The Rise of the Overclass.
YOU'VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF THE overclass, which is just how its members like it; they have a lot
to answer for. They are the people who put Jim Carrey on magazine covers, who renamed blue-green "teal"
and keep loaning money to Donald Trump--not out of any sinister conspiracy to ruin the country but because,
well, it's their job. As "professionals" and "managers" they lay claim to an increasing share of the national
income, but they wind up spending most of it at mirror-walled restaurants where they have to eat $10 arugula
salads. They're famous for having opinions, but it's hard to know what these are, since they never call talk-
radio shows. If they didn't exist we'd have to invent them, because otherwise we'd have no answer to the
question, whatever happened to all those Yuppies we used to see running around, anyway?
We are witnessing an epochal moment in American sociology, the birth of a new class. There is, obviously,
nothing new in the fact that some people in America have more money, influence and prestige than others. But
designating them "the overclass" is not just another way for journalists to package the squeal of the skewered
bourgeoisie. When "the poor" became "the underclass" it meant no longer thinking of them as just a lot of
people without money," but as the inheritors of a culture of poverty." Similarly, the overclass refers to a group
with a common culture and interests, with the obvious difference from the underclass that nobody is trying to
get out of the overclass.
Important discoveries like this always galvanize the national dialogue. Michael Lind, who gives a neo-Marxian analysis of the overclass in his new book "The Next American Nation," was still being attacked last week from both the left and the right, even as The Atlantic Monthly was arriving in mailboxes with a cover story by Nicholas Lemann on "The Structure of Success in America." Lind puts more emphasis on race and parentage, while Lemann dwells more on the role of SAT tests in determining who gets the goodies in American society. But they're talking about the same people, who are also part of the IQ elite described in last year's best seller "The Bell Curve."
AND THIS SAME INSIGHT resonates throughout society. Marketing consultants are already whacking the overclass into demographic slices so thin that they can peel off the Lexus segment from that for Infiniti’s. Political consultants study how to covertly appeal to the-newly identified bloc, while simultaneously attacking their opponents for pandering to it. Bashing an elite is always great political sport. But somehow the people derided by the left as corporate America!" and by the right as the "liberal establishment" seldom find their real interests seriously threatened.
Who is the overclass? It is hard to talk about class in America, a country in which 90 percent of adults in defiance of statistics and common sense identify themselves to pollsters as "middle class." What distinguishes the overclass, in fact, is precisely its effort to distance itself from the middle class, rather than lay claim to it. If the overclass is hard to define, it's because it is a state of mind and also a slice on the income curve. But it is not a ruling class: Bill Clinton seems to belong, but Newt Gingrich clearly doesn't; Bir Gates does, but probably not the chairman of Dow Chemical. The overclass obviously is affluent, but how much is that in dollars? Lind refers to families in the top "quintile," or 20 percent, of household income, because most government statistics are kept that way. But that implies a cutoff of only about $67,000 a year. Any figure is necessarily arbitrary, but it seems more logical to speak of a class consisting of the top 5 percent in household income, roughly 12.5 million people with incomes starting at $113,182.
That figure--more than three times the median household income--probably seems extravagant to most Americans, but Fortune magazine recently proclaimed on its cover the alarming news that the new standard for executive pay is "four times your age" -- in other words, $120,000 at the age of 30. The fact is that no matter how many Danielle Steel novels we read most of us have only the vaguest idea of the lives of people much richer (or poorer) than we are. Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, once asked voters to imagine what it would be like to have dinner with their congressmen. Overwhelmingly they described a meal out of an Edith Wharton novel, with liveried servants and string quartets. Congressmen make $133,600 a year.
