This, right here:
“…if you’ve worked so hard to rise to the top of your status-sphere in academia, politics, or Hollywood, you really don’t want to think that the average air conditioning repairman, to use Tom Wolfe’s example above, has almost the same quality of life as you do.”

Nail, meet hammer. Remember reading about the aristocrats of old and their opinion of the “nouveau riche”? How gauche they were, and how tacky in their expenditures? They just didn’t understand how the wealthy were supposed to act. The bottom line is, these elitists do not want anyone else to achieve their level of prosperity or prominence. After all, if anyone can reach the pinnacle of success, then their achievement is a whole lot less special and they are just (gasp!) another regular person, just like anyone else.