Louis Menand summarized the mid-centurysituation and Macdonald’s thinking as follows: “There was a majormiddle-class culture of earnest aspiration in the 1950s, the productof a strange alliance of the democratic (culture for everyone) and theelitist (culture can make you better than other people).

To understand elitism in relation to the great books idea, one mustconsider the meaning and existence of cultural hierarchies in litera-ture.

there has been a spectacular rise in luxury consumption, with the consumption patterns of the global elite acting as a marker for those further down the income scale. Robert Frank (2000) describes the process as 'luxury fever', as consumption expectations are ratcheted up all the way down the income scale. The global elite are pushing up people's expectations and assumptions. In the US, for example, the average size of house has doubled, in square feet terms, in the past thirty years. In part it is a function of the positional nature of consumption. We consume in order to position ourselves relative to other people. Not only do the global elite raise the upper limit, everyone is thus forced to spend more just to keep up, but they also become the perceived benchmark, Juliet Schor's work, for example, shows that people are no longer keeping up with the people next door, but the people they see on television and magazines (Schor, 1998). In order to keep up with these raised consumption standards people are working harder and longer as well as taking out more debt. The increase in luxury consumption has raised consumption expectations further down the income scale, which in order to be funded has involved increased workloads and increased indebtedness. It is not so much keeping up with the Jones but 'keeping up with the Gates'.

privileged institutions

Craig doesn’t think elite schools need to worry; their degrees will still be used by employers as a sign of quality.