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<\/a><\/p>\nA Rasmussen poll surveyed America\u2019s \u201celite,\u201d constituting 1% of the population, and compared their views to those of average Americans.<\/p>\n
The study, commissioned by the conservative Committee to Unleash Prosperity, is entitled Them vs. U.S.: The Two Americas and How the Nation\u2019s Elite Is Out of Touch with Average Americans<\/a>.\u00a0 Here is a sampling of the findings:<\/p>\n \u2022 In a time when most Americans have suffered a loss of real take-home pay, 74% of elites say they are financially better off today than in the past versus 20% of all Americans.<\/p>\n \u2022 Nearly six in ten say there is too much individual freedom in America \u2013 double the rate of all Americans.<\/p>\n \u2022 More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing of vital energy and food sources to combat the threat of climate change.<\/p>\n \u2022 In stark contrast to the rest of America, 70% of the Elites trust the government to \u201cdo the right thing most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Two-thirds (67%) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.<\/p>\n \u2022 Somewhere between half and two-thirds favor banning things like SUVs, gas stoves, air conditioning, and non-essential air travel to protect the environment.<\/p>\n \u2022 About six of ten elites have a favorable opinion of the so-called talking professions\u2014lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and journalists.<\/p>\n \u2022 President Joe Biden enjoys an 84% job approval rating from this group \u2013 roughly twice as high as the general public.<\/p>\n 60% of the elite think Americans have too much freedom?<\/p>\n 67% want teachers to determine what children are taught, rather than parents?\u00a0 The actual question was whether you would vote for a candidate who advocated letting teachers rather than a candidate who advocated letting parents decide.\u00a0 So probably this would be construed as applying mainly to the unwashed masses in need of greater enlightenment, rather than the children of the elite themselves, many of whom go to the private schools that the parents choose.<\/p>\n The elite seem commendably willing to do without in the name of the environment, though, paradoxically, such sacrifice can be a luxury of the affluent.\u00a0 Poor people already do without, so it\u2019s hard for them to do without even more.\u00a0 Meanwhile, 74% of the elite are doing well for themselves financially in what 80% of the rest of the country consider hard times.<\/p>\n The elite have an outsized influence on the rest of the country.\u00a0 The report explains why:<\/p>\n The Elites represent 1% of the U.S. population but have an outsized voice on public policy in the United States, with their views seeming somehow to dominate the national conversation. This may be because it is the Elites themselves who determine what that conversation will be about on campus, in the legacy media, and corporate board rooms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I find this information very telling.\u00a0 And yet we should be aware of how the pollsters are defining the Elite:<\/p>\n The survey is a first-of-its-kind look at the views of the American Elite \u2013 defined as people having at least one post-graduate degree, earning at least $150,000 annually, and living in high-population density areas (more than 10,000 people per square mile in their zip code) \u2013 and compares them to what the average American thinks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The income designation of $150,000 strikes me as quite low for elite status.\u00a0 This 1% is not the same as the top 1% in income.\u00a0 Then again, journalists, professors, and members of other \u201ctalking professions\u201d (who are rated so highly probably because they are part of the elite) do not necessarily earn high salaries.<\/p>\n Having a post-graduate degree?\u00a0 This will skew the sampling to include more university professors.<\/p>\n Living in zip codes with high density populations, defined as more than 10,000 people per square mile?\u00a0 That means not only city dwellers but dwellers in our\u00a0 most densely populated cities<\/a>.\u00a0 The only cities that would qualify would be New York, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington.\u00a0 These are influential cities, to be sure\u2013the centers of finance, high-tech, academia, and government\u2013and all bright blue, except for Miami.<\/p>\n So there may be some selection bias here, constructing a research target that will give you the results you are looking for.\u00a0 Still, the study documents a belief gap in our society that may be more significant than the income gap that we hear so much about (mainly from the \u201celite,\u201d perhaps from the \u201celite\u201d that don\u2019t make all that much money).\u00a0 And it tells us much about the \u201ctwo Americas\u201d that shape our society and our politics.<\/p>\n The title of this post comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald since I cannot resist literary references.\u00a0 Apologies if you are rich and not all that different from me.\u00a0 The line \u201cthe rich are different from you and me\u201d\u00a0 is not from The Great Gatsby<\/a>, but from a short story entitled The Rich Boy<\/a>.\u00a0 As for Ernest Hemingway\u2019s rejoinder, \u201cyes, they have more money,\u201d see this<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0The study report quotes the passage in full, so I will too:<\/p>\n \u201cLet me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.\u201d \u2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Rich Boy<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n HT:\u00a0 Richard Ostling<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Illustration: \u201cGroup Blog, after J. C. Leyendecker<\/a>\u201d by Mike Licht via Flickr,\u00a0 CC 2.0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Rasmussen poll surveyed America’s “elite,” constituting 1% of the population, and compared their views to those of average Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":72006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,13,14,19,36,42],"tags":[14337,14340,13748],"class_list":["post-71985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-culture","category-economics","category-education","category-government","category-politics","category-social-science","tag-american-social-classes","tag-class-differences-and-politics","tag-cultural-elite"],"yoast_head":"\n