James Kwak
- Advancing Oligarchy
(fall2010)
“The class warfare argument is...highly effective. Most people think that society is too unequal. Yet at the same time, we have an instinctive dislike for class warfare. If you're engaged in class warfare against the rich, that must mean you're poor, and people don't want to think they're poor. We like to think we're not a class society; everyone likes to think they're middle class; even large proportions of the rich identify themselves as middle class. And we have this belief in social mobility, though in fact we're less mobile than most European societies. And as a result, we think you should become rich; you shouldn't attack the rich.”