Delusions of the “Future-Rich Millennial”
April 14, 2022 9:18 AM Subscribe
“You realize that in this group, everyone’s parents own at least one house? And we’re the only ones whose parents don’t own property?” It felt like a conspiracy dawning in a bad 90s film. In realizing my own naivety, and that our lives were different, I was shattered. A thought hit: were my peers future-rich millennials?
It would still be more wealth-concentrating than first houses being bought from wage expectations, yesno?
I thought the essay should have mentioned Piketty’s Capital which is the spectacular data - and - theory history of the world briefly leaving the asset economy and then congealing back into it. Long, but not dry.
posted by clew at 9:43 AM on April 14, 2022 [13 favorites]
I thought the essay should have mentioned Piketty’s Capital which is the spectacular data - and - theory history of the world briefly leaving the asset economy and then congealing back into it. Long, but not dry.
posted by clew at 9:43 AM on April 14, 2022 [13 favorites]
Probably this author should've had a few conversations with her therapist before or instead of writing this article. Trying to write away a fundamental discomfiture rarely works.
posted by praemunire at 9:48 AM on April 14, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:48 AM on April 14, 2022 [13 favorites]
elkvelvet: ...a person's parents offering a non-negligible sum of money to help get started really should not be an indicator of a higher wealth bracket, I think it should be the norm.
Well, looked at another way, it may be that the lack of this -- because Mom & Dad are also scraping by, and can't spare $20k -- might be the indicator that the wealth of the middle class isn't what it used to be (particularly the older member of the group).
As money has percolated upwards, the people who used to be "middle class and able to help with the down payment" can't do so any more, so we need to redefine what we think of as "middle class" so it doesn't include that kind of liquidity.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:49 AM on April 14, 2022 [53 favorites]
Well, looked at another way, it may be that the lack of this -- because Mom & Dad are also scraping by, and can't spare $20k -- might be the indicator that the wealth of the middle class isn't what it used to be (particularly the older member of the group).
As money has percolated upwards, the people who used to be "middle class and able to help with the down payment" can't do so any more, so we need to redefine what we think of as "middle class" so it doesn't include that kind of liquidity.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:49 AM on April 14, 2022 [53 favorites]
The author did a good job of comparing inheritance-expecting millennials to the poor half of boomers, which has to be the more relevant economic distinction. But I don’t think it will much overcome the common framing.
posted by clew at 9:52 AM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 9:52 AM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
totally agree, if that was not clear from my comment
not sure of the pedigree of the term "middle class" (probably a fascinating read), but the essential concept that there's enough for everyone to live, and enjoy life, is a starting point.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:54 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
not sure of the pedigree of the term "middle class" (probably a fascinating read), but the essential concept that there's enough for everyone to live, and enjoy life, is a starting point.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:54 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
The author opens with an anecdote about other people in her privileged social circle pretending to be poor, or at least pretending not to be rich, and then getting tired of pretending. Then three-quarters of the way through, around the place I started skimming, she confesses that she too has married money and was also just pretending not to be rich for the first bit of the article.
I believe that growing wealth inequality is real, and bad. Though, as Piketty points out in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, we're regressing to a very durable long-term mean--it's the relatively egalitarian postwar decades that were anomalous. But the rate of homeownership in the United States is 64%, the same as it was thirty years ago. And while I don't drink $30 bottles of wine, I am not rich and I do other things that cost $30 when with friends, like attending concerts and sporting events, and think that's a weird thing to fetishize.
posted by sy at 9:54 AM on April 14, 2022 [24 favorites]
I believe that growing wealth inequality is real, and bad. Though, as Piketty points out in Capital in the Twenty-First Century, we're regressing to a very durable long-term mean--it's the relatively egalitarian postwar decades that were anomalous. But the rate of homeownership in the United States is 64%, the same as it was thirty years ago. And while I don't drink $30 bottles of wine, I am not rich and I do other things that cost $30 when with friends, like attending concerts and sporting events, and think that's a weird thing to fetishize.
posted by sy at 9:54 AM on April 14, 2022 [24 favorites]
The author opens with an anecdote about other people in her privileged social circle pretending to be poor, or at least pretending not to be rich, and then getting tired of pretending. Then three-quarters of the way through, around the place I started skimming, she confesses that she too has married money and was also just pretending not to be rich for the first bit of the article.
