As long as elites empathize deeply with immigrants while judging and dismissing middle-status people’s pain, we won’t help immigrants.

If you already have a stable middle-class life, you can worry about the end of the world. If you don’t, you’re worried about the end of the month, as the yellow vest protesters in France put it.

In elite circles, we feel entitled to self-development because it’s available to us, and we focus on self-development and maximizing our skills because that’s what succeeds in elite jobs. But if your best hope for stability is a blue- or pink-collar job where you need to show up reliably without attitude to a job that’s often not intellectually sti... See more