The privileged class

People like Piketty focus on the top 1% or 0.1% but it is not clear the extent to which in a society where higher education is attained by 20% of the population this is still a useful model to understand political trends.

The privileged class is a concept that I have encounterd in Lasch's revolt of the elite (top 20% of income). I have a vague memory that Louis Maurin makes the same distinction in Encore Plus, and probably Emmanuel Todd in Après la démocracie.