Exactly.
posted by praemunire at 10:06 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Exactly.
posted by praemunire at 10:06 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Things have changed a lot. The idea that a person's parents offering a non-negligible sum of money to help get started really should not be an indicator of a higher wealth bracket, I think it should be the norm.
Maybe. I suspect that even then it has a wealth concentrating effect and while I don't want to valourise the past, I think it is true that a very substantial number of working class people were able to save down-payments from their wages over a few years of belt-tightening rather than have to spend a decade eating nothing but sawdust just to watch prices accelerate faster than their savings.
A few years ago, a colleague had complained that she was the only person in a particular circle who had attended “a public school” (it was, in fact, one of the state’s top-ranked, most prestigious and well-resourced schools). Another friend, who insisted she “grew up in poverty” in “a suburb with migrants” was poached to be an executive at a major transnational media company.
I'm reminded of some of the links posted as part of the discussion on MacKenzie Fierceton and the beastly way she has been treated by Penn and the Rhodes. As a society, we valourise poverty and suffering in a really weird way. People compete on how difficult their backgrounds are in a way that 200 years ago, people spent money on elaborate and tendentious family trees that aimed to "prove" their descent from aristocracy. A few stories and essays were linked there by people who showed that depending on how they presented their own backgrounds, they could demonstrate greater or lesser degrees of privilege. It goes without saying that people still want the privilege for themselves and their children, they just want to make it look like they did not themselves grow up with it).
I actually wonder if that will fade along with the measure of real mid-century egalitarianism that, limited though it was, really did allow quite a few people to escape the economic class of their birth? After all, if a substantial number of your peers really did attend a state school, work hard, and then make a fortune, inheriting it makes you look like a bit of a loser. (In the Britain of 1970s, everyone wanted to have gone to a grammar / selective state school because actual private schools were for thickos who couldn't pass the exams). If everyone who has money has inherited it, it becomes less socially necessary for the well-off to invent struggle stories since everyone around the table has the same advantages.
“You realize that in this group, everyone’s parents own at least one house? And we’re the only ones whose parents don’t own property?” It felt like a conspiracy dawning in a bad 90s film. In realizing my own naivety, and that our lives were different, I was shattered.
The way in which peer group socialising happens for people who hit the privilege threshold to go to college (note that most people would not even have been part of that group in the pub!) works drives this as well. Nobody spends huge amounts as an undergraduate and the style is still very much for people in their first jobs (especially in the arty world) to live as if they did not have very much money. This allows members of those social groups who actually *don't* have money to effectively defer the realisation of the class barriers.
I see this in London as well. At some point, you know, everyone* was living in the same few clusters of North London warehouses or East London shared houses and then it's like you look up and suddenly your "peers" have bought a three bed in Islington and it's like... wait a minute, what the fuck just happened? I thought we were the same because we shared cultural interests?
(*) it's not everyone obviously. I think this phenomenon is most felt by people with the social capital to exist in groups where many of their peers have a lot of familial actual capital. People who have neither are never under the spell and know from much earlier that some people have a lot more money.
I do hope that the now-ongoing wealth transfer between privileged boomers and their millennial children will destroy once and for all the godawful bad generational takes which have been inflicted on us over the last few decade or so. Generational conflict is posed as "our parents" as a generation have bought all the property and therefore "we" can't buy any. A moment's reflection makes it obvious that if we look at, you know, actually "our parents" then "we" are their heirs. So the problem is that some people's parents have bought all the houses and as they downsize and eventually shuffle off this mortal coil, "we" suddenly splits into a "we" who owns all this stuff and a "we" who has to rent it.
I wonder if anyone who has read it can tell me, is The Asset Economy worth it if I've already read Capital in the 21st C?
posted by atrazine at 10:16 AM on April 14, 2022 [23 favorites]
Maybe. I suspect that even then it has a wealth concentrating effect and while I don't want to valourise the past, I think it is true that a very substantial number of working class people were able to save down-payments from their wages over a few years of belt-tightening rather than have to spend a decade eating nothing but sawdust just to watch prices accelerate faster than their savings.
A few years ago, a colleague had complained that she was the only person in a particular circle who had attended “a public school” (it was, in fact, one of the state’s top-ranked, most prestigious and well-resourced schools). Another friend, who insisted she “grew up in poverty” in “a suburb with migrants” was poached to be an executive at a major transnational media company.
