OPINION:
For the past 30 years or so, the left has invented a narrative that there are two Americas: The very rich (the 1 percenters) have prospered over the past several decades, and everyone else has gotten poorer. It’s a fairy tale, because almost all Americans have seen financial progress. The median household income adjusted for inflation has risen by more than 40% since 1984.
Prosperity isn’t an “us vs. them” zero-sum game. A rising tide really does lift all boats.
But there really are two Americas today. First, there are the cultural and overeducated snobs — the kind of people who religiously read The New York Times, drive electric vehicles, wear Harvard or Yale sweaters, and have never watched NASCAR, eaten at Popeyes, or ridden a John Deere tractor.
And then there are Main Street Americans. The snobs thumb their collective nose at these unrefined, working-class people. The elites believe they are intellectually, culturally and morally superior to the working class and rural America. You won’t see many elites at a Trump rally with 30,000 people.
A group I helped found, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, just published a study, “Them v. U.S.,” examining how our country’s cultural elites (defined as having at least one postgraduate degree, attended an Ivy League school, an annual income of over $150,000, and live in a high-density urban area) are hopelessly out of touch with ordinary Americans. Pollster Scott Rasmussen did the research.
Here are some of the key jaw-dropping revelations from the survey:
Financial well-being: Nearly three-quarters of the elites surveyed believe they are better off now financially than they were when President Biden entered the White House. Less than 20% of ordinary Americans feel the same way.
Individual freedom: Elites are three times as likely as all Americans to say there is too much individual freedom in the country. Astonishingly, almost half of the elites and almost 6 in 10 Ivy Leaguers say there is too much freedom.
Climate change: An astonishing 72% of the elites — including 81% of the elites who graduated from top universities — favor banning gasoline-powered cars. And majorities of elites would ban natural gas stoves, nonessential air travel, SUVs, and private air conditioning. That means no flights with the children to Disney World.
Education: Most elites think that teachers unions and school administrators should control the agenda of schools. Most mainstream Americans think that parents should make these decisions.
Oh, and about three-quarters of these cultural elites are Biden supporters. Surprised? Read the full report here.
The Grand Canyon-sized divide between the elites in the United States and ordinary Americans is so profound that it is as if they live in two different countries. Silicon Valley, Manhattan and Washington have become bubbles that have lost contact with everyday Americans. This explains why the political class — which is a big part of the elite group — is confused by poll numbers showing that voters are financially stressed out.
The elites are doing fine, so they believe that everyone is prospering. I suspect that most don’t want radical change in the public schools because their children attend blue chip private schools. They are fine with abolishing SUVs because elites generally don’t drive those cars in big cities — if they drive at all.
Crime, illegal immigration, inflation, fentanyl, and factory closings aren’t keeping the elites up at night because, in their cocoons, they don’t encounter these problems on a daily basis the way so many Americans do today. Not many Main Street Americans are losing sleep over climate change or LGBTQ issues.
The elites in America tend to work in the “talking professions” — university professors, journalists, lawyers, actors and lobbyists. They keep talking, and normal Americans are more than ever not listening to them.
• Stephen Moore is a co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. He serves as chief economist with FreedomWorks.
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