Society has multiple classes with distinct interests. It’s not just “owners versus workers.” In the U.S., the top 0.1% own about 14% of the wealth, but most of the rest is owned by the top 25% outside the top 0.1%. Within this class there is a spectrum of “ownership.” Tim Cook is technically a worker, but he has “owner” wealth. But he came into that wealth by being a worker—he never risked his own capital to start a business, nor did he inherit assets. This is especially true for knowledge work, where putative workers typically are non-fungible in ways that give them a great deal of leverage with owners.
That study defines “elite” as the top 10% of income earners, which is mostly skilled and knowledge workers, not owners. I can’t access the PDF but there was a reddit thread about the methodology: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/73nbuv/in.... So that is consistent with my point that knowledge workers have lots of political power.
Also, Vox did a piece discussing subsequent research that suggests that whatever effect Gilens and Page are seeing is relatively weak: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-.... I suspect you’d find a stronger correlation if you compared knowledge workers versus blue collar workers (I.e. accounted for the fact that you have fairly affluent tradespeople and medium income knowledge workers, like entry level folks who work in marketing).
>That study defines “elite” as the top 10% of income earners
The study does not define elite that way, it simply notes that the likelihood of a policy being implemented trends upward with income.
>that is consistent with my point that knowledge workers have lots of political power.
I cant see anything on this reddit thread which indicates this.
>Also, Vox did a piece discussing subsequent research that suggests
Im sure they did. It's not unusual for corporate backed think tanks to push back on studies which run counter to their narrative. The same thing happened with r>g, minimum wage increases across state borders, etc.
The quote from the paper on the reddit thread discusses dividing people into income quintiles. I assume you actually read the paper and understand the methodology?
It showed a direct correlation between income and your impact on policy.
It would, alas, be scientifically illiterate to assume that since they divided the public into 10 quintiles that the correlation suddenly stopped above the 90.1% threshold.
And, it would be regular old illitetate to assume that crossing from 89.9% to 90% puts you firmly in the cateogory of "elite" because of how a study divided up income quintiles.
There is a difference between a true elite (e.g. gets put in charge of a government department of your own creation) and somebody who just earns a lot of money and generally benefits from tax breaks lobbied for by those elites.
Almost half the world is children, elderly, or disabled. The first two have reduced capacity to run a business and the latter have reduced earning capacity to obtain the business.
Once you consider maybe half of all humans even have the chance to become owners, even if it means building something out of nothing, you don't have such a bad chance of being in the 50% of the 50%. Bad luck happens, but if you can avoid divorce/illness/drugs/laziness there is a very good chance you could own something to make you an owner-capitalist even if it is just a hot dog stand in Timbuktu.