I'm reminded of some of the links posted as part of the discussion on MacKenzie Fierceton and the beastly way she has been treated by Penn and the Rhodes. As a society, we valourise poverty and suffering in a really weird way. People compete on how difficult their backgrounds are in a way that 200 years ago, people spent money on elaborate and tendentious family trees that aimed to "prove" their descent from aristocracy. A few stories and essays were linked there by people who showed that depending on how they presented their own backgrounds, they could demonstrate greater or lesser degrees of privilege. It goes without saying that people still want the privilege for themselves and their children, they just want to make it look like they did not themselves grow up with it).
I actually wonder if that will fade along with the measure of real mid-century egalitarianism that, limited though it was, really did allow quite a few people to escape the economic class of their birth? After all, if a substantial number of your peers really did attend a state school, work hard, and then make a fortune, inheriting it makes you look like a bit of a loser. (In the Britain of 1970s, everyone wanted to have gone to a grammar / selective state school because actual private schools were for thickos who couldn't pass the exams). If everyone who has money has inherited it, it becomes less socially necessary for the well-off to invent struggle stories since everyone around the table has the same advantages.
“You realize that in this group, everyone’s parents own at least one house? And we’re the only ones whose parents don’t own property?” It felt like a conspiracy dawning in a bad 90s film. In realizing my own naivety, and that our lives were different, I was shattered.
The way in which peer group socialising happens for people who hit the privilege threshold to go to college (note that most people would not even have been part of that group in the pub!) works drives this as well. Nobody spends huge amounts as an undergraduate and the style is still very much for people in their first jobs (especially in the arty world) to live as if they did not have very much money. This allows members of those social groups who actually *don't* have money to effectively defer the realisation of the class barriers.
I see this in London as well. At some point, you know, everyone* was living in the same few clusters of North London warehouses or East London shared houses and then it's like you look up and suddenly your "peers" have bought a three bed in Islington and it's like... wait a minute, what the fuck just happened? I thought we were the same because we shared cultural interests?
(*) it's not everyone obviously. I think this phenomenon is most felt by people with the social capital to exist in groups where many of their peers have a lot of familial actual capital. People who have neither are never under the spell and know from much earlier that some people have a lot more money.
I do hope that the now-ongoing wealth transfer between privileged boomers and their millennial children will destroy once and for all the godawful bad generational takes which have been inflicted on us over the last few decade or so. Generational conflict is posed as "our parents" as a generation have bought all the property and therefore "we" can't buy any. A moment's reflection makes it obvious that if we look at, you know, actually "our parents" then "we" are their heirs. So the problem is that some people's parents have bought all the houses and as they downsize and eventually shuffle off this mortal coil, "we" suddenly splits into a "we" who owns all this stuff and a "we" who has to rent it.
I wonder if anyone who has read it can tell me, is The Asset Economy worth it if I've already read Capital in the 21st C?
posted by atrazine at 10:16 AM on April 14, 2022 [23 favorites]
she confesses that she too has married money and was also just pretending not to be rich for the first bit of the article.
Well, now. It sounds like those conversations were happening some years back, prior to her marriage. And the fact of her current marriage doesn't change her childhood or what she grew up expecting in terms of parental help. Does my current high salary mean I somehow didn't grow up with housing insecurity? Does it mean all those years I spent making barely anything never happened? Come on.
I agree that this article fundamentally is not doing much that a hundred articles before it haven't done already. "I discovered everyone has secret money they don't talk about!" is a genre that is at least a decade old by now.
But one interesting thing she doesn't get into is...some of those future-rich millennials are more precarious than they think. One friend of mine recently noted that she has built her entire adult life in her hometown, which has had substantial downsides personally and professionally, because she will one day inherit her father's house there. But now it seems equally likely the California wildfires and mudslides will get to it first, and then what?
My mother owns a home, which the author would say makes me a "future rich millennial." But I won't inherit it, nobody will. It's been underwater since the 2009 crash with no sign of ever improving. When she dies, it'll just go back to the bank.
Even the author, with her wealthy landowning husband, is at the mercies of climate change. How stable will that farm be? How much will it be worth when they try to get out from under it?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:16 AM on April 14, 2022 [26 favorites]
Well, now. It sounds like those conversations were happening some years back, prior to her marriage. And the fact of her current marriage doesn't change her childhood or what she grew up expecting in terms of parental help. Does my current high salary mean I somehow didn't grow up with housing insecurity? Does it mean all those years I spent making barely anything never happened? Come on.
