Home > Author > Christopher L. Hayes
41 " In 1982, the top 1 percent of pop stars, in terms of pay, raked in 26 percent of concert ticket revenue. In 2003, that top 1 percent—names like Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, or 50 Cent—took 56 percent of the concert pie.12 "
― Christopher L. Hayes , Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
42 " Between the 1970s and early 2000, the ratio of the pay of the top 10 percent of CEOs to those in the middle doubled from two to four.14 Not only that, but CEOs even pulled away from their own deputies. A 2006 study found that the ratio of CEO pay to the average of the next two most highly compensated employees of the firm also almost doubled during the period between 1980 and 2005.15 In "
43 " If it is the case that politicians who have not experienced war are more disposed to advocate force, then there is a very real and dangerous cost to the social distance we now have between our civilian elite and our soldiers. And this is precisely what Feaver and his coauthor found. They looked at the voting records of politicians who were veterans, going all the way back to 1816. They found that those with military experience were less likely to favor force than their non-veteran peers. "
44 " A wide distance between the governors and the governed will produce a state that is predatory toward its own citizens, indifferent to their desires, and subject to the inbred whims and compulsions of its ruling class. It will produce crisis. Countering "
45 " But disruption as disruption isn’t enough. In order to actually effect deep and lasting change, those opposed to the current social order must locate another base of power that can credibly challenge the power of incumbent interests. I think the answer lies in a newly radicalized upper middle class. One "
46 " Our task now is to recognize that that struggle is ours. "
47 " But political crises, moments when the keystone of authority of some major governing institution is whisked away like a Jenga block, can produce a tumbling cascade of new forms of politics. We’ve been looking at the tower for so long we forget it’s made of blocks; we forget it can be put back together in a different way. Previous crises of authority in America produced not just concerted movements to reform the institutions of the time, but organic bouts of institutional innovation that created fundamentally new ways of coordinating work and life. "
48 " In the second stage, once those who oppose the status quo succeed in weakening the authority of the existing order, they are able to bring about new social and legal structures that actually reduce its power. "
49 " But we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside. "
50 " Today, the Power Elite is more geographically concentrated in specific areas. Economist Jamie Galbraith found that if you measured inequality across counties in the United States in the 1990s, half the rise occurred in 5 counties out of 3,150: New York, New York; King County, Washington; and San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Mateo in Northern California.24 "
51 " When recruiting candidates for the House of Representatives, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) looks for aspirants to raise so much money, so early—$250,000 in the first quarter the candidate has declared—that it’s almost impossible to do without a massive personal or family bank account. "
52 " nearly half of all members of Congress have a net worth north of a million dollars, compared to just one in twenty-two households nationwide.26 Between 1984 and 2009, while the median net worth of American households remained essentially unchanged, the median net worth of members of the House of Representatives rose by 260 percent. Not only did the rich get richer, so did Congress. While "
53 " More than one-third of congressional staffers turn to a career in lobbying after leaving Capitol Hill. It’s clear the staffer-turned-lobbyist’s value to special interests depends on the robustness of his or her network on Capitol Hill. According to an August 2010 study, when a lobbyist’s former boss on Capitol Hill left office, the lobbyist’s salary declined by an average of 50 percent in the six months following the departure.27 Moving from Capitol Hill to K Street isn’t limited to staffers: In 2010, 37 percent of the newly out-of-office members of Congress went to work for lobbying firms or clients. After losing his run for Senate in 2006, Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford Jr. moved to New York to take a job with Merrill Lynch with a guaranteed annual compensation of $2 million. At the time he had no experience in finance. What he was paid for were his networks: "
54 " Bush paid into the myth that education will level the playing field. "
55 " As American society grows more elitist, it produces a worse caliber of elites. The "
56 " In Parton’s telling, the Village is “a permanent D.C. ruling class who has managed to convince themselves that they are simple, puritanical, bourgeois burghers and farmers, even though they are actually celebrity millionaires influencing the most powerful government on earth.”17 It’s not just the activist base of the left and the right who have recognized the widespread elite failure; more and more individual elites have broken ranks to acknowledge their own responsibility. "
57 " In 1928, the top 10 percent of earners captured 46 percent of national income. That was the highest share that the top tenth captured for nearly eighty years, until 2007, when we returned to the wealth distribution of the country on the eve of the Great Depression. The top 1 percent did even better. Between 1979 and 2007, nearly 88 percent of the entire economy’s income gains went to the top 1 percent.49 One "
58 " The meritocracy offered liberation from the unjust hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation, but swapped in their place a new hierarchy based on the notion that people are deeply unequal in ability and drive. "
59 " Adjusted for inflation, the top 0.1 percent saw their average annual income rise from just over $1 million in 1974 to $7.1 million in 2007. And things were even better for the top 0.01 percent, who saw their average annual income explode from less than $4 million to $35 million, nearly a ninefold increase.51 It is not simply that the rich are getting richer, though that’s certainly true. It is that a smaller and smaller group of über-rich are able to capture a larger and larger share of the fruits of the American economy. America now features more inequality than any other industrialized democracy. "
60 " With a résumé that boasts a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton and years at the infamous Soros Quantum fund, Johnson has a uniquely intimate perspective on American elite failure: “For years, the right has worshipped markets and now they have reason to be skeptical,” he told me. “Meanwhile, the left has romanticized government and now they have reason to be skeptical. So what you’ve got now is a society that is demoralized because they have nothing to believe in.”18 "