The mechanism postulated by the theory that leads to growing intraelite inequality works as follows. When conditions of labor oversupply create a favorable economic conjunction for the elites, upward social mobility into the elite strata begins to swell elite numbers. After a time lag, the elite numbers increase beyond the ability of society to support all of them. As a result, intraelite competition for the limited number of positions in business and government becomes very intense. The problem is exacerbated by rapidly increasing expectations of the income levels needed to maintain elite
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