New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | May 16, 2005

Poor folks have cell phones, billionaires are running around in shades and baseball caps... It's hard to tell who's a lowlife anymore in this crazy, hill-of-beans world, but The New York Times can try, and Ron Bailey can make fun of them.

Comments

|5.16.05 @ 11:38PM|#

Rarely is it possible to earn success while being lazy, ignorant, rude, and a spendthrift.

Rock star? Subtract lazy, and you've got a large portion of professional athletes.

Jealousy trumps reason every time.

This reminds me of when I was obsessed with playing Civilization II. When one was doing well, one's biggest problem was other civs growing jealous of your standard of living. I thought this was interesting that this was how the game designers tried to keep the game balanced, so that once you get ahead it still stays competitive. Rather realistic, regarding human nature. The only way to stave off conflict was to give away enough to avoid war, but not so much as to give away your advantage, until you were far enough ahead to just give everyone the finger. Hmmmm...

|5.16.05 @ 11:40PM|#

I remember discussing the wealthy with someone over on the YAHOO! message boards(that name, btw, is quite appropriate). He made the claim that the wealthy basically don't do anything, that the middle and lower class are the ones doing 'stuff.' I responded with some examples, like how they provide employment when they own businesses. No, he said, they don't actually do that. It's the HR dept. of the company that does that. OK. Then I talked about how they help make new technology cheaper by, for example, buying cell phones back when they cost thousands of dollars. If they had not bought them, would the phone makers continue making them? No, he said, it was advances in technology and so on. There really was no arguing with this guy. I'm sorry, but if there were no wealthy people in this world there would not be much motivation to better one's self. What is there to look up to?

|5.17.05 @ 12:20AM|#

In India, capitalism is really shaking things up. Some higher caste parents complain that thier sons and daughters who labor in the burgeoning software industry work along side youth from lower castes and much lower castes. Rubies in search of programming talent seem to care little about social background. And you know, when young people work together, romance often seems to ensue. Bye bye caste system.

|5.17.05 @ 12:33AM|#

Oh yeah, capitalism in India is also crushing the social mores that have restricted the latitude of choice for woman by giving them economic options outside the home. Individual liberty rocks!

|5.17.05 @ 2:06AM|#

I'm trying to figure out what the point of Ron's article is -- its a multi-part series and already he seems to have his guard up and the blinders on after just the introduction -- maybe thats warrented with the old grey lady, but why not wait an installment or two before you start to critize. Surely you'll have a lot more material than the molehill you make a meal of. What are you desperate for an article or something?

|5.17.05 @ 8:41AM|#

Something I want to see resolved:

Liberals claim that wages for the lower 50% or so of the population have been stagnant for decades.

Ron indicates that is not the case.

Who is right? What is the basis for the liberal claim? Anyone?

|5.17.05 @ 8:56AM|#

Between 1979 and 2001 the real income of the top one percent of households ($700,000) increased 139 percent, while the income of the middle quintile ($43,700) increased just 17 percent and the poorest fifth rose by only nine percent. However, a Times' survey found that most Americans say that their standard of living is better than their parents' and that they think that their kids will be better off than they are. In the poll, 45 percent said that they were in a higher class than when they grew up and only 16 percent said that they were in a lower one. The Times cites recent data show that social mobility between income quintiles has slowed down in recent years. But Americans don't seem to care. "The slicing of society's pie is more unequal than it used to be, but most Americans have a bigger piece than they or their parents once did," notes the Times. The article somewhat grumpily adds, "They appear to accept the trade-offs."

Here's a concept that even the staunchest equality-obsessed lefty can understand: there is a point at which real poverty exists, and this is based on physical suffering and hardship. The richer society gets, as a whole, the further the lower classes get from this point. Past that, it's all more or less icing. Luxury. Add-ons. Perks. While I might care about someone starving to death while the king eats his bounty, I don't care that one guy has a Bugatti, and another guy "only" has a Camry. There are some things that transcend our psyches, like starvation, living in shit, drinking dirty water, etc. But the other things, the icing on top, well, it's f-ing rediculous to bemoan the fact that you only have a little bit of icing, while another guy has alot.

|5.17.05 @ 9:46AM|#

In India, capitalism is really shaking things up.

