The profound disconnect between the attitudes shared by the ‘top’ 1% elites in American society and the rest of the population is laid bare by the results of an illuminating new poll. Nearly six in 10 elite members believe there is too much individual freedom in America, more than two-thirds favour rationing of food and energy to combat climate change, somewhere between a half and two-thirds favour banning things like SUVs, gas stoves, air conditioning and non-essential air travel, while two-thirds believe teachers should decide what children are taught. Meanwhile, 70% of those polled trust Government to “do the right thing most of the time”, while among these groups, President Biden enjoys an 84% approval rating.
The poll’s authors note that at a time when most Americans have suffered a loss of real take-home pay, 74% of members say they are financially better off than in the past. “The people who run America, or at least think they do, live in a bubble of their own construction. They’ve isolated themselves from everyday America’s realities to such a degree their views about what is and what should be happening in this country differ widely from the average American,” it is observed.
The poll studied American elites but observations suggest these views are widespread within small highly influential groups in many other countries. Populist parties are rising across Europe and elsewhere, in reaction to open borders, the woke attack on traditional values and cohesive societies, and the savage insanity of the collectivist Net Zero project. In Britain, this last lunacy is demonstrated with the recent news that steel making is to stop in Port Talbot with the horrendous loss of around 3,000 local jobs. Wherever you look, none of this concerns the new elite aristocracy, insulated and isolated by high state salaries and subsidies, or large, outsized remunerations from corporations and financial institutions with an almost monopolistic lock on commerce and ‘virtue’.
Two polls were conducted last September among 1,000 U.S. elite members, defined as having a postgraduate degree, a household annual income of more than $150,000 and living in an area with more than 10,000 people per square mile. About 1% of the U.S. population are said to meet these criteria. The results were titled ‘Them v U.S’ and published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP), a Maryland-based non-profit advocacy group founded by the distinguished economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore. The methodology was determined after observing numerous surveys indicating that these elite segments of the population consistently exhibited views that were distinct from the general population.
Many of the views expressed are frankly very scary, but they chime with the agenda promoted by similar elites across the world. Climate change is clearly an obsession of the very rich and highly educated, note the authors, adding: “An astonishing 77% of the elites – including nearly 90% of the elites who graduate from the top universities – favour rationing of energy, gas and meat to combat climate change.” More than two-thirds of graduates from elite colleges would ban SUVs, gas stoves, air-conditioning and most air travel. The cynical will note of course that current elite lifestyles suggest that the favoured few have little expectation that such restrictions will apply to themselves – rather it is a new way of living for the sheeple, the fly-overs, the deplorables or the gammon, or whatever insult is in vogue at any one time.
Attempting to remove a steak dinner from many Americans and substituting it with a bean salad might be considered an unwise course of action, but elites are three times more likely to say there is too much individual freedom than all Americans. Almost six out of 10 graduates from elite colleges think there is too much freedom in a country that has always considered itself the ‘land of the free’.
The authors note that these elites have extraordinary political and societal powers. They determine what the conversation will be about on campus, in the legacy media and corporate boardrooms. They put their trust in big government/media/business/academia because they run all these institutions. As we have seen in the Daily Sceptic, large amounts of green billionaire money is available to promote their destructive agendas, and in the process censor any views not fully backing the pre-ordained narrative. Only in mainstream media and over-funded academia can the scientific process of climate science be deemed ‘settled’, only a Harvard professor can think there is ‘context’ in calling for the genocide of Jews, and only the very flexible of mind can believe that a woman has a penis. Only a very odd group can give the barely sentient President Biden an 84% approval rating.
The CUP points to widely differing views of individual freedom. Most Americans think there is not enough freedom, a view shared by only 21% of elites. Being this down on freedom is not surprising within decadent groups seeking to reshape human and economic society using all the levers of power available in supra-national organisations. Look at the example of Port Talbot. Steptoe and Son horse-drawn carts suitable for 20mph roads taking scrap steel to a promised electric arc furnace that will probably never be built. The main road connecting England and de-industralising South Wales reduced to a local rat-run around the M4 Newport tunnel because local ‘labour’ politicians have banned further construction. Farming restrictions likely in the rural areas. You can lie and propagandise all you like, but in the end you don’t get away with this unless you restrict common and popular lifestyle choices by overwhelming state control.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Stop Press: Watch the President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, articulate similar themes at Davos.
