Elites are social groups that rank high in the systems that societies adopt to measure who has accumulated the greatest amount of the most valued possessions. Elites are identified by social, occupational, educational, income, and wealth benchmarks that differentiate such groups from other classes or categories of people. However, elitists do more than occupy prestigious social spaces in stratification systems: they run things by their abilities to shape and control events to their pleasing, even when others resist. They occupy top positions in governmental and economic institutions, which allow them to form policies and decisions that over the long term benefit their interests and secure their dominance over the rest of the economy and polity.