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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   31393 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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Let's say the ultra-elite in the US is something like 10,000 families. That's accounting for the roughly 700 billionaires, a larger number of 9-digit millionaires, some political elites, some cultural elites, and a few odds and ends. If 1/4 of those have a kid in college at any given time, that's say roughly 2500 ultra-elite students in college at any moment.

3% of Harvard are from the 0.1 percentile. That is 50 kids per grade. The threshold to get into the top 0.1% by income is supposedly $1.6M. These people are not rich or elite in a meaningful way. The top 0.01% have a threshold income of $7.5M, and these are comfortably well off. There are about 16k of these families. One thing worth remembering is that almost all very rich people are very, very old, so their grandkids are the ones going to college, not their kids. If there are 50 kids from the 0.1% then there are perhaps 5 to 10 from the 0.01 percentile, the people you would consider elite.

From personal experience, there are about that many actually rich American kids at these colleges, and perhaps the same number, or more, of rich foreign kids.

Uh, you might be confusing income with personal wealth, or you have very strange standards. Having $1.6M doesn't make you particularly rich. Earning $1.6M per year definitely does. Unless you just think that schmoes like George W. Bush (net worth of ~$40M) aren't "rich or elite in a meaningful way".

George W. Bush is not a central example of a person with a $40 million net worth.

$40 million is incredibly common in the U.S.

According to Credit Suisse, there are 140,000 ultra-high net worth individuals in the U.S., defined as people with a net worth over $50 million. This is a huge group. The average member of this group is someone like a car dealership owner, a dentist who sold his practice and then invested well, or an early FAANG employee.

It is not rare. It is not elite.

Being in the top 0.1% doesn't count as elite? I don't see why the people you described can't be elite. The most expensive house in my city, which is an actual mansion, was bought by a car dealership owner.

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