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Was she briefly possessed by the ghost of Enoch Powell? Seemed to be paraphrasing his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.
Not sure if this person did something especially bad or just made a ”lesbian nana” type comment.
”British police arrest patriotic Britons who took part in anti-immigration protest in Sunderland. Thoughts?”
https://x.com/EuropeInvasionn/status/1819993048702398670
This is the result of too much multiculturalism, particularly too much Islam importation. Will the police be raiding these psycho’s homes too? I’ve seen the footage of two men with their heads cracked open after they were attacked. I’m sure they’d consider themselves ‘culturally enriched’ today;
”In Stoke a white man is cornered & is given a terrible beating by Muslims.
Later gangs of Muslims were seen with weapons, touring the town looking for other victims.”
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1820005133062644213
Vaguely on topic we’re just now doing a bit of shopping in an area of North London with a large Turkish community, near where we used to live. They are economically successful and I’ve never experienced or heard of racial tensions with them in all the time we used to live here. I don’t think mass immigration of any culture is helpful but we should also recognise that not all cultures are the same and outcomes may depend on a mixture of race, culture and religion.
Agreed, but why is preferential treatment given to young male black sub Saharan Africans with no identification?
Bet you wouldn’t be so keen living next door to them as majority culture?
I’m not “keen” on any of it as I made clear in my previous post. I was merely making an observation based on my personal experience.
As to your question, I think it’s quite plausible to think that sub-Saharan Africa is the place that more people want to get out of than anywhere else – not exactly surprising – and that TPTB merely acquiesce to this as it suits them.
A good point, one problem being is the mass immigration which does not allow for an integration, it introduces a different culture into an existing one with all the inevitable inter-reaction, good and bad. You can welcome one visitor par se, but not to one that could deemed an army of invasion.
I think there are two related but distinct issues. The first is the inevitable disappearance of a distinct English culture and race, both of which are regrettable and tragic if you value cultural and racial diversity. It’s perhaps a bit too subtle for many and is therefore not ringing enough alarm bells (present company excepted). The second is the more acute and headline grabbing issue that subsets of the immigrant population have greater propensity to antisocial behaviour and crime and less willingness or capacity to make a net positive contribution.
Indubitably.
The two are different, but each one, unchecked, can lead to the other, so should not be separated (not in my mind at least). Erosion of British values and culture will encourage an explosion of values and cultures that cannot exist together in harmony. The refusal to integrate inevitably leads to a cultural clash, and a cultural clash inevitably leads to further refusal to integrate. Very much a chicken and egg thing.
Most of us are perfectly happy with a level of migration that benefits the UK – that in itself is a whole other topic however – where the immigrants offer something in return for a home. That, of course, is not what we have anymore. What we have is unrestricted immigration, of which a significant section of is hell-bent on bending us to their will. It’s a perverse inversion of what would happen organically. And there’s it is: what we are experiencing, which results in children being slaughtered by a savage, is nothing like organic. Our masters have been very busy laying the foundations of complete and total subjugation of the people. We let it carry on too long and now their wet dream is within touching distance.
I think I would agree with almost of all that.
“Most of us are perfectly happy with a level of migration that benefits the UK “
It depends what you mean by “benefits”. There are immigrants – individuals and groups – who will contribute economically and be good citizens, and if we have to have it at all, let’s have that sort, but even then the numbers need to be pretty low to avoid erosion of our culture and race. Trouble is, we’ve had so much already, of mainly I would say the wrong sort overall (I don’t mean the majority of immigrants are horrible people in case anyone thinks that’s what I mean), that now it really has to stop dead and even then with the demographics we are onto a loser. Of course, it won’t stop dead – not in our lifetimes anyway.
Nothing I disagree with, hence my disclaimer with respect ‘benefits’.
