The American Ruling Class

In this first of its kind "dramatic-documentary-musical", Lewis Lapham (former editor Harper's Magazine) takes two young Ivy-League graduates on a tour of the corridors of power. The novice careerists must decide: should they seek to rule the world, or to save it? (2005)

The Ruling Class
"... not someone of the possessing class or the celebrity class, but someone with real power; a ruler."

"There is something fatally attractive about joining the ruling class, starting of course with the pay, but also with the prestige and the like. But fatally ought to go with attractive, in many cases, because it means for a large part you're getting ready to forget about half of what you learned at Yale or anywhere else, that there are obligations in this democratic republic which I still, perhaps naively, believe need to be factored in. I do not actually believe that society is best served by everybody running avidly after their own self interest. I particularly think: that it is betrayal when the best and the brightest decide that their being the best and the brightest means that they jump on the gravy train and tell everybody else kiss mine as I leave the room. If there is no last morality here to be offered, it is an individual question. The last thing people always say as they go out is not 'I wish I had had more money.' They're usually wishing something else, about what they did with their lives."

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundance of the poor." -Voltaire