But money is not the only entry requirement. Inherited wealth doesn't count for much, unless you're actively investing it yourself, preferably in something creative like a yogurt plant in Kazakhstan, nor does income from a
Important discoveries like this always galvanize the national dialogue. Michael Lind, who gives a neo-Marxian analysis of the overclass in his new book "The Next American Nation," was still being attacked last week from both the left and the right, even as The Atlantic Monthly was arriving in mailboxes with a cover story by Nicholas Lemann on "The Structure of Success in America." Lind puts more emphasis on race and parentage, while Lemann dwells more on the role of SAT tests in determining who gets the goodies in American society. But they're talking about the same people, who are also part of the IQ elite described in last year's best seller "The Bell Curve."
AND THIS SAME INSIGHT resonates throughout society. Marketing consultants are already whacking the overclass into demographic slices so thin that they can peel off the Lexus segment from that for Infiniti’s. Political consultants study how to covertly appeal to the-newly identified bloc, while simultaneously attacking their opponents for pandering to it. Bashing an elite is always great political sport. But somehow the people derided by the left as corporate America!" and by the right as the "liberal establishment" seldom find their real interests seriously threatened.
Who is the overclass? It is hard to talk about class in America, a country in which 90 percent of adults in defiance of statistics and common sense identify themselves to pollsters as "middle class." What distinguishes the overclass, in fact, is precisely its effort to distance itself from the middle class, rather than lay claim to it. If the overclass is hard to define, it's because it is a state of mind and also a slice on the income curve. But it is not a ruling class: Bill Clinton seems to belong, but Newt Gingrich clearly doesn't; Bir Gates does, but probably not the chairman of Dow Chemical. The overclass obviously is affluent, but how much is that in dollars? Lind refers to families in the top "quintile," or 20 percent, of household income, because most government statistics are kept that way. But that implies a cutoff of only about $67,000 a year. Any figure is necessarily arbitrary, but it seems more logical to speak of a class consisting of the top 5 percent in household income, roughly 12.5 million people with incomes starting at $113,182.
That figure--more than three times the median household income--probably seems extravagant to most Americans, but Fortune magazine recently proclaimed on its cover the alarming news that the new standard for executive pay is "four times your age" -- in other words, $120,000 at the age of 30. The fact is that no matter how many Danielle Steel novels we read most of us have only the vaguest idea of the lives of people much richer (or poorer) than we are. Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, once asked voters to imagine what it would be like to have dinner with their congressmen. Overwhelmingly they described a meal out of an Edith Wharton novel, with liveried servants and string quartets. Congressmen make $133,600 a year.
But money is not the only entry requirement. Inherited wealth doesn't count for much, unless you're actively investing it yourself, preferably in something creative like a yogurt plant in Kazakhstan, nor does income from a
local business like a fast-food franchise. (Owning a Cajun or Tuscan restaurant is OK, though, even if it loses
money. The overclass is national, or even transnational, in outlook, although its members mostly cluster on
both coasts. It judges people, itself included, mainly on "merit," a quality that can be demonstrated only by a
continual and strenuous accumulation of academic and professional credentials. Even more than money, it
values competitive achievement: books published, screenplays produced, products launched, elections won.
Of course, those things generally translate into money in the end anyway.
YOU MIGHT THINK that anyone would be proud to be associated with such a productive and successful class, but somehow that's not the case. The overclass, in fact, is one of the most anguished and self-doubting oligarchies in history, a habit of mind that began in the first act that defined it as a generation, its resistance to being drafted for Vietnam. "We've kept our compact with ourselves," says Chicago novelist and lawyer Scott Turow. "We know the unexamined life is not worth living, we're good parents, we recycle. But what have we done for anybody else? That's the question people of this class will ask when their kids are grown." Who wants to be in that position? Not I, says Eric Redman, a partner in a big Seattle law ofgce, with a comer office on the 61st floor of Seattle's tallest building. Also a Rhodes scholar, a Harvard Law graduate and a member of the Harvard class of 1970 -- of whom nearly 30 percent, responding to an anonymous survey for their 25th reunion, reported a net worth of more than $1 million. But Redman describes himself as just a "glorified hourly wage slave ... My broker told me the really big money isn't being made in salaries, but real estate and stock options." So count him out. What about Faith Popcorn, the endlessly quotable president of a marketing firm called BrainReserve, who lives and works in her own town house in the most expensive part of Manhattan? Not her either. "I'm not psychologically like those rich people," she says. "I lived in a studio apartment for 25 years before I bought my brownstone, and my cottage in Wainscott [a fashionable section in the Hamptons] is only 750 square feet."