Indeed. And it's a damn shame that the government has helped perpetuate the caste system (not to mention hurt economic growth) over the last 25 years by requiring that a certain percentage of positions at government offices, state-owned enterprises, and public universities be given to members of lower castes. And now there's talk of talk of trying to extend this quota system to the private sector, though fortunately it's remained just talk for now.

|5.17.05 @ 9:50AM|#

Can one talk about class in America without being accused of 'class warfare'? Afrer all, what are conservative demagogues talking about when they refer to latte-sipping, Volvo driving liberals if not of class? And their liberal counterparts when they refer to 'Jesusland' and the horrors of suburban sprawl and McMansions? "Class is rank, it is tribe, it is culture and taste. It is attitudes and assumptions, a source of identity, a system of exclusion. To some, it is just money." This is how the Times nebulously defines their subject. Does Ronald Bailey have a better term to refer to someone's position in society. Perhaps status would be better since it doesn't have the same obsessive association with someone's wealth or income. In any case, social scientists and thinkers infinitely more serious than David Brooks and Paul Fusell have been thinking about these issues for centuries. And what does Ronald Bailey have to say? "F. Scott Fitzgerald's once supposedly declared to Earnest Hemingway. "The very rich are different from you and me." To which Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money." That about sums it up for me." Plain stupidity.

And, Rick Barton, your reference to capitalism's caste-crushing powers is well taken. But, then again, you could have found it predicted and analyzed exhaustively in Marx's collected works.

|5.17.05 @ 10:19AM|#

My favorite is the really rich people who wear velour jogging suits that cost them hundreds of dollars. I respond to that phenomenon with one of my favorite sayings, "Being rich does not give you good taste", a variation on another favorite of mine, "Just because you're rich, does not mean you dress well." Do they not know they've been had? Hundreds of dollars for a f---king velour leisure "workout" outfit? The best and most ironic part is, if they have a nice figure, it's almost completely likely that they did not earn that nice body - they had it nipped, tucked, and liposucked. Some of those rich people are just hysterical to me!

|5.17.05 @ 11:33AM|#

Yeah, Bailey's thrown up the barricades a little too fast.

Oh no, somebody's writing about economic class! Who knows where this will lead? Quick, cool kids, we all need to point and laugh so nobody with actually think!

|5.17.05 @ 11:49AM|#

"so nobody with actually think!"

har har har!

oh, buffy, get a load of joe's spelling...it's so...minimum wage!

har har!

|5.17.05 @ 12:04PM|#

I guess I don't understand your objection, joe. RB doesn't seem to be making fun of anyone, nor "throwing up barricades". I also don't think he is implying that there will be "class warfare", he was only observing that it would be interesting to see what comes of future discussions - a sort of generic, substanceless comment.

The implied objection seems to be that because one's parents taught one to work hard, study, be polite, and save money, then one has not earned one's success. How in the world does the Times expect someone to become successful without those attributes?

The above is sample summarizes RB's point best. He doesn't seem to be supporting so-called "class warfare" at all. If anything, he appears to be objecting to the perceived class difference that the Times notes.

I was just making fun of people who have a ton of money and still dress badly.

|5.17.05 @ 12:22PM|#

"The implied objection seems to be that because one's parents taught one to work hard, study, be polite, and save money, then one has not earned one's success. How in the world does the Times expect someone to become successful without those attributes?"

This isn't his best point, it's his most obtuse. Does Ronald Bailey truly believe that tony suburban school systems, elite prep schools, and outrageously expensive private colleges teach the children of privilege the value of industry, studiousness, courtesy, and thrift? This is the fairy tale vision of American society and it is as divorced from reality as the nightmare one.

|5.17.05 @ 12:51PM|#

Sage,

How can that Yahoo dork claim that HR departments do the hiring? Who hires the HR people and establishes the department to begin with?

A great example would be Bill Gates. Love him or hate him, what he has done businesswise is astounding. Microsoft started with 3 employees. At last count, over 10,000 people have become millionaires working there. Those are just Microsoft employees. That doesn't count others that benefited from, at least peripherally, from what Microsoft has done, like say Michel Dell.

|5.17.05 @ 1:42PM|#

Okay, but back to something Matty wrote. The Times is substituting wealth for class. Inherited old money could designate class, but the article stresses the decline in inherited wealth as the driver of wealth. Earned wealth is becoming predominant. Don't confuse wealth with class, nor confuse income with wealth; there's plenty of rich people with no class. I'm glad I'm not one of them.

|5.17.05 @ 2:14PM|#

matty,

To nitpick: I did not say it was RB's best point, I said his point was summarized best by that quote, although my meaning may have been garbled by my apparent inability to read or write today. My typo may have made that particular sentence unreadable.

|5.17.05 @ 2:42PM|#

Sorry, smacky. Dyslexia had me reading "summarizes RB's best point" for "summarizes RB's point best".

