I think this article should be understood in the context of the 2020 US presidential campaign. At the time, Pete Buttigieg was a candidate showing promise. This article attempts to portray candidate Buttigieg as a member of the 1% elite, at a time when the progressive wing of the Democratic party was gaining ground on the traditional Democratic party establishment. The Atlantic tends to be read by educated urbanites and surburbanites, a key constituency of the Democratic party.
It's analysis looks excellent to me, in being able to put concrete words to a phenomenon that everyone should have noticed already.<p>And I think that the same thing is happening with government and politics in our modern "democracies".
Of course the unstated reality appears to be that <i>it works</i>. That is, the middle management was not necessary. Elite students really do make better executives than former burger flippers and rivet drivers.<p>I know some corporations still maintain a culture of promote from the bottom, but they are the exception. It's nice to think that hands-on experience would give companies an advantage, but let's not conflate our desire for how the world ought to work with how it does.<p>I see this as yet another way in which capitalism's brutal efficiency finds more and more things to trim.
some discussion only 3 months ago:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041701" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28041701</a>