Perhaps they just don't realize that the overclass is not the old-fashioned, discredited, morally bankrupt aristocracy. "They're the first wave of people who went to Ivy League schools on their merits, did well and are still hustling to do well," says Ne son W Aldrich Jr.--himself a scion of an old aristocratic family and the author of "Old Money" The overclass was made possible by the transformation in the 1950s and 1960s of the Ivy League from a closed network dedicated to serving the least disreputable offspring of the WASP elite into a great machine for identifying future national leaders. A degree from an Ivy League or equivalent school is an almost indispensable credential of overclass membership--and not only because it presumes that you learned something while getting it. "At the highest levels," Lind says, "everyone was a roommate in college." Turow, who has degrees from Amherst, Stanford and Harvard, says friends sometimes ask him whether their children really need $100,000 worth of higher education to get ahead in life. If you're asking me whether an Ivy League graduate will have access in ways that don't exist to graduates of otherwise outstanding schools like the University of Illinois," he tells them, "the answer is yes." The overclass leads a distinctive lifestyle, which basically reflects Yuppie tastes updated to take into account its increased affluence, sophistication, and of course weight--often a simple matter of substituting a Mercedes SL320 for a 10-speed bicycle. It is a lifestyle founded on privilege--on the premise, according to Stan Schultz, a cultural historian at the University of Wisconsin, that "we are terribly busy souls doing important things that no one else can do . . . " so of course we have to fly business class, we need a full-time nanny instead of day care, we eat out four nights a week instead of trying to make our own risotto with squid ink. The widespread belief that Yuppies as a class would perish from Brie-cheese poisoning turned out to be over-optimistic. They're still at it, according to the consumer- research wizards of Claritas, Inc., who have identified a specific segment of the overclass, comprising mostly urban singles and couples without children, whose members eat Brie cheese at more than five times the national average.
POLITICALLY, THE overclass exists in a state of perpetual tension between its economic interests, which lie with the Republicans, and its psychological affinity for the Democrats. "One trait that comes through the data is the economic conservatism of this group," says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. "They don't like to give money away." But their values are libertarian and cosmopolitan-- typically prochoice on abortion, pro-NAFTA on trade, environmentally aware. And at odds, therefore, with the Republican social agenda, which is driven by groups like the Christian Coalition (founded by Yale Law School alumnus Pat Robertson) and The Family Research Council, which actively loathe everything about the overclass, except its money. "If you're making six figures, Republican
YOU MIGHT THINK that anyone would be proud to be associated with such a productive and successful class, but somehow that's not the case. The overclass, in fact, is one of the most anguished and self-doubting oligarchies in history, a habit of mind that began in the first act that defined it as a generation, its resistance to being drafted for Vietnam. "We've kept our compact with ourselves," says Chicago novelist and lawyer Scott Turow. "We know the unexamined life is not worth living, we're good parents, we recycle. But what have we done for anybody else? That's the question people of this class will ask when their kids are grown." Who wants to be in that position? Not I, says Eric Redman, a partner in a big Seattle law ofgce, with a comer office on the 61st floor of Seattle's tallest building. Also a Rhodes scholar, a Harvard Law graduate and a member of the Harvard class of 1970 -- of whom nearly 30 percent, responding to an anonymous survey for their 25th reunion, reported a net worth of more than $1 million. But Redman describes himself as just a "glorified hourly wage slave ... My broker told me the really big money isn't being made in salaries, but real estate and stock options." So count him out. What about Faith Popcorn, the endlessly quotable president of a marketing firm called BrainReserve, who lives and works in her own town house in the most expensive part of Manhattan? Not her either. "I'm not psychologically like those rich people," she says. "I lived in a studio apartment for 25 years before I bought my brownstone, and my cottage in Wainscott [a fashionable section in the Hamptons] is only 750 square feet."