I guess most of the people who voted for anyone but Reform think that immigration has benefited and will benefit us, or they were asleep when deciding who to vote for. For me along with Nut Zero and Medical Fascism it’s a red line
A lot of Turks in North London are actually Turkish Cypriots or the descendants of Turkish Cypriots who fled here when the Civil War started. They are “fairly British.” If you visit Northern Cyprus, as I have several times, there are obvious echos of British rule still in place.
Yes that makes sense. Lots of Greek Cypriots there too – I’m not aware of major conflicts between the two groups though that may have passed me by.
Oh dear – I have to admit that I wholeheartedly agree with Rachel Reeves! Presumably now she will have observed that the current situation is much worse than when she made the statement!
Ah, nethen, Ms Reeves has since that anti immigration comment been convinced of ‘the new way’ and thanks very much for the brown envelope.
Who is the leader of the Labour party? Very few voted for Starmer so he certainly is not the Prime Minister of the vast majority: 20% is risible. So, the real question has to become who is the real power in the Labour party? Starmer and Reeves (aka Matt Lucas) seem to agree on absolutely nothing whatsoever.
They couldn’t agree on who works and who doesn’t a few weeks ago. Given the evidence we have all seen, Matt Lucas is in charge banging her drums dressed as a baby.
As to what is currently happening: come on, does anyone think the majority are out for a ruck with the Police? This has been simmering for years as Reeves well knows. Starmer hasn’t got a clue; he is less intelligent than one of Magic Grandpa’s lettuces.
Go down the Pub today, no matter where you live, and ask “Are you fed up with mass immigration and what it has, and is, causing?”. You may be unlucky get two who say they are perfectly happy.
At least we now know who our Prime Minister supports. Personally, I find myself ashamed of the nation I now live in, a nation where illegal immigration and the consequences of that are fine, voicing or protesting against it are not, indeed, you will be punished if you do.
A decade too late…. It’s lip service anyway
A huge Oil Tanker puts on the brakes well in advance of where it wants to stop eg. If it doesn’t do that then it will crash into the harbour with disastrous results. This is exactly what has happened with mass immigration. We did not and still have not put the brakes on and the result is DISASTER.
Excellent point. And that lets you know just how far into the harbour they wish this tanker to go.
wink
“We’ve all seen the protests against the almost open-borders immigration forced on us by.Blair/Brown, in order to rub the Right’s faces in diversity, and enthusiastically continued by the Not-a-Conservative-Party …… particularly Johnson.
Please don’t start an article by revising history.
What are these ‘curbs’? There are plenty of curbs out in the street. They frame a broad highway.
The volte face of Reeves is reminiscent of that of Boris Johnson. As Mayor of London, he was openly climate sceptical – “wind forms couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding” – but as soon as he became prime minister, he realised that his bread was buttered on the side of the globalists’ climate change hoax and here we are today heading for Net Zero economic ruination.
Now that Reeves is in power, as an obedient puppet she is likewise toeing the globalist party line on enforcing mass immigration, against the interests of the people of the UK.
In various surveys, when asked if they have an issue with mass immigration, the MAJORITY of people say yes. This is therefore an issue that our politicians should deal with, rather than tarring anyone who challenges it as right wing racists. If more than 50% of the population agrees with an issue, then its a majority view not right wing!
Are Reeves and Phillipson clones?
Is that how labour get so many supporters?
Clowns, is, I think, the word.
Now it’s Bolton’s turn;
”Tensions rise in Bolton! Muslim Defence League and British patriots face off. British police try to separate them.”
https://x.com/EuropeInvasionn/status/1820097614676685033
https://x.com/EuropeInvasionn/status/1820095072357974056
With a side helping of pyromania in Rotherham;
https://x.com/dailyreportsx/status/1820092759006654842
Why on Earth is there a group calling themselves Muslim defence league? Rioting on the streets of England to the battle call of Allah Akbar, indeed! Be off with them, see them off to the cry of Rule Britannia!
Indeed.
There are a variety of existing names to choose from like Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, ISIS, Houthi, ISIL etc.