quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

happiness inequality and income inequality are also different things, but not completely unrelated

I'm confused tho, did you think there was something bad about noah's post?

I think this is a really interesting and paradoxical thing about the mechanisms of class in capitalism -- for most people a certain salary/profession means being a part of a certain class, and almost by definition most people in a certain class can "barely afford" the things that are perceived to be essentials of that class. For whatever reason it's really hard, psychologically, for most people to forgo the things that their colleagues/peers have. So the third-year investment banker wants to live in the kind of neighborhood the fifth-year investment banker lives in, go on the kinds of vacations he goes on, eat out at the same places, send his kids to comparable schools, etc. and then he says "why is it so hard for me to afford just the basics on my salary?"

isn't that more just a thing about human nature? we're never satisfied with what we have, always feel like we could be doing better

right, which is why high taxes on rich people is a great idea, cause they're not losing much

I mean this thread really should be titled 'why the highest tax bracket should be 70%'

I don't really mean about always feeling you can "do better" though (and fwiw, I don't accept that it's part of "human nature" to feel that way, I think it's a very capitalist idea). I more mean that our conception of "enough" usually comes from our immediate surroundings.

I'm confused tho, did you think there was something bad about noah's post?

No, not at all. I just posted it because it was another perspective on the whole quiddities thing - how one person's idea of modest comfort could be another's image of self-indulgent luxury.

okay I thought you were posting it as an example of quiddities stuff

It's a very NYC thing too - certain things are expensive here that a person could take for granted (at a middle-to-upper-middle-class salary) in other parts of the country, e.g. having a dishwasher and a washer and dryer.

well status games aren't isolated to nyc at all, but it's a pretty good place to observe them because of the amount of wealth here + the density of opportunities to signal wealth

Yeah for sure. But to be clear I'm kind of more talking about the "just keeping up" end of the status game rather than the flossy end. Like I'm more interested in the phenomenon of people making six figures feeling like they can't afford a decent standard of living than the phenomenon of flaunting wealth.

Conservative pundits would like to say you're not poor if you have a dishwasher or washer and dryer. But really, if you sell any of them for $100-$500 then you're poor again the next month, and now you don't have a washer.

Compare that to most of the nytimes quiddities, where they could sell one of several vehicles or, god forbid, their summer home on the cape.

well they mostly just ignore the fact that dishwashers / tvs / washer+dryers are fairly cheap mass-produced things, like you can buy an enormous tv for not very much money these days. rent, transportation, health care otoh.

Carefully phrased:

Shot in 24 days on a budget of about $6 million, “Casa de Mi Padre” tells the story of Armando Alvarez (played by Mr. Ferrell), the ne’er-do-well son of a Mexican rancher whose manhood is tested when he falls in love with the fiancée (Genesis Rodriguez) of his flashier brother, Raul (Diego Luna), and is drawn into a violent conflict with a drug baron (Gael García Bernal).

If that sounds like the plot of a garden-variety telenovela you might see playing on a cheap TV in a corner of your Laundromat, that is exactly the point.

it's YOUR laundromat, so it's okay

Laundromat

Ha, yeah. These newfangled futuristic inventions called "Laundromats."

So this isn't a perfect fit, but indirectly belongs here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-go-nowhere-generation.html?_r=1

also I don't think we have a boomers vs. millennials rolling FITE thread yet

that's because we so own them

This reads like satire:

AMERICANS are supposed to be mobile and even pushy. Saul Bellow’s Augie March declares, “I am an American ... first to knock, first admitted.” In “The Grapes of Wrath,” young Tom Joad loads up his jalopy with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma dust bowl for sun-kissed California. Along the way, Granma dies, but the Joads keep going.

Perhaps young people are too happy at home checking Facebook.