I agree that this article fundamentally is not doing much that a hundred articles before it haven't done already. "I discovered everyone has secret money they don't talk about!" is a genre that is at least a decade old by now.
But one interesting thing she doesn't get into is...some of those future-rich millennials are more precarious than they think. One friend of mine recently noted that she has built her entire adult life in her hometown, which has had substantial downsides personally and professionally, because she will one day inherit her father's house there. But now it seems equally likely the California wildfires and mudslides will get to it first, and then what?
My mother owns a home, which the author would say makes me a "future rich millennial." But I won't inherit it, nobody will. It's been underwater since the 2009 crash with no sign of ever improving. When she dies, it'll just go back to the bank.
Even the author, with her wealthy landowning husband, is at the mercies of climate change. How stable will that farm be? How much will it be worth when they try to get out from under it?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:16 AM on April 14, 2022 [26 favorites]
Piketty ‘s Capital - does Metafilter still get a bit of affiliate income?
posted by clew at 10:22 AM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 10:22 AM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
That a large wealth transfer between aging boomers and their millennial children is just getting started is interesting, but there was so much about natural wine... it reminded me of that tumblr post "Everyone is saying that? Who is 'everyone'? I've never seen a single person saying that."
posted by subdee at 10:31 AM on April 14, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by subdee at 10:31 AM on April 14, 2022 [12 favorites]
But the rate of homeownership in the United States is 64%, the same as it was thirty years ago.
Homeownership rates got as high as 69% before in 2005 we decided that poor people shouldn't own homes, and cut 7% of the population out.
However it's kind of a misleading statistic, far buoyed by the small towns, and the midwest to upper NE, where rates can hit 70% and higher. In most major cities in the US, it's barely at 50%, and a place like Boston is at 35%(!). As you can imagine, as the ownership rate falls, the cost of housing rises--dramatically. So saying your parents own their homes kind of defines where you are from...
What's odd FTA is that I'm only slightly older, and I only know one family whose parents* helped them buy a home. The rest must be keeping it really quiet if they got that kind of help. Plenty of us (nearly all of us) got help paying for college, but after that we were cut off. Also, I'm of the age where everyone's parents are generally still alive, so they are not getting inheritance from parents but grandparents. That's even more rare, as it's pretty rare for parents of upper income people to die early.
Even the wealthy ones, whose rich parents were would pay for weddings (parties for themselves) but not homes.
*The couple were 45 years old when they purchased their first house from their parents, not millennials. Their kids were in high school. They lived with their parents almost the whole time.
IDK: home ownership is so screwed up in the US and not only due to wealthy people (outside of their home wealth of course) that the whole thing needs to be re-thought.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:33 AM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
Homeownership rates got as high as 69% before in 2005 we decided that poor people shouldn't own homes, and cut 7% of the population out.
However it's kind of a misleading statistic, far buoyed by the small towns, and the midwest to upper NE, where rates can hit 70% and higher. In most major cities in the US, it's barely at 50%, and a place like Boston is at 35%(!). As you can imagine, as the ownership rate falls, the cost of housing rises--dramatically. So saying your parents own their homes kind of defines where you are from...
What's odd FTA is that I'm only slightly older, and I only know one family whose parents* helped them buy a home. The rest must be keeping it really quiet if they got that kind of help. Plenty of us (nearly all of us) got help paying for college, but after that we were cut off. Also, I'm of the age where everyone's parents are generally still alive, so they are not getting inheritance from parents but grandparents. That's even more rare, as it's pretty rare for parents of upper income people to die early.
Even the wealthy ones, whose rich parents were would pay for weddings (parties for themselves) but not homes.
*The couple were 45 years old when they purchased their first house from their parents, not millennials. Their kids were in high school. They lived with their parents almost the whole time.
IDK: home ownership is so screwed up in the US and not only due to wealthy people (outside of their home wealth of course) that the whole thing needs to be re-thought.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:33 AM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
there was so much about natural wine... it reminded me of that tumblr post "Everyone is saying that? Who is 'everyone'? I've never seen a single person saying that."
Hahaha yes I've literally never even heard of "natural wine" despite moving in distinctly hipster millennial circles. 'Round here if you order a "natty" you get a Natural Light.
