SlowpokeBlog

Several months ago, I read an article in the NYT (which I am unable to track down now) about the explosion of services catering to the new super-rich, allowing them to live in practically a separate universe from the rest of us mortals. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the birth of the luxury airline, like EOS, which shuttles people back and forth between New York and London in supreme comfort (beds over six feet long!). The use of private and chartered aircraft has also surged. I guess first class, which shares the same airport security lines as the coach chattel, and occasionally entails said chattel wandering into the elites' bathroom, just isn't good enough anymore.

Also, there is the trend of "boutique" or concierge doctors who, for a pretty penny, offer the kind of personal, round-the-clock care people received from doctors of yore. To some extent, you can't blame the doctors for wanting to escape our increasingly factory farm-like medical system. But you see how this is problematic. When the most privileged and powerful members of society can escape the inconveniences and declines in service the rest of us must put up with, there's that much less impetus for change.

I'm reminded of another Times article, "A Privy for the Privileged" in which a woman confesses how she hates the people in first class and the system that puts them there, despite the fact that other luxury perks for the rich don't bother her. I feel much the same way. I'd say this is because first-class seating makes the American class system all too plainly clear -- it chafes against some fundamental, egalitarian aspect of our identity as Americans, in which we stand opposed to aristocracy. But many of the readers' comments on the article are disappointing. So many of them are along the lines of, "They're paying for it. Get over it." While I understand that reasoning, it seems so limited in scope. It fails to question the larger system that created the aristocracy in the first place, and that for the past decade has enhanced their wealth while doing nothing for the middle class. Yeah, we're living in a caste system. Get over it!