Class Homicide – The American Mind

In the process, the aspirational character long essential to American society is being transformed. According to one study, the chances of middle-class earners moving up to the top rungs of the income ladder has declined by approximately 20 percent since the early 1980s. Data from the Census Bureau show that the share of national income going to the middle 60 percent of households has fallen to a record low.

In the economy, hierarchy is rapidly replacing opportunity. Banking and finance, treated amiably by Washington during the Financial Crisis, have become increasingly concentrated while many smaller regional institutions have either been acquired or driven out of business.  Growing corporate concentration has now seeped into the once dynamic tech economy in both the U.S. and Europe. In Silicon Valley now, the renowned garage culture has morphed into a Gargantua of giant firms with market power unprecedented in modern times, controlling in some cases 80 to 90 percent of key tech markets.  

Similarly, property ownership has become more concentrated; we see declining  homeownership, particularly among the young, notably in the United States, Canada, and Australia. One analyst predicted that soon most middle class people will be priced out of ownership in a rentership society where Wall Street firms profit by re

via americanmind.org

There’s a word for this — “repatrinomialization’, or in the case of the US, perhaps just “patrinomialization.” It’s the process by which a mostly merit-based social hierarchy is replaced by one based on social and/or political connections. It’s happening in the US with astonishing speed. We’ve seen this happen in other countries and it doesn’t end well. See Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, about which more later.