Perhaps they just don't realize that the overclass is not the old-fashioned, discredited, morally bankrupt aristocracy. "They're the first wave of people who went to Ivy League schools on their merits, did well and are still hustling to do well," says Ne son W Aldrich Jr.--himself a scion of an old aristocratic family and the author of "Old Money" The overclass was made possible by the transformation in the 1950s and 1960s of the Ivy League from a closed network dedicated to serving the least disreputable offspring of the WASP elite into a great machine for identifying future national leaders. A degree from an Ivy League or equivalent school is an almost indispensable credential of overclass membership--and not only because it presumes that you learned something while getting it. "At the highest levels," Lind says, "everyone was a roommate in college." Turow, who has degrees from Amherst, Stanford and Harvard, says friends sometimes ask him whether their children really need $100,000 worth of higher education to get ahead in life. If you're asking me whether an Ivy League graduate will have access in ways that don't exist to graduates of otherwise outstanding schools like the University of Illinois," he tells them, "the answer is yes." The overclass leads a distinctive lifestyle, which basically reflects Yuppie tastes updated to take into account its increased affluence, sophistication, and of course weight--often a simple matter of substituting a Mercedes SL320 for a 10-speed bicycle. It is a lifestyle founded on privilege--on the premise, according to Stan Schultz, a cultural historian at the University of Wisconsin, that "we are terribly busy souls doing important things that no one else can do . . . " so of course we have to fly business class, we need a full-time nanny instead of day care, we eat out four nights a week instead of trying to make our own risotto with squid ink. The widespread belief that Yuppies as a class would perish from Brie-cheese poisoning turned out to be over-optimistic. They're still at it, according to the consumer- research wizards of Claritas, Inc., who have identified a specific segment of the overclass, comprising mostly urban singles and couples without children, whose members eat Brie cheese at more than five times the national average.
POLITICALLY, THE overclass exists in a state of perpetual tension between its economic interests, which lie with the Republicans, and its psychological affinity for the Democrats. "One trait that comes through the data is the economic conservatism of this group," says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. "They don't like to give money away." But their values are libertarian and cosmopolitan-- typically prochoice on abortion, pro-NAFTA on trade, environmentally aware. And at odds, therefore, with the Republican social agenda, which is driven by groups like the Christian Coalition (founded by Yale Law School alumnus Pat Robertson) and The Family Research Council, which actively loathe everything about the overclass, except its money. "If you're making six figures, Republican
The Overclass 100
IN 1984, NEWSWEEK MARKED THE ARRIVAL OF A NEW species of successful American--the Yuppie.
Now, a decade later, it's time to take stock of another breed of the upwardly mobile. This is an unscientific list
of 100 members of the new overclass, They are among the country's comers, the newest wave of important
and compelling people. Just because someone is on the list does not mean they share every overelass trait.
They might not send their kids to private schools, might not reject middle-class values and might not have even
heard of the "overclass." But they're part of it because the fields in which they're making their marks -- from
software to upscale businesses like Starbucks -- are ones that other ambitious people want to be part of. They
cans aren't hurting you," said Diana Sperrazza, a TV news producer vacationing on Nantucket Island this
summer. "You don't want to think about it," she says. "You have a foot in each camp, really."
It's likely those tendencies described by Sperrazza actually cancel each other out. As far as political power goes, individual members of the overclass naturally serve in high positions -- such as the presidency--in both parties. But except for those whose careers are actually in politics or journalism, they don't seem to wield extraordinary influence. "These people want access and power," says Maria Cantwell, a former Democratic congresswoman who represented Seattle's East Side, home to many Microsoft millionaires. "But they're too busy to use it. They're used to the fast track to make things happen. That's not government."
