"The story goes like this: America's affluent are affluent because they made the right lifestyle choices. They got themselves good educations, they got and stayed married, and so on. Basically, affluence is a reward for adhering to the Victorian virtues. ...But the main thing about this myth is that it misidentifies the winners from growing inequality. White-collar professionals, even if married to each other, are only doing okay. The big winners are a much smaller group. The Occupy movement popularized the concept of the '1 percent,' which is a good shorthand for the rising elite, but if anything includes too many people: Most of the gains of the top 1 percent have in fact gone to an even tinier elite, the top 0.1 percent. And who are these lucky few? Mainly they're executives of some kind, especially, although not only, in finance. You can argue about whether these people deserve to be paid so well, but one thing is clear: They didn't get where they are simply by being prudent, clean, and sober."—Paul Krugman, in "The Undeserving Rich."
[Related Reading: Wealth Gap.]
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