Everywhere, cultural snobbery has been alienating the working class from the parties of the left that began as parties of workers.

President Trump's critics have positioned as snobs who think they are better and therefore deserve more power.

Social power is divided, not between the haves and have nots, but between the knowledge class and the old property class.

Public servants vote left, and worry about school lunches, but have mostly ignored the crumbling quality of education. School failure has created a long tail of poor kids who have no hope of competing with the kids of the educated elite. Well-paid stars cheer the high price of butter as good for farmers, but prices well above the cost of production are not bringing in new, lower-priced competition. Consumers understand we are paying too much, while the highest paid executives in the country have been closing dairy factories in towns like Paraparaumu.

All societies have been led by elite groups.

The “symbolic capitalists” should be honest about the profound gulf between their rhetoric of care, and their de-prioritisation of class and inequality in the real world.

Josie's column is here.