How McKinsey Destroyed the Middle Class (2020) (opens in new tab)

I think this article should be understood in the context of the 2020 US presidential campaign. At the time, Pete Buttigieg was a candidate showing promise. This article attempts to portray candidate Buttigieg as a member of the 1% elite, at a time when the progressive wing of the Democratic party was gaining ground on the traditional Democratic party establishment. The Atlantic tends to be read by educated urbanites and surburbanites, a key constituency of the Democratic party.

It's analysis looks excellent to me, in being able to put concrete words to a phenomenon that everyone should have noticed already.

And I think that the same thing is happening with government and politics in our modern "democracies".

Of course the unstated reality appears to be that it works. That is, the middle management was not necessary. Elite students really do make better executives than former burger flippers and rivet drivers.

I know some corporations still maintain a culture of promote from the bottom, but they are the exception. It's nice to think that hands-on experience would give companies an advantage, but let's not conflate our desire for how the world ought to work with how it does.

I see this as yet another way in which capitalism's brutal efficiency finds more and more things to trim.

some discussion only 3 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041701

But the middle class isn’t destroyed.

needs a (2020) in the title

feb 2020?