YOU can handle one more post on Charles Murray, can't you? Mr Murray argues in Time that we should honour a distinction between people who are "just rich" and "people who run the country". I think he's on to something.
Mr Murray envisions a chap named Hank who builds a chain of auto-repair shops that make him very rich, but not particularly powerful:
[Hank] is not just in the 1%; he’s in the top fraction of the 1%—but he’s not part of the new upper class. He went to a second-tier state university, or maybe he didn’t complete college at all. He grew up in a working-class or middle-class home and married a woman who didn’t complete college... He has a lot of money, but he doesn’t have power or influence over national culture, politics or economy, nor does he even have any particular influence over the culture, politics or economy of the city where he lives. He's just rich.
The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country. By “the people who run the country,” I mean two sets of people. The first is the small set of people—well under 100,000, by a rigorous definition—who are responsible for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the success (or failure) of the nation’s leading corporations and financial institutions and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. The second is the broader set, numbering a few million people, who hold comparable positions of influence in the nation’s major cities.
What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country.
Mr Murray, a sociologist, is very interested in the details of the putative cultural chasm between the merely rich and the people who really run things, but I want to pause to reflect on the idea, implied in Mr Murray's analysis, that wealth and influence come apart.
When I worked at the Cato Institute, I became accustomed to hearing from certain corners that the organisation was a tool of imagined plutocrats, and therefore so was I. What I found amusing about this was the notion that the best America's malignantly moneyed classes can muster is to hire nerds like me to maybe shift public opinion at the margin by writing widely ignored policy papers and op-eds. Arrangements like these seem to be predicated on the idea that far-from-rich wonk types are endowed with certain capacities that make them especially likely to exert an influence on the culture. If the money of think-tank patrons makes a difference, it's because the people who work in think tanks make a difference. Where exactly is the locus of power?
When I parted ways with Cato, I thought it would be nice if there was a lavishly endowed think tank that better fit my increasingly idiosyncratic politics. Alas, there is not. But this led to me to think about what I'd do if I were a multi-millionaire with idiosyncratic politics and wanted to start a think tank to make the public case for my peculiar creed. Who would I hire? Think tanks and donor-supported ideological publications are already shot through with principal-agent problems. At places like Cato, the principals pay to restore the sacred ideals of the founders and the agents spend to abolish the status-quo patent system, end the war, and legalise weed. If I were rich, I don't know if I would trust anyone to run the Institute for the Free-Market Welfare State according to my wishes instead of theirs.
As I've argued elsewhere, financing the operations of political-action committees, campaigns, think tanks, advocacy organisations, and money-losing ideological publications is likely the best most wealthy Americans can hope to do in converting their money into political influence. And beyond relatively small-scale giving to campaigns and causes, most rich folk don't actually spend their money this way. Even when they do, the ideologically-motivated rich are limited by the menu of preexisting organisations, prevailing ideas, and the supply of ideologically congenial labour. No amount of money can buy you a think tank with your politics if there is no one with your politics to work in it.
Reader, I almost surely make less money than you do. But, for some reason, thousands of people read what I write on a number of important subjects several times each week. Sometimes, strangers will write to me to report that I've altered their opinion or attitude regarding some weighty matter. This is gratifying. Yet I'm a minor player at best in the opinion-shaping game, unworthy to touch the hem of Paul Krugman's or George Will's garment. Still, I suspect I qualify, functionally and culturally, as part of Mr Murray's "new upper class", my middle-class background and third-tier university degrees notwithstanding. I'm paid to tell people what I think. I love quinoa. I am disgusted by the obesity and religiosity of Americans. I drive my vizsla around in a Honda Element listening to Bon Iver. Please don't hate me, merely rich Coors Light drinkers of little influence. I'm doing it all for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment