America’s richest citizens want food, gas and electricity to be rationed in order to fight climate change, a new poll has shown.
The survey has found that the country’s “top one per cent” of earners and Ivy League alumni want to save the planet by rationing and banning air and car travel.
The study, released by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, aimed to measure the beliefs of the “elite”, and found that there are “two Americas today”.
The free-market advocacy group which ran the poll said that the upper class in America “live in a bubble of their own construction”.
The survey has found that the country’s “top one per cent” of earners want to save the planet by rationing
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“The people who think they run the country don't think the same things about issues like individual freedom climate change and whether the government can be trusted,” said the Committee's Steve Moore.
“To understand that is to understand the divide in contemporary American politics.”
A thousand people, who all had to meet strict criteria to qualify for “elite” status, were surveyed for the poll entitled “Them vs Us”.
To qualify, individuals needed to possess a postgraduate degree and be earning more than $150,000 a year.
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At least half of those who qualified as an elite attended an Ivy League school or private universities such as Stanford or Duke.
Their votes were then compared to a representative sample of 1,000 registered voters, with the findings between the two showcasing a divided nation.
One key finding was the elites' commitment to fighting climate change. As well as their endorsement of rationing gas, meat and electricity, they also supported the banning of various modern conveniences, such as air conditioners.
In comparison, regular voters would mostly keep all of these amenities.
America’s richest citizens want food, gas and electricity to be rationed in order to fight climate change
GettyThe survey also found that most of the privileged one per cent were much fonder of the US government than others, with 84 per cent giving Joe Biden a positive approval rating.
Elites are also three times more likely than all Americans to say there is too much individual freedom in the country.
The president of RMG Research, which conducted the poll, called the one per cent an “urban academic elite” that is “extraordinarily influential in government, corporate America, and the philanthropic world”.
Commenting on the results of the survey, Isaac Schorr from The New York Post said: “The United States has a wealthy, partisan elite class that’s not only immune from and numb to the problems of their countrymen, but enormously confident in and willing to impose unpopular policies on them.
“This is a recipe for disaster.”