.A.? Would you rather people get their hands dirty?
– October 25, 2010 11:33 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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)
– October 25, 2010 11:39 AM
PUBLIC POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF LIVING IN A BUBBLE I would argue that it DOES "make much difference to public policy when a factory worker doesn't know much about life in Potomac, Md.," because people vote for
17 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
people they agree with. If rural people don't know what it is like to live in a crowded suburb or city, they won't support things like bigger road or public transit budgets, because those things aren't much of an issue in THEIR experience. It go both ways.
– October 25, 2010 11:33 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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).
– October 25, 2010 11:40 AM
OBAMA CHILDREN Are Malia and Sacha being raised without an understanding of the "real Americans" in spite of their being assured of the finest educations in the country?
– October 25, 2010 11:32 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Could be.
– October 25, 2010 11:40 AM
TRADITIONAL EDUCATION AN ANSWER? Perhaps an incentive for the elites to get their kids out of the bubble might be a traditional classical education? Your description of the New Elite focuses on Business, Law, Medicine and Science/Technology. Isn't their a history of wealthy parents seeking a more intellectual type of education for their children? Or would a generation of underpaid philosophy/literature/art history majors just create an new, different bubble?
– October 25, 2010 11:37 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I'm a big fan of classical education, period, for all sorts of reasons. ED Hirsch is my guy for K-12
– October 25, 2010 11:41 AM
GETTING CHILDREN OF ELITES OUT OF THE BUBBLE If the Law of Unintended Consequences applies, isn't there a risk that some of non- elite kids that elite kids rub elbows with will aspire to become elites themselves? Or are elite kids likelier to move downscale?
18 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
– October 25, 2010 11:34 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I don't think of it that way--moving up or downscale. It's about getting to know who your fellow citizens are.
– October 25, 2010 11:42 AM
THE TEA PARTY WARNS OF A NEW ELITE So the response of the tea party is to take us back to zero knowledge based policies? Can America survive being governed for a generation by know-nothings?
– October 25, 2010 11:38 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:43 AM
WHY SHOULD THE NEW ELITE CARE? Isn't the point to improve on your status and make your lot in life better? It's almost like you're saying shame on the educated because they have all their teeth and don't play the banjo.
– October 25, 2010 11:38 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I must not have communicated clearly.
– October 25, 2010 11:43 AM
ARE YOU ONE OF THE "ELITE" OR A "REAL" AMERICAN? You never answered the question
– October 25, 2010 11:39 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I fit the definition of the elite by virtue of my job. I like to think that I'm not in the bubble.
– October 25, 2010 11:44 AM
19 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
RESPONSE "Do most of the people in your neighborhood have college degrees--just 50 percent or more?" What's the point? That doesn't prove anything about the experiences I've had or the perspective I have. It's just a data point.
– October 25, 2010 11:40 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: It proves you live in a REALLY unusual neighborhood, statistically. An interesting datum.
– October 25, 2010 11:45 AM
THOSE ZIP CODES "In the 30,000-odd zip codes of the United States, just 4 percent have that proportion of college graduates among their adults." No doubt these zip codes account for the majority of people who claim evolution is false or that global warming is a scam. Being uneducated is not a badge of honor, sir.
– October 25, 2010 11:41 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:46 AM
WHAT IS THE DATA You tend to write about issues that are based on 'hard' data. Where does your data come from for your assumption that the new elite are out of touch?
– October 25, 2010 11:43 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:47 AM
HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD You say: "I fit the definition of the elite by virtue of my job. I like to think that I'm not in the bubble." Precisely. But you only identify the nasty ignorant elite by this same definition. How do you know what proportion are just as vigilant as you about not being in the bubble?
20 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
– October 25, 2010 11:46 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:49 AM
CHURNING IS SUBSIDING? Really? It seems I can't read a single newsblog and fail to see something about all the college grads who can't find jobs due to the recession.
– October 25, 2010 11:44 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Harvard grads don't seem to be having much problem.
– October 25, 2010 11:50 AM
EDUCATION OUT OF SYNC Education is out of sync with American working life. There was an article in Saturday's Post on how we're learning too much math: How much math do we really need? Way too many people go to college in this country.
– October 25, 2010 11:44 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Maybe two or three times too many.
– October 25, 2010 11:51 AM
PROBABLE RESULT OF THE ELECTION How will the election prove your thesis if some candidates with advanced degrees from top universities win with Tea Party backing (e.g. Rand Paul)?
– October 25, 2010 11:48 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:52 AM 21 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
ROCCI FISCH WRITES: The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.
– October 25, 2010 11:53 AM
BUBBLE With today's information age (Internet especially) the bubble has burst to a degree. It is hard to be ignorant if one watches the news, which I am sure the elite do.
– October 25, 2010 11:51 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:53 AM
WE'RE ALL IN SOME KIND OF BUBBLE I know how to get out of the bubble. Work as a seasonal crop harvester. Do the work our immigrants do. Now that'll get you out of the bubble.
– October 25, 2010 11:52 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: That would do it indeed.
– October 25, 2010 11:53 AM
WHAT POLICIES WOULD CHANGE IF ELITES WERE MORE IN TOUCH WITH THE REST OF THE POPULATION?
– October 25, 2010 11:50 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:55 AM
22 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
TRADES IN EUROPE I have come to understand (I have never been to Germany) that in places like Germany people in skilled trades are paid well and not looked down upon. Is that true? And how can we improve trades training as a path to good wages and the good life?
– October 25, 2010 11:54 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:56 AM
UNUSUAL NEIGHBORHOODS Comparing neighborhoods to zip codes is comparing apples to much larger apples. I live in a city with some of the highest dropout rates in the country but in a neighborhood you would have to have a decent job to afford to live in. Am I elite or not?
– October 25, 2010 11:49 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: I'm really bemused by the notion that "Am I elite or not?" is a question that has a binary answer.
– October 25, 2010 11:57 AM
COLLEGE I may not like everything you are saying, but I get what you are saying about college. My only issue is even if people don't really need the BA, college is probably the last chance most will ever have to be exposed to ideas, literature, etc. With the state of high schools today, a HS grad doesn't have much incentive to keep learning on their own.
– October 25, 2010 11:55 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: 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.
– October 25, 2010 11:58 AM
23 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010
MILITARY: THE GREAT INTEGRATOR Wondering why you didn't mention the military in your terrific op-ed, since the military is one of the greatest integrators of America (and the New Elite are hugely under-represented).
– October 25, 2010 11:56 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Lack of space. But I agree with your point.
– October 25, 2010 11:58 AM
WASHINGTON, DC Doing the work of an immigrant crop harvester won't get you out of the bubble. Being an immigrant whose best opportunity is the work of a seasonal crop harvester is something completely different from picking lettuce until your back hurts and you go home.
– October 25, 2010 11:56 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Well, it would be a lot better than nothing.
– October 25, 2010 11:59 AM
BINARY "I'm really bemused by the notion that "Am I elite or not?" is a question that has a binary answer." Well, it seems many readers took your piece as indicative that you think it is.
– October 25, 2010 11:58 AM
CHARLES MURRAY WRITES: Just gotta write better, I guess. Out of time.
– October 25, 2010 11:59 AM
24 From www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html 30 October 2010