“ I’m just an ordinary man,”[i] The political turbulence of the last
few years, created an eddy about the idea that educated people who live in
large metropolitan areas, or near the coasts are elites and elitists, and that
that is a bad thing. I don’t understand why they became a pejorative. In a vain
attempt at full disclosure, I did grow up in the East, although 120 miles from
any saltwater, went to a great high school, and got a college degree. I’ve also
worked in two large metropolitan areas in the last forty years; brace yourself,
one of them was on the left coast. Still, I don’t consider myself elite or an
elitist; just a regular guy.
America is experiencing rapid change,
technologically, socially and morally. Advancements in artificial intelligence
reduce the need for low-skill jobs. When manufacturing leaves the smaller towns
and cities because the product is no longer needed, productive people are replaced
by robots, or the jobs moved to the large city or another country, certain
desperation sets in. Without jobs, life becomes a struggle, stores close, the population
dwindles and division begins.
Those who cause disruption tend to be
well-educated technocrats who use high-skill abilities to create new products
and services. Long-standing industries become obsolete – think taxies, small
hotels, or assembly lines. Change has brewed for a few decades but is now in a
fast boil. Our national DNA is steeped in a them-vs.- us divide. Those who
don’t have the opportunity or the will to keep up need someone to tag with the
blame for their lot in life; perfectly understandable.
One of the things I learned early on when I was
a teacher was that a lot of “smart” kids were smart because we told them they
were because we treated them as if they were and set higher expectations for
them. Children from poorer families were not grouped with the elites; race made
a difference too, social standing made a difference, and behavior made a difference.
The problem was that those kids were smart too but we treated them as if they
weren’t. The self-fulfilling-prophesy was at work. G. B. Shaw was right.[ii] He still is.
America rid itself of royalty at its founding but kept its elites: Washington, Jefferson, the Adam’s, the Lowell’s, Cabot’s
and Lodge’s[iii], the Roosevelt’s, Kennedy’s, Bushes and
other politicians. We have a pantheon of corporate moguls: Carnegie, Stanford,
Hearst, Ford, Mellon, Gates, Jobs, Buffet, and Ellison. In a meritocracy, we
will always have those who, through family position, luck, or pluck, will rise
above others.
What do most people do as they accumulate
success and excess money? They move to neighborhoods that reflect their view of
themselves, associate with others like themselves, buy bigger toys, vacation
homes, join organizations with similar folks, and go from there. They seek out
the best schools for their kids, foster competitiveness, push academics, and
urge them on to independence with the best of intentions. Why is that bad? That
is the American dream, isn’t it?
Some say that we need just plain people running
our nation because the elites have not done so well by us. I am not sure I
agree. Contemplate our country governed by poorly educated people, with
diplomats who lack a basic understanding of the forces of hegemony, the value
of alliances, with leaders who disdain expertise and experience, or lack social
graces. Think of schools led without a passion for learning. There seems to be
something happening that does not like education, which does not believe
science, does not like the traditional definitions of success, that can’t cope
with the sea change flooding our lives.
We live in a global economy whether we like it
or not. That means we compete with people from countries that place a high
value on educating their elite students: those who can pass the entrance exams
and move from one level to another. India has 260 million high-school students,
China has about 300 million, and the US only 11 million. Let’s put that in
perspective; The top 10% of high school students in India or China are larger
than the entire high school population of the US. Their elites will be kicking
our butts in a few years.
So, who are these elites that have everyone up
in arms? They are mostly people who went to college, and let’s face it, went to
elite schools like Harvard and Stanford. All of the current Supreme Court
Justices, for example, went to Harvard Law School or Yale Law School. (RBG
transferred from Harvard Law to Columbia Law School.) They excelled and they
succeeded. Most Fortune 100 CEOs have graduate degrees from highly rated
schools. Highly educated and skilled individuals lead most major non-profits.
They are all members of the elite class. That seems like a good bargain for the
nation. Yet, as no good deed goes unpunished, the elites are blamed for the
economic disparity in the nation, the educational disparity, and the social
class disparity. They may deserve it, too. But … but!
Too few of the elite class own too much. We
have too few willing to share the spoils of success with those who helped them
rise to the top. Worker wages really haven’t gone up much in the last twenty
years while the very rich are even richer by many folds. This creates a natural
dislike for the haves by the have-nots. The divide showed its power in the 2016
election when a conservative nationalist game-show host with no governing
experience was sent to the White House because many people were willing to vote
for anyone other than more of the same. The elites do rule the country at
local, state and national levels; they always have. Most have no concept of
life in mid-America or the problems it faces. So, they focus on the needs of
the people in the cities, on issues of no concern to the mid-west or the
northern plains. They forget that 80% of the Senate represents only fifty
percent of the population and their states have the same percentage of the
Electoral College.
I am comfortable with highly educated
up-to-date visionaries leading the country, up to a point. The wealth of the
nation needs to be better distributed. We need to ensure that every American
has access to good healthcare at an affordable price. We need to insist on
schools that educate and train people for the jobs of the future, not the last
century. We need those jobs in this country even if it cost a little more. We
need a company’s value measured by more than its stock price.
We have been through these cycles before; the agricultural society suffered through the industrial revolution, we endured a
half-century or more of wars, lived through a postindustrial world, and are now
working our way along a technological road to the next disruption. The elites
led all the movements and recoveries, though with restraints by the masses.
That’s where we are today: pulling the reins on a runaway, unregulated economic
system that encourages greed and oligarchy. The pendulum will swing back, led
by a new batch of elites. If we don’t let them become elitists, we’ll be fine.
[i] Lerner & Loewe – My Fair Lady – 1957 – I’m an
Ordinary Man
I’m an ordinary man
Who desires nothing more than just an ordinary
chance
To live exactly as he likes and do precisely
what he wants
An average man am I, of no eccentric whim
Who likes to live his life free of strife
Doing whatever he thinks is best for him
Well, just an ordinary man
[ii] George
Bernard Shaw – Pygmalion – 1913
A play on which My Fair Lady is based
[iii] A well-known toast to the city of Boston –
1910 - “Here’s to the beans and the cods, where the Lowell’s speak only to the
Cabot’s and the Cabot’s speak only to God. The Lowells never get a look in.”
