The New Aristocracy: How the Upper Middle Class Hoards Opportunity

These podcasts explore a provocative idea from American Richard V. Reeves and Dream Hoarders: modern inequality may be driven less by billionaires alone and more by the upper-middle class quietly protecting its advantages through housing, education, networking, elite credentials, and parenting strategies.The discussions examine how zoning laws, legacy admissions, unpaid internships, assortative mating, tax advantages, and “glass floor” protections help affluent families preserve status across generations while social mobility declines for everyone else. At the same time, the podcasts wrestle with a difficult moral question: where does good parenting end and opportunity hoarding begin?Blending sociology, economics, psychology, and political philosophy, these episodes challenge the modern myth of pure meritocracy and ask whether today’s “self-made” success is actually built on invisible systems of inherited advantage. We thought this discussion is relevant to Australian's too.