How the Upper Middle Class Has Risen Even Higher (Interview)

Who doesn’t love to hate the excesses of the 1 percent? But a new book argues that the whole upper middle class has some giving to do if we’re ever to stem the country’s growing inequality.

I was riding a fizzy, popping wave of self-righteousness reading the New York Times that morning on the subway: Newly installed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his socialite wife, Hilary, had recently purchased a 10,000-square-foot mansion on “billionaire’s row” in Washington, DC, staff quarters and movie theater included. They’d just attended a Versailles-themed ball at Mar-a-Lago, where the waiters were required to wear four-pound powdered wigs and where Ms. Ross swanned through an ersatz Hall of Mirrors in a gown of “crimson lace, her shoulders wrapped in white fur.” Yuck.

What do 1-percenters like these really have to lose by paying more taxes? Or by offering to take substantially smaller paychecks from the companies they run to strike a blow against the huuuge pay differentials between CEOs and those who labor for them?

Read more at Elle

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