YES I'M SURE THAT IS IT.

srsly, it's on the level of the "Comedy = tragedy + time" bit in Crimes & Misdemeanors, self xpost

love the awesome undercurrent of blame for not doing our part to grow the economy

that thing was the dumbest fucking thing i've read in a long time. made the go nowhere kids seem like the smartest people on earth not to move anywhere near that guy.

i think rush limbaugh actually ghost-wrote that thing.

its the first time i ever wanted to find the comments thing just so i could write FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE but i wasn't logged in or something or they weren't taking comments.

I know this is done and done already, but this post is awesome: http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/post/19119585575/ btw

also, no wonder this guy is a dipshit -- he's a pop-economist: http://www.toddbuchholz.com/about

this is all i really need to know:

"A former director of economic policy at the White House"

but he's really good at predicting when things will turn into shit! i guess that's nice. good job!

For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate.

sounds like an euler argument

and is a co-producer of the Broadway smash “Jersey Boys.”

Victoria Buchholz, a student at Cambridge University, is at work on a book about the neuropsychology of the teenage brain.

will she finally crack the code???

for the price of leaving behind their families, friends, social connections, loved ones, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, but they're too busy reading facebook. bummer.

WHAT IF THEY HAD LEFT JERSEY? THEY HARDLY WOULD HAVE BEEN JERSEY BOYS, RIGHT? THEY STRUGGLED UNTIL THEY MET JOE PESCI AND THE REST IS HISTORY YOU ASSHOLE. IF THEY HAD LEFT JERSEY THEY NEVER WOULD HAVE FUCKING MET JOE PESCI!

sorry.

oh my god that is the actual stupidest thing thats ever been written

Why wouldn't a young person not want to go to North Dakota? You could hang out with Marilyn Hagerty.

lol i googled todd g. buchholz and google is telling me that his personal site 'may be compromised.'

that's what you get for fucking with kids in their parents' basements amirite

that guy should definitely move to north dakota. and stay there.

i feel like the new york times is totally trying to make me move out of this COUNTRY these days. is it just me? i like where i live! stop making me sick about this friggin' place, nyt! i beg of you. i just have to stop looking at it entirely.

was reading an article about supermax prisons and solitary confinement and here's the conclusion that prison officials and the new york times came up with: 23 hours of solitary confinement in a prison cell for months at a time might not be the greatest idea. this is 2012, right? is everyone on the planet this friggin' slow? i find it hard to believe. where do all the smart people live? gonna go get a passport, brb...

There is not enough alcohol in the world for me to write a rebuttal of that article, but this

Why are young people not crossing borders? “This generation is going through an economic reset,” said John Della Volpe, who directs polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which surveys thousands of young people each year. He reports that young people want to stay more connected with their hometowns: “I spoke with a kid from Columbus, Ohio, who dreamed of being a high school teacher. When he found out he’d have to move to Arizona or the Sunbelt, he took a job in a Columbus tire factory.”

...is something people have been saying about poor inner-city (read: black) people for a long time. "Why don't they move to the country, where it's cheaper to live/poor people could have gardens if they were willing to work in them/there are ill-paying manufacturing (or farming, or etc) jobs in the middle of nowhere?" Because when you only survive by your known support system, you cannot afford to leave it. Who helps you with child care when you don't know anyone? No one. Who loans you $50 until payday when you're new in town and have no extended family? No one. Who feeds you when your kids are hungry? No one. How do you move to and work in a place that requires a car when you have poor credit and no license? How completely alone will you be when no one around you shares or respects your culture/heritage? And so on.

that's not how the PILGRIMS saw it

the pilgrims starved to death and died of frostbite i think. they were morons.

they relied on the red man to get by until payday.

essentially the article's view of human beings is that they're totally labor. it's a vision that completely eliminates the family, community, neighborhood, etc. everyone is just a body for the factory so it might as well move itself to where the factories are and if it doesn't, it isn't doing its job for capitalism. fuck this idea forever.

the recession would be solved if everybody would just move to north dakota

people in north dakota just stand around and close their eyes and pretend they live in arizona, don't they?

water capital flows downhill. why aren't ppl more like that? if money is speech, and also time, then ppl must be going downhill too