[mercer]

Spot on! Maybe it's beneficial to use a term that doesn't make people defensive ('privileged? me? I worked hard to get where I am!), but I do agree it's important to make people aware of it.

A week or so ago one of our former Dutch politicians wrote a column about 'the elite' in Holland. This resulted in a highly entertaining but tragic borderline-flamewar between said politician and some well-known Dutch people. Entertaining because it was fascinating to see such 'impactful' people commenting on an internet forum, and tragic because the discussion became about the term 'elite' and the perceived insult by the 'accused' individuals, rather than about the point of the article: pointing out the reality of there being an 'elite' and asking some relatively open questions on what this realization means.