(edited bc quote paste did not work)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:34 AM on April 14, 2022 [6 favorites]
Hahaha yes I've literally never even heard of "natural wine" despite moving in distinctly hipster millennial circles. 'Round here if you order a "natty" you get a Natural Light.
(edited bc quote paste did not work)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:34 AM on April 14, 2022 [6 favorites]
> As money has percolated upwards, the people who used to be "middle class and able to help with the down payment" can't do so any more, so we need to redefine what we think of as "middle class" so it doesn't include that kind of liquidity.
I think it's more effective to frame it as the destruction of the middle class. Framing the middle class as whatever demographic happens to fit into the median income bracket misses the economic and political role that the middle class plays in society, which depends on specific characteristics of the group, not just the fact that they're the median demographic. For example, when we talk about the destruction of the middle class in late antiquity, and its reemergence in the late middle ages / renaissance, and their relationship with the emergence of liberal democratic institutions, such a redefinition would be harmful to the discussion.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:44 AM on April 14, 2022 [17 favorites]
I think it's more effective to frame it as the destruction of the middle class. Framing the middle class as whatever demographic happens to fit into the median income bracket misses the economic and political role that the middle class plays in society, which depends on specific characteristics of the group, not just the fact that they're the median demographic. For example, when we talk about the destruction of the middle class in late antiquity, and its reemergence in the late middle ages / renaissance, and their relationship with the emergence of liberal democratic institutions, such a redefinition would be harmful to the discussion.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:44 AM on April 14, 2022 [17 favorites]
Definition: The middle class are owners of means of production, but must also labor in order to maintain their class. The upper class are those who are able to maintain their class off of rents and investments alone. The upper middle class is the grey area between that.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:56 AM on April 14, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 10:56 AM on April 14, 2022 [12 favorites]
I'm in a bit of this position myself, in addition to my many other privileges. Parents definitely saved and ate sawdust to afford their houses, and now are in a position to sell them for what would have seemed insane prices in the '80s.
I've had this safety net most of my life and to some extent I've played the part of someone with less money than I actually theoretically have access to... when I was earning barely enough to make rent I did know if I failed I could move back home, so it removed some of the stress of that. I definitely was paycheck to paycheck though. Then I met people who really did have money and seemed to be "slumming" and eventually tired of it.
I feel this category of future-rich is a little too broad because it's kind of a psychological profile as well as an economic one. There's definitely a lot of diversity here and the term seems reductive.
But I agree with the people above who describe the process as wealth concentrating. That's certainly the case with my parents and myself at this point even if that wasn't necessarily the expectation. There's certainly no way I could afford a down payment on a house in any major city even though I've got a good job and employed partner. The category of "can afford house" is getting narrower and narrower, which is doubly troubling considering the urbanization of the population.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:19 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
I've had this safety net most of my life and to some extent I've played the part of someone with less money than I actually theoretically have access to... when I was earning barely enough to make rent I did know if I failed I could move back home, so it removed some of the stress of that. I definitely was paycheck to paycheck though. Then I met people who really did have money and seemed to be "slumming" and eventually tired of it.
I feel this category of future-rich is a little too broad because it's kind of a psychological profile as well as an economic one. There's definitely a lot of diversity here and the term seems reductive.
But I agree with the people above who describe the process as wealth concentrating. That's certainly the case with my parents and myself at this point even if that wasn't necessarily the expectation. There's certainly no way I could afford a down payment on a house in any major city even though I've got a good job and employed partner. The category of "can afford house" is getting narrower and narrower, which is doubly troubling considering the urbanization of the population.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:19 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
As you can imagine, as the ownership rate falls, the cost of housing rises--dramatically
Not inevitably. There is no good reason to privilege homeownership over other forms of asset accumulation.
posted by praemunire at 11:26 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
Not inevitably. There is no good reason to privilege homeownership over other forms of asset accumulation.
posted by praemunire at 11:26 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
Probably this is irrelevant in Australia, but many or even most people with middle class homeowning parents in the States will not inherit those houses when they die, because those houses are part of the retirement/elder care plan. My grandmother owned her house, and my mom and her siblings had to sell it so that she could qualify for Medicaid when she could no longer live alone. I can’t imagine how much money you’d need to have saved to pay for a quality nursing home out of pocket for a decade and still have some money left over for your kids, but it’s a huge unknown that makes banking on an inheritance pretty risky even for people whose parