Social Class in America: Three Ladder System

[Ideologue]

Of course it is.

[garbon]

We don't need you purposefully saying silly things.

[Malthus]

Or the nephews of celebrated cultural icons.

Yeah, I can take that right to the bank. 

If you had no morals, you could. Just look at what Princess Diana's brother did with her. Hell, he's almost solvent now!

Naw. All I'd get, is attention from penniless graduate students working on their PhDs. 

[Neil]

We don't need you purposefully saying silly things.

I don't think that you're qualified to judge that.

[alfred russel]

It seems the further up the ladder the author gets, the more fanciful the ratings become. By the time he gets to E1, I think he is writing about a boogey man that doesn't actually exist. He is able to identify that there are 60,000 people in this group, and 18,000 live in the US. But who are these people that are actually running the world in downtime between their rape sessions of ski bunnies?

When I think of the most powerful and influential people in the US that don't have that influence tied to a specific job (which can be lost), I think of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, T Boone Pickens, Sheldon Adelson, the Clintons, perhaps Jay Z, Oprah Winfrey, etc. That is a diverse group, but what unites all of them is the fact that they are essentially self made and have been in executive roles (if they aren't still in them).

Which makes sense when you think about it. The nature of world economic growth has meant each generation of truly rich is wealthier than the one before it, and wealth has a lot of factors to make it decline on a per person basis as it is passed through generations. If you want power but don't have the greatest wealth, you are going to need people's respect. 

[crazy canuck]

We've also got the judicially poor. Those people who had to suffer irrationally harsh legal sanctions that create extra barriers to success that would otherwise not be there. I'm talking about a 20 year old with a drug possession charge for having some weed or something minor like that. In the era of background checks, that crap can ruin your life for just one dumb mistake. Kinda takes away any reason they might have had to try at that point. If we didn't have an underclass, we'd manufacture one.

Agreed

[dps]

Seems to me that pretty much everyone at languish can be placed on it

I don't think that I can.

[The Minsky Moment]

Can't speak for CC, but for me, my "clients" are in-house counsel at pharma corporations. Those are the "connections" that count. The people who own pharma corporations don't want to know me, would have exactly zero contact with me.
...
For litigators, OTOH, your clients are of course anyone with litigation to do and the money to pay for it.

For big companies, it is pretty much the same: the key person to know is not BigBank CEO but the inhouse counsel responsible for disputes (for bigger disputes this could be fairly senior people but usually not the top of the C-suite)

For smaller or midsize companies it could be the principal i.e. CEO or director but again could be a GC if the position or its equivalent exists.

A significant source of business is other lawyers or service professionals who either lack the specific expertise or are conflicted out.