[ExI] Protected Elites

[Damien Broderick]

At 03:26 PM 5/15/2009 +0200, Stefano wrote:

>what we are living in is a neo-feodal
>society, where circulation of the élites is reduced to a minimum, and
>social mobility is largely a myth, the few examples of which have
>usually little to do with IQ, but rather with purely physical features
>(as in "marriage, show business and sport").

When James James Andrew Andrew Rogers was a 
frequent poster on this list, he denied that 
fervently, offering data suggesting a quite 
remarkable degree of USian turnover in the upper 
reaches of the plutocracy. At least half the 
billionaires had parents who were poor or middle 
class, that sort of thing. I find it hard to 
believe, and even if it's true there might be 
some power law that gives those right at the very 
top of the curve incomparably more sway over the 
nation's/globe's running, and most of those might 
well be multi-generational elites. Data, anyone?

Damien Broderick