One of Lind's most controversial points is that the overclass has used its money and access to manipulate public policy, enriching itself at the expense of everyone else. But the money and access that count in Congress are wielded by institutions, not classes" composed of disparate individuals. Much has been made of the reduction in marginal tax rates since 1980. But over the same period many loopholes were closed, so that while tax burdens were shifted around some among individuals, as a group the top 5 percent paid 31 percent of all federal income taxes last year-up from 27.8 percent in 1977. It is true that the gap m after-tax income between the richest Americans and all the others has been growing. But economists now agree that the government's consumer price index, which is used to adjust income statistics, overstates the effect of inflation on people's wages. By other measures, middle-class income is growing-slowly--the poor are stagnating, and the rich are getting richer, very rapidly.
IF IT LACKS A DISTINCTIVE Political interest, the overclass nevertheless has an ideology, the ideology of "merit." Its success validates its intelligence and effort. Other oligarchies in the past have made similar assertions, of course, but the overclass is the first that is able to demonstrate superiority mathematically, with the help of "SAT scores. "They believe they create their job, their opportunity and their wealth," says Edward Blakely, dean of urban planning at the University of Southern California. The attitude he describes may account for the peculiar reaction the overclass has to failure, such as the loss of a job. Its members decline to acknowledge it. "Their view," says Peter Meder, who runs an executive--search firm in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, "is still one of total entitlement.. . . The opening line is, `I'm networking right now. I'm taking some time off to evaluate my options.' Can you imagine a factory worker or a retail-store manager getting fired and saying, `I'm taking time off to evaluate my options?"'
In the abstract, "merit" is a wonderful ideal, and a far more efficient way to allocate rewards in a modern society than, say, primogeniture. Of course, in the real world luck plays a role in everyone's life; some people go to high school in Beverly Hills and some in East St. Louis. But people who believe that all rewards flow from merit tend not to have much sympathy for life's failures. "As you do well, you convince yourself that anyone can do well," says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. "They don't feel particularly connected to the plight of the working class," says Blakely. When a factory worker loses his job, the overclass isn't hostile, just uncomprehending, he says: "It's a case of `What's wrong with them? Why can't they go back to school?"'
Failure just is not an option for the overclass. Elise Gunter, a successful Hollywood lawyer, had dinner with an investment-banker friend recently, who explained his theory that America is becoming a two-tier society. One class will have the autonomy to live where and how it wants; the other will be increasingly constrained and shut out. Pedigree and power, money and education will make the difference, and so he had set out to become as rich and successful as possible. "You couldn't imagine anyone saying that 10 or 15 years ago," she said with a shudder. "But he said it matter-of-factly, as if to say, `Of course that's the way it is.' On the one hand it was disturbing, but part of me agrees with that."
It's likely those tendencies described by Sperrazza actually cancel each other out. As far as political power goes, individual members of the overclass naturally serve in high positions -- such as the presidency--in both parties. But except for those whose careers are actually in politics or journalism, they don't seem to wield extraordinary influence. "These people want access and power," says Maria Cantwell, a former Democratic congresswoman who represented Seattle's East Side, home to many Microsoft millionaires. "But they're too busy to use it. They're used to the fast track to make things happen. That's not government."
One of Lind's most controversial points is that the overclass has used its money and access to manipulate public policy, enriching itself at the expense of everyone else. But the money and access that count in Congress are wielded by institutions, not classes" composed of disparate individuals. Much has been made of the reduction in marginal tax rates since 1980. But over the same period many loopholes were closed, so that while tax burdens were shifted around some among individuals, as a group the top 5 percent paid 31 percent of all federal income taxes last year-up from 27.8 percent in 1977. It is true that the gap m after-tax income between the richest Americans and all the others has been growing. But economists now agree that the government's consumer price index, which is used to adjust income statistics, overstates the effect of inflation on people's wages. By other measures, middle-class income is growing-slowly--the poor are stagnating, and the rich are getting richer, very rapidly.
