Rich People Stick Together

How is the middle class supposed to compete with that?

I have never been comfortable around rich people.

This is okay because I’m a Midwestern middle-class townie who wandered into this suburb near the farm where I grew up back in the days when you could buy a starter house for less than a cool half mil. I’m a librarian by trade, so I don’t have the opportunity to meet or hang out with a lot of rich people.

My family mocks me, because we’re not wealthy people, but we all understand and respect that money can buy you a lot of things: time, security, better health care, more safety, and also, of course, consumer goods (not to mention nursing home care). I shouldn’t dislike people with money, my family thinks— I should merely work harder to be counted among their ranks.

I get it. And if you had asked me, previously, why I don’t like rich people, the only concrete reason this former waitress would have been able to give you would have been: “They’re lousy tippers.”

But I’m getting slightly more observant in my old age. And here’s one thing I’ve started noticing: Rich people stick together — and they teach their kids to do the same.

Wealth is relative, of course, so let’s talk about some numbers.

I don’t even bother thinking about the top 1%. I know they control a ridiculous amount of money in the U.S. and the world (and they also exert a lot of control over everything, full stop). Of course, they affect my life, but mainly I consider them an entirely lost cause, a small group of pod people who are busy building bunkers for when the apocalypse comes. Whatever.

The income class that concerns me includes those billionaires, but more broadly I am concerned with the top 20% of income earners, many of whom I can catch glimpses of in this wealthy suburb. These are people who, according to census data and this SmartAsset study, earn $130,545 annually.

Basically, where I’m living, if your household pulls down 130 grand per wage earner or so annually, you’re in the top-fifth income class.

Wherever you live, take a look around you. Do you make this much money? Do you know people who do? What do their lives look like? What does it mean for everyone else that rich people stick together and train their kids to do the same?

Private schools within public ones

I sit somewhere in the middle, socioeconomically, in my smallish (population ~20,000) community. In our school district, my older child goes to the larger middle school that includes students from everywhere on the income spectrum, while my younger child goes to a school that is widely recognized as one of the poorest in the district.

This is the first thing you need to understand. There is nothing particularly equitable about public schools, even ones within the same district (not to mention between different districts in richer and poorer areas). In a school district of about 7,000 students from 4K through 12th grade, everyone knows the income distribution in all the schools without really talking about it. The grade school attached to one of the nicest neighborhoods in town has a strong PTO that receives a lot of donations, and only 13% of students are described as from “low-income families.” At my son’s school, 40% of students come from low-income families.

Because I am a member of my older son’s middle school PTO (Parent Teacher Organization), I am now able to see how wealthy people make donations and work with schools.

And they do make donations. This is not a personal hit piece. I know and like many of the wealthier people I have met in the district. I have seen wealthy people donate a lot of resources AND time to school events.

But even within our public school system, there are schools that function almost more as private schools. In some of our grade schools, the PTO is well-funded (and I’ve been told the principal always knows who gives the biggest donations because the donors make sure they know) and is able to buy many more enrichment activities and resources. In these schools, parents are also taking their kids to private tutoring and lessons and training them to get the best possible scores.

People in these schools, both kids and adults, aren’t bad people, but they also don’t give a lot of thought to how the “other half” lives. At one point in our middle-school PTO meeting when people were trying to figure out why few people are volunteering (sometimes this requires a background check), I pointed out that some district parents are not legal citizens (while their children were born here and are), and therefore couldn’t submit their names. Another (well-educated, well-read) member said, “Oh…I never thought of that.”

Wealthy community cohesion

There are many reasons people become wealthy. Many of them are born into it. Lots of them work very hard. A lot of times good luck and good health have a role to play in increasing wealth.

But another reason people become and stay wealthy is because they associate almost exclusively with other wealthy people, and try to ensure that their children do so as well.

Another way wealthy people are different from the lower middle classes is the cohesion in their (for lack of a better term) “wealthy people communities.” In our district’s wealthier neighborhoods, there is definitely a feeling of “US” versus “them.” Over Halloween, when we visited a friend in one of those neighborhoods, some other kids from my son’s middle school saw us there and said, “Oh! Do you live in Aspen Glen?”

I am perhaps ascribing too much to that comment, but if you’d heard the tone it was definitely, “Oh! Are you one of us and I didn’t know it?” And I know that because we live in a neighborhood that doesn’t really have its own name, and if it did, my kid certainly wouldn’t know it. He might say something like, “Hey, do you live around here?,” but not, “Oh…do you live in Aspen Glen?”

Kids in wealthy neighborhoods get to know one another. Their wealthy parents work in similar professional fields and network with and know one another. They all sign their kids up for (the same) club athletics and music lessons and tutoring sessions so that wealthy cohesion is fostered early. As they get older, these kids are friends with and start dating (and eventually marrying) within their wealthy people class.

Why should the lower middle classes (and those in the bottom 20%) care about that?

Again, let’s talk math and numbers. If my community has a population of 20,000, that means the population of the top 20% is 4,000 people. That’s it. Whoever is among those 4,000 people wants to stay among those 4,000, and does not want their kids to slip down a class. Numerically, that’s just how it works.

And yes, I know, the next 20% down from the top 20% is not that horrible a class to be in. But as this inequality keeps cycling, and more wealth is consolidated in the top, the fewer resources there will be for the bottom 80% to share.

How to learn more

The longer we go on pretending there is no wealth inequality in America (there is; it’s now harder to move among classes in America than it is in Great Britain, which is famous for having poor class mobility), the faster that inequality will grow.

So, here’s your assignment.

Start looking around where you live. If you have kids in a school district, get involved. If there’s a city or town government that you can start watching, do so. Seek out as much local news as you can find.

THINK about what you are seeing.

Where do the wealthy people live? How are their kids doing in school (maybe compared to your kids, and others’)? What kinds of organizations do they donate to? How and where do they shop? What vocabulary do they use? What city meetings do they attend and what local zoning (and other) issues are they vocal about?*

Ask yourself: What are the top 20% doing to ensure that 80% of Americans — a.k.a., you and your kids — stay beneath them in wealth, opportunities, and resources?

*A very interesting book on this subject is Richard Reeves’s Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else In the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What To Do About It.

Rich people marry rich people.

Education. No free lunches to a school with all free lunches.