In the days before the classless society, there was no guilt attached to hating posh people, writes Richard Gillis
AN UNDERRATED benefit of the banking crash is how it's united the family unit in front of the television again. It's been a long time since there's been anything on the box that we can all enjoy together.
"Daddy! Daddy! Lehman Brothers is going down!"
"Omigod! Sky Plus it for me darling, and be sure to let me know when they come out with their cardboard boxes. I'll bring the Doritos."
Yes, I know, we're all going to pay, but hey, don't knock a man's hobbies. There are very few legitimate targets for hatred anymore, and it's important that you grab them when you see them.
It used to be different. In the days before the classless society, there was no guilt attached to hating posh people. Inherited wealth and a life of privilege came with the caveat that they were figures of ridicule for the rest of us. The barriers to entry into being posh were insurmountable, and so we just got on with getting by.
To find that level of peace of mind today we'd have to go and live in a city state like Singapore or Dubai, where people chug along while their absolute rulers make all the decisions and any independent thought is met with medieval policing techniques.
Today's financial elite is made up of hedge fund traders and Premier League footballers, and the class war is not such a clean fight.
Plot a graph that maps financial reward against use to society and these two "professions" are in a catfight to win the title of the most over-rewarded job in the world. Their astonishing wealth and irresponsibility have defined the past 10 years.
The old Left was beaten to a pulp because they allowed themselves to be labelled as the party of hate: higher taxes and government control were not economic tools, but weapons of the class war. Any government tinkering with the will of the free market went against the rules of meritocracy.
But look at what happens when the gap between rich and poor is allowed to become so wide.
In The Impact of Inequality, Richard Wilkinson, professor of social epidemiology at Nottingham University, showed rates of violent crime and racism to be higher where the gap is greater. Many criminologists rank this statistic as more important than any other environmental factor when assessing the roots of serious crime.
The same study showed that in some countries inequality reduces the life expectancy of the poorest by as much as 25 per cent.
A couple of weeks ago, Cristiano Ronaldo bought a Bentley for €426,000 and spent £150,000 (€188,000) on a registration plate, CR7 - his initials and shirt number. Since joining Manchester United in 2003, he has spent €2.5 million on cars.
This sort of wealth is taunting a generation of kids who are getting angrier as every year goes by, and they find they are not good enough to emulate him.
Likewise, the shadowy figures of the hedge fund world have the same effect on "team morale".
The multi-million euro bonus stories have become a pre-Christmas staple of the business pages, making the rest of us question our choice of jobs, look at our cars a bit more critically and wonder if we can stretch to one of those plasma tellies.
Talking to a teacher friend recently put it into perspective.
Being a "hedgie" is the chosen career plan for the bright kids who would previously may have chosen to go into something more useful. Nowadays, if you're smart, you'd be crazy to go into teaching, or medicine, or other essential and rewarding jobs.
The mantra of the Third Way was that rather than worry about curbing the vast wealth of the super-rich, we should focus on pulling people up from the bottom.
That's a laudable aim, and only an idiot would disagree with attempting to do it. But ignoring the effect of the lucky few has been a disaster.
There may be good news on the horizon. In Britain at least, posh people are making a comeback. Boris Johnson (Eton, Oxford) is Mayor of London and David Cameron (Eton, Oxford) looks as if he's going to be next prime minister. Behind them, a whole cabal of toffs and tory boys will begin to fill the top jobs.
Good old fashioned, guilt-free hate is back in fashion. Happy days.