IF IT LACKS A DISTINCTIVE Political interest, the overclass nevertheless has an ideology, the ideology of "merit." Its success validates its intelligence and effort. Other oligarchies in the past have made similar assertions, of course, but the overclass is the first that is able to demonstrate superiority mathematically, with the help of "SAT scores. "They believe they create their job, their opportunity and their wealth," says Edward Blakely, dean of urban planning at the University of Southern California. The attitude he describes may account for the peculiar reaction the overclass has to failure, such as the loss of a job. Its members decline to acknowledge it. "Their view," says Peter Meder, who runs an executive--search firm in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, "is still one of total entitlement.. . . The opening line is, `I'm networking right now. I'm taking some time off to evaluate my options.' Can you imagine a factory worker or a retail-store manager getting fired and saying, `I'm taking time off to evaluate my options?"'
In the abstract, "merit" is a wonderful ideal, and a far more efficient way to allocate rewards in a modern society than, say, primogeniture. Of course, in the real world luck plays a role in everyone's life; some people go to high school in Beverly Hills and some in East St. Louis. But people who believe that all rewards flow from merit tend not to have much sympathy for life's failures. "As you do well, you convince yourself that anyone can do well," says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. "They don't feel particularly connected to the plight of the working class," says Blakely. When a factory worker loses his job, the overclass isn't hostile, just uncomprehending, he says: "It's a case of `What's wrong with them? Why can't they go back to school?"'
Failure just is not an option for the overclass. Elise Gunter, a successful Hollywood lawyer, had dinner with an investment-banker friend recently, who explained his theory that America is becoming a two-tier society. One class will have the autonomy to live where and how it wants; the other will be increasingly constrained and shut out. Pedigree and power, money and education will make the difference, and so he had set out to become as rich and successful as possible. "You couldn't imagine anyone saying that 10 or 15 years ago," she said with a shudder. "But he said it matter-of-factly, as if to say, `Of course that's the way it is.' On the one hand it was disturbing, but part of me agrees with that."
Gunter's friend had an extreme case, verging on paranoia, of a more general overclass anxiety. "You could call
them scared to death, leading lives of quiet desperation," says Aldrich. "Or not-so-quiet desperation. They talk
about their desperation while eating out." This belief in the coming triumph of the smart and rich helps explain
why the overclass is so driven to reject so vehemently middle-class values and tastes. Is health the only
reason so few of them smoke? Or is it also a way of choosing sides with the winners? "`We a re the talented
few'," says Schultz. "`We wouldn't think of going to Las Vegas, except once to be able to comment on how
tacky America is'. " Can anyone doubt that arugula would quickly be seen for the bitter, stringy vegetable it
actually is if Burger King began offering it on sandwiches?
Of course, salad vegetables don't have much significance, even symbolically. But other personal choices, such as where to live and send children to school, very much do. Increasingly the overclass is choosing to live in ways that minimize its mixing with the middle class (which is doing the same, of course, with respect to the poor). Sometimes it just moves farther out into the suburbs, or higher up the high-rise. But increasingly often it chooses to live in a walled and gated community guarded by private security forces. "It becomes a matter of status not to have contact [with strangers]," observes Mike Davis, a perceptive critic of Los Angeles society. "Physical isolation is a luxury." In Laguna Niguel, a wealthy Orange County beach town, a group of homeowners won permission to put gates at their entry roads--guarding not just the 250 homes, but a public park right in the middle of their subdivision. The plan is being challenged in court by another resident of the town.
No issue is more fraught with desperation for the overclass than schools. Their conviction that they rose to their eminence in one generation on "merit" leads inescapably to the conclusion that their own kids might not make it, or deserve to. But few are willing to put that proposition to the test; instead they maneuver frantically to get their offspring into the best possible private schools, starting (in highly competitive environments such as Manhattan) with preschool before the age of 3. "Those who believe in public education as a democratic ideal," says Pearl Kane, an authority on independent schools at Columbia University Teachers College, "move to Greenwich, Conn., and pay a million dollars for their homes." Those who don't are like one well-to-do Los Angeles mother, a former public-school teacher herself, who says bluntly that the problem with the public schools is having children of different social classes, where "they don't have the same values in their home ... if I'm working hard to push my child I want to make sure the other parents are, too." One development soon to be built in California has hit on the perfect overclass solution: a gated community with a private school inside.
