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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If you suspected the phrase ‘elite Americans’ was an oxymoron, the fact that ‘the barely sentient President Biden has an 84% approval rating’ amongst them is proof.
If he’s furthering an elite agenda, why wouldn’t he get a high rating?
Don’t know about you, but I find the phrase ‘barely sentient’ somewhat troublesome.
Some are just saying this and don’t really mean it, others probably realise it won’t apply to them. That’s my guess anyway.
Just make stuff expensive. That doesn’t affect them.
Exactly- and it’s already happening. Foreign travel, cars, heating
There is no climate crisis. Anyone who believes that is brain dead. The elite never suffer from periods of lockdowns, rationing or rampant fascism. It is the average person who suffers, despairs and is sacrificed.
Food and energy rationing could reduce population but selling it as a way to counter “climate change” will get support that “population reduction” won’t.
Add to that transgender, abortion and euthasia promotion. Self-extermination with no apparent blood on anyones hands because it will be legislated to ensure it’s personal choice.
Quite right.
Only the bizarre belief that CO2 is a temperature thermostat. Literally.
Is there any evidence that they practise what they preach? Of course they don’t. Their prescription is for the basket of deplorables.
Last night my wife and I watched a film with DiCaprio, Streep, Jennifer Lawrence etc called “Don’t Look Up”. It started out with a comet heading on a collision path to earth discovered by the two astronomers. (DiCaprio and Lawrence). 2 minutes into the film I could see it was pure propaganda attempting to compare politicians showing no interest in the comet and the Media (Cate Blanchet) being frivolous about the impending catastrophe. It had all the same ingredients as the climate change issue, (even comet deniers) which since DiCaprio is a raging phony planet saver it wasn’t such a big surprise. ——-People can only make decisions about what they think is true on issues based on the information they have gathered. If they gather it from activist TV news programs on BBC SKY CNN etc then their view will be affected by what they have seen there. —–As regarding Elites like billionaires funding all the eco socialism, it is unlikely they will want to disagree with something when making their billions selling snow to Eskimo’s (turbines, smart meters, electric cars, heat pumps, etc) depends on agreeing. ——-So if you live in a big house with a helicopter pad and a Yacht in the Bay of Naples you will have a totally different world view to someone working overtime to make ends meet in a factory that might just manage a holiday in Tenerife, and an even different world view to someone living on a dollar a day and burning dung for heat and cooking in the third world. Elites cannot stand the idea that the world’s poorest might have the same standard of living as them and the climate change issue is the perfect way to insure this does not happen. After all we cannot have every Tom Dick and Harry sailing into Positano and Amalfi now can we?
If they want to live that way, I suggest they lead by example and get on with it, the rest of us can observe the outcome. Sunday roasts all around today everyone?
Carbon Credits are a coming. ——-Only so much beef, only so much energy, only so much of everything really. Remember the words of the former head of the National Grid “We are going to have to get use to using electricity as and when it is available”. (when the wind happens to blow)——The climate issue has given Progressive Bureaucrats and Politicians the plausible excuse for their socialism. CO2 is their Dream Gas
Club of Rome 1972.
I feel desperately sad for the people of Port Talbot.
But then I remember that for generations they have voted for a Labour Party which abandoned them and their interests several decades ago and which would now deliberately exacerbate their situation with the Net Zero lunacy.
But they’ll still vote Labour. Welsh Turkeys voting for Christmas.
How does this eaxctly differ from English people from the home counties voting for the Tories despite these abandoned them several decades ago? I still fondly remember the superficially male ex-Downing Street bumblebee telling us all how newly souvereign Great Brextain must defer all political decisions to international experts because of Corona, presumably right before attending another boozy after-work shagaton.
Yep. The Conservative Party have been giving out little more than scraps of conservatism to their followers.
The population have been well conditioned to expect next to nothing and to value the pathetic scraps they do get.
Would you have them vote Tory?
Summed up: food for me but not for thee.
Not that long ago, the company which owns the Port Talbot factories got government subisdies to keep them running in order to preserve the jobs. Nowadays, they’re getting government subsidies to shut them down and fire all the people. A proud achievement of a local Labour government — make thousands of people unemployed. All because 99% of all ‘scientists’ agree that this must be done. And these are the same 99% of all scientists who predicted that winters with freezing temperatures and lots of snowfall couldn’t happen anymore in our latitudes because of global warming 24 years ago¹.
But in 99%-science, nothing succeeds like failure and the guy who’s notorious for mispredicting everything (Neil Ferguson) is still regarded as very useful prophet because he always looks so authoritative when mispredicting something else.
German article about that from 4th of April 2000:
¹ https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/winter-ade-nie-wieder-schnee-a-71456.html
99% of scientists? Really?
That’s as much BS as the rest of the “climate science”.
The people who publish the number are doing the counting. And they also probably wouldn’t call someone a scientist when he disagreed with their opinion on the matter. That’s all which needs to be said about this.
Another excellent commentary and some sanity at Davos.
Milei’s speech shocked the audience, and those capping at the end it’s really mean it.It’s time those ‘elites’ were brought back down to earth with a bump.
There needs to be a State Security Tax or some other mechanism that removes some of the vast extreme wealth that some elites are able to amass in a lifetime. Never before have so many been able to get so much wealth in such a short time. Money buys influence. Bill Gates has amassed so much wealth in his lifetime he is listed as the 7th most powerful person in the world. Too many become oligarchs interfering in governments with their myopic, self-serving group think. Their wealth grows exponentially due to investment & compound interest. Their spending is irrelevant to their wealth. Bill Gates wealth has doubled since he started spending a relatively small amount through his foundation. The extreme wealthy push self-serving, virtue signalling policies and are a high security risk to western governments and it’s people’s. This sounds draconian but something must be done. Western society and countries are literally being destroyed and becoming unstable because of the influence of these oligarchs, fake charities and foundations.