Nathan|5.17.05 @ 2:57PM|#

This "rising tide that lifts all boats" of wealth has the lefty re-distributors on the run. The old class warfare politics don't work anymore, so they try to make people worry about WalMart and having "too much" choice in the marketplace. It's a losers' game.

|5.17.05 @ 3:34PM|#

Marx also welcomed the civilizing effects of capitalism in India.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/saff9/Marx%20100%20Folder/Marx%20100/original%20texts/Marx%20on%20India.htm

|5.17.05 @ 4:23PM|#

alkurta,

I know. It's the same dork who made this post. It's hard to take someone like that seriously. One wonders how he thought crap like that up.

|5.17.05 @ 5:00PM|#

One wonders how he thought crap like that up.

Probably no thought involved.

|5.17.05 @ 5:29PM|#

smacky,

Bailey's leap to "implied objections," along with the tone of the entire article, make it clear that his real objection is to the recognition that economic class even exists, and is worthy of investigation.

Like the pull of entrenched chemical dependency, the continuing persistence of class-based privilege is threat to the fundamentals of free market utopianism, and therefore the utopians must deny its existence, and pre-emptively discredit those who draw attention to the phenomenon.

|5.17.05 @ 5:30PM|#

And yeah, that Yahoo yahoo didn't exactly cover himself with glory, either.

|5.17.05 @ 9:48PM|#

The problem is not the recognition that there are social classes; the problem is the implication that runs through the NYT, as well as more leftist thought, that class is a static unchanging state. That one is in a certain class, and there one will stay.

That attitude was prevalent and pervasive in Boston when I lived there; it's one of the many reasons I consider Boston the worst place to live in America (and I've lived in some mighty crappy places).

Economic 'class' suggests, on the face of it, that you are a member of a group, and that membership is somehow intrinsic to your being. That 'class' is a fundamental property of 'person', rather than a descriptive category assigned to people with certain amounts of money.

What Bailey seems to be arguing: 'class' as a property of 'person' is bullshit. Tastes are detached from costs, these days. The 'low class' people have satellite television and broadband internet. The 'middle class' people drive BMWs and eat sushi. People move from one to the other, and usually in an upwards direction.

The only ones who still cling to the old notion of class as natural aristocracy are the aristocrats -- those people who are certain their birth and their inherited wealth makes them special in some way. This is not a uniquely champagne-liberal trait, but it's certainly commonplace among that set.

Meanwhile, the rest of us, liberal and conservative alike, are sneering at class distinctions as we watch our flatscreen televisions and talk to each other on our ultra-thin Motorola phones.

|5.18.05 @ 9:08AM|#

isildur,

I'm willing to admit that 'class' may have more meaning in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and the other cities and towns of the Northeast. The area is so saturated in culture and history that those who are bred there develop extremely sophisticated tastes, attitudes, and customs. I can see how this might intimidate outsiders like yourself and lead to resentment. But, why am I offering my sympathies to you? You don't need them. I mean, if you're sitting in your lavishly furnished suburban living room clicking through the five hundred channels of pure entertainment on your huge plasma TV while simultaneously text messaging your equally fortunate middle-class friends, go ahead and sneer away at us incorrigible snobs. Nobody will see you but nobody's feelings get hurt either. Certainly not mine.

|5.18.05 @ 12:48PM|#

You've gotta be kidding me. 'extremely sophisticated tastes, attitudes, and customs'?

No: the supposed 'upper-class' I interacted with in Boston were just *assholes*.

They were no more or less sophisticated than the Southies I knew. They were just more impressed with themselves.

I was from Los Angeles, so I didn't fit into their little classification scheme. After all, I didn't have a Southie accent, but I also didn't have a Hah-vahd accent -- so where did I belong?

The answer: I belonged on the west coast, and I'm glad it only took me a couple of years to realize that.

I wouldn't describe Boston as 'saturated in culture'. It was saturated in *assholes*. People who came from a long line of aristocracy and would-be aristocracy stretching back to the founding of the country. The only 'culture' I ever saw was the culture of looking down one's nose at people -- not for being poor, but for having the wrong accent.

I just hope that somewhere you're aware of the hilarious, almost self-parodying way your words sound: 'The area is so saturated in culture and history that those who are bred there develop extremely sophisticated tastes, attitudes, and customs.'

If sneering self-congratulation is 'sophistication', count me out. Guess I'll have to be crude and unsophisticated here in Seattle.