I think I’m following your comment, but I’m not sure I see the distinction between the super-smart and the super-rich that you do. I’m not sure that things would be improved by replacing dumb crooks with smart crooks, and I see very little correlation over a generation or so between intelligence and morality. Smart immoral people can always make money. Smart moral people are a rare jewel.

Wrong!

They are smart enough to twist the issues to their own advantage.

I wish, here in OZ, that we could trust some of those in leadership to do the right thing for all citizens…to look after the best interests of the poor and the outcast…instead of their own interests.

I largely agree with your points here as they apply to the upper reaches of the ruling class, although I would place more emphasis on the notion of the money political power transaction being very much a two-way street.

However, the super-rich/super-politically connected can’t make too many commoners part of the elite; otherwise, they wouldn’t be “common” or elite. As long as people don’t love others as much as themselves, which all of us struggle with even in our most loving relationships, the super rich get super richer, and only some of them actually will work very hard to surrender their own elitism to pull others upward.

The solution for them, then, in a variety of situatiohns, is to keep inventing rungs on the ladder between the commoners and the actual ruling powers. I think this is where intellectualism comes in as an “opiate of the masses”, to borrow a term from the left.

The August 2010 unemployment rate for people with 4 year degrees was 4.6%, so there has been no recessiohn among the college educated (although they’ve locked themselves into a long term wealth hit in investments and housing values). As you note, access to college is strongly influenced by things other than individual merit.

My home county is a test case of how this works, and the risks people are willing to take to get into the edges of the ruling class. I live in one of the five richest counties in the US. About 1-2% of the homes in my neighborhood are going into foreclosure per month because people bought housing they could not afford in order to get their children into the County school system, which is also one of the most highly ranked in the nation. I believe I read before the primaries for school board a few weeks ago that Federal grants and subsidies had now become the largest source of support for the school system — even more than comes from what should be a huge property and sales tax base.

Perfect example, IMO, of how the ruling class regulates entry to its ranks through political power. We have to be among the least needy counties in the country for Federal assistance to elementary and secondary education, but our resident elites would not tolerate it.