THE LIBERAL GILDED AGE: Jay Cost reviews Joel Kotkin’s The New Class Conflict. Exerpt:

Kotkin asserts that a new ruling class has emerged from the upper echelon of society, one that is starting to rival the oligarchs of the late 19th century. In the Gilded Age, it was the railroad barons, oil magnates, and sundry industrial tycoons who had in their pockets machine politicians. Today, our incipient rulers come from the technology sector, which sprung up in California and Seattle in the wake of the computer and Internet revolutions. Joining them is a new “clerisy” of elites from academia, government, think tanks, and media.

The two camps are united around the concept of so-called “gentry liberalism,” which is defined by postwar ideals such as environmentalism, consumer rights, and cultural leftism. This differentiates the new oligarchs from the old ones in important ways. The so-called Robber Barons had an interest in economic growth and, ultimately, a vibrant middle class that could afford to purchase the goods they made. Today’s would-be oligarchs lack such an incentive. As Kotkin notes, one need not be middle class to afford a smartphone. And the new oligarch’s ideological commitment to environmentalism usually means stifling development for the sake of “sustainability.”

Arrayed against the oligarchs is a group Kotkin calls the yeoman class, a phrase that harkens back to the small, independent farmers idealized by the Jeffersonian Republicans of the early 19th century. Today’s yeomanry is not on the farm, but is composed of small businessmen and property holders. Often aligned with them are the old industries—oil, natural gas, coal, and other extracted-resource concerns—that share the yeoman’s priority for broad-based economic growth.

The heart of Kotkin’s work is in chapters two through four, where he describes the nature of each of these classes. His best work is really in the discussion of the tech oligarchy, which he dissects. He peels away its inflated self-conception to reveal a hypocritical, self-interested class of billionaires whose interests run contrary to the revolutionary and egalitarian rhetoric they espouse.

Read the whole thing. I think that Kotkin’s book is a very important one, and wrote about it here.