Word: overclass
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...must credit President Clinton for realizing his national dialogue, with a caveat: The topic long ago shifted from race to sex. Last week, he joined a pitiable and forgettable discussion organized by ESPN on race in sports. Meanwhile, the chattering class, the middle class, the overclass and even elementary school classes debated sex and politics...
Like other colonists in Africa, the Belgians singled out one group to serve as their proxy. By independence, they had not only installed the Tutsi as an administrative overclass but also, thanks to the pseudoscientific theories favored at the time in the West, led them to believe they were biologically superior as well. This engendered a level of resentment previously unseen in the region. "Tutsi and Hutu have killed each other more to upbraid a vision they have of themselves and the others than for material interests," historian Gerard Prunier wrote in his account of the 1994 Rwandan holocaust. "That...
Unfortunately, however, tax coddling doesn't necessarily put the overclass in the mood to generate decent employment. Barlett and Steele offer the case of Buster Brown shoes, which managed, by means of some cunning detours through the Caymans, to reduce its 1987 tax rate to 1.7% of sales. Meanwhile, the company was laying off hundreds of stateside employees, who for their part had no choice but to pay taxes on their unemployment benefits. Or contemplate the 1950s, when corporate tax rates were piratical by today's standards but unemployment was low and the middle class was busily expanding...
...race of $10 billion a year -- much more than the $3.9 billion advantage African Americans gain from their disproportionate share of welfare. One sad reason: whites live an average of six years longer than African Americans, meaning that young black workers help subsidize a huge and growing "overclass" of white retirees. I do not see our confession bringing much relief. There's a reason for resentment, though it has more to do with class than with race. White people are poor too, and in numbers far exceeding any of our more generously pigmented social groups. And poverty as defined...
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