Sometimes people say to me "Come on Rob, luxury beliefs spread because working class people are listening to Yale graduates?" Yep that's how it works. At age 15 I would open my pixelated motorola in 2005, dial up the Ivy League presidents, and ask them how to live my life. In seriousness, here's an example of how it works. I watched a lot of TV shows as a kid and as a young adult. (today, kids from poor families spend 2 hours more per day in front of screens than kids from rich families). The shows I watched: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The O.C., The West Wing, etc. These shows are created by people who went to private schools and elite colleges. One thing I learned was the importance of college (as I wrote here, the characters on these shows were obsessed with college). That was a message being conveyed to me that I wasn't receiving in my local environment. In addition to the importance of college, there were other ideas and habits and beliefs that were being conveyed. People who graduate from elite universities and are overrepresented in influential industries—not just Hollywood, but politics, media, academia, the non-profit sector, etc. These segments of the haute bourgeoisie, for better or worse, play a large role in what our culture wants people to aspire to. They have a massively disproportionate sway on the story our society tells itself, the challenges we should be concentrating on, the images we see, and the ways of life we should strive toward.