"Today's 9.9% have convinced themselves they don't have any privileges."
Have they? If anything, the primary arguments against the concept of privilege haven't been the denial of privilege in general, but rather the hyper-fixation on "white" or "male" privilege, and acknowledging how loosely and irresponsibly those are used to explain away all sorts of complexity in differing outcomes.
In fact, many of the advocates for serious restructuring of wealth redistribution mechanisms seem to be coming out of the higher echelons of society. Even many free-market-advocate-types are fully onboard with concepts akin to UBI as technology reshapes people's capabilities to meaningfully contribute to the market.
Jordan Weissmann's response in Slate is worth a read:
Actually, the 1 Percent Are Still The Problem
The Atlantic trots out a familiar argument blaming the upper-middle class for income inequality. It’s wrong.
> Stewart and Reeves are right to point out that the American upper class is bigger than just the top 1 percent. There are, indeed, many layers of economic privilege in this country. But they’re doing it in a way that essentially asks us to forget a lot of what we’ve learned about how income and wealth are really concentrating in this country. The 1 percent vs. the 99 percent may not be a perfect shorthand for what ails the economy, but it’s a whole lot more useful than what they’ve offered up.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 11.0 ms ] threadHave they? If anything, the primary arguments against the concept of privilege haven't been the denial of privilege in general, but rather the hyper-fixation on "white" or "male" privilege, and acknowledging how loosely and irresponsibly those are used to explain away all sorts of complexity in differing outcomes.
In fact, many of the advocates for serious restructuring of wealth redistribution mechanisms seem to be coming out of the higher echelons of society. Even many free-market-advocate-types are fully onboard with concepts akin to UBI as technology reshapes people's capabilities to meaningfully contribute to the market.
Actually, the 1 Percent Are Still The Problem The Atlantic trots out a familiar argument blaming the upper-middle class for income inequality. It’s wrong.
https://slate.com/business/2018/05/forget-the-atlantics-9-9-...
Here's Weissmann's concluding paragraph.
> Stewart and Reeves are right to point out that the American upper class is bigger than just the top 1 percent. There are, indeed, many layers of economic privilege in this country. But they’re doing it in a way that essentially asks us to forget a lot of what we’ve learned about how income and wealth are really concentrating in this country. The 1 percent vs. the 99 percent may not be a perfect shorthand for what ails the economy, but it’s a whole lot more useful than what they’ve offered up.