Lawyers in ‘Lower Upper Class’ Begin Revolt with Goldman Case, Columnist Says
Members of the lower upper class—professionals who are living better than 99 percent of other Americans due to education, hard work and good luck—are beginning to revolt against those who are an economic step above them.
That’s the view of Washington Post columnist Matt Miller, who sees a connection between the revolt of the uppers—a group that includes lawyers—and the Goldman Sachs case.
“For several years I’ve predicted that a new wild card in American life—the presence of economic resentment at the bottom of the top 1 percent of our income distribution—would become a powerful force for reform,” writes Miller, a law school graduate and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “The SEC’s fraud case against Goldman Sachs may be the first shot in what I think of as the revolt of the ‘lower upper class.’ “
Miller says those in the lower upper class can’t help but notice that others with similar credentials are living in “Gatsby-like splendor they’ll never enjoy” and being rewarded even when they fail.
The next battleground, he predicts, will be over taxation of the “Ultrarich.”
“The revenge of the Lower Uppers may have only just begun,” he says.