And let's wish the future residents long and happy lives, in contented ignorance of people like Michael Brennan, a union electrician from Arlington Heights, Ill. He had a few years of college, intending to be a teacher, but lost interest. When a friend from college derided people with "dead-end jobs," Brennan thought to himself, "Hey, some people just want to feed their kids and meet their responsibilities." He's working now on a job at a big Chicago law firm, and when he shows up at 2 a.m. to shut off the power, he finds lawyers still at their desks from 18 hours before, even on weekends. Some of them probably feel sorry for or even contemptuous toward him. They probably think, if they think about it at all, that he envies them. They're very wrong. "Some of these people I feel sorry for," he says. "You wonder if they've sold their souls. Life's pretty short." Even for the overclass.
Source Citation:Adler, Jerry. "The rise of the overclass." Newsweek 126.n5 (July 31, 1995): 32(8). General OneFile. Gale. Nipmuc Regional Middle/High School. 25 Feb. 2009
.
Of course, salad vegetables don't have much significance, even symbolically. But other personal choices, such as where to live and send children to school, very much do. Increasingly the overclass is choosing to live in ways that minimize its mixing with the middle class (which is doing the same, of course, with respect to the poor). Sometimes it just moves farther out into the suburbs, or higher up the high-rise. But increasingly often it chooses to live in a walled and gated community guarded by private security forces. "It becomes a matter of status not to have contact [with strangers]," observes Mike Davis, a perceptive critic of Los Angeles society. "Physical isolation is a luxury." In Laguna Niguel, a wealthy Orange County beach town, a group of homeowners won permission to put gates at their entry roads--guarding not just the 250 homes, but a public park right in the middle of their subdivision. The plan is being challenged in court by another resident of the town.
No issue is more fraught with desperation for the overclass than schools. Their conviction that they rose to their eminence in one generation on "merit" leads inescapably to the conclusion that their own kids might not make it, or deserve to. But few are willing to put that proposition to the test; instead they maneuver frantically to get their offspring into the best possible private schools, starting (in highly competitive environments such as Manhattan) with preschool before the age of 3. "Those who believe in public education as a democratic ideal," says Pearl Kane, an authority on independent schools at Columbia University Teachers College, "move to Greenwich, Conn., and pay a million dollars for their homes." Those who don't are like one well-to-do Los Angeles mother, a former public-school teacher herself, who says bluntly that the problem with the public schools is having children of different social classes, where "they don't have the same values in their home ... if I'm working hard to push my child I want to make sure the other parents are, too." One development soon to be built in California has hit on the perfect overclass solution: a gated community with a private school inside.
And let's wish the future residents long and happy lives, in contented ignorance of people like Michael Brennan, a union electrician from Arlington Heights, Ill. He had a few years of college, intending to be a teacher, but lost interest. When a friend from college derided people with "dead-end jobs," Brennan thought to himself, "Hey, some people just want to feed their kids and meet their responsibilities." He's working now on a job at a big Chicago law firm, and when he shows up at 2 a.m. to shut off the power, he finds lawyers still at their desks from 18 hours before, even on weekends. Some of them probably feel sorry for or even contemptuous toward him. They probably think, if they think about it at all, that he envies them. They're very wrong. "Some of these people I feel sorry for," he says. "You wonder if they've sold their souls. Life's pretty short." Even for the overclass.
Source Citation:Adler, Jerry. "The rise of the overclass." Newsweek 126.n5 (July 31, 1995): 32(8). General OneFile. Gale. Nipmuc Regional Middle/High School. 25 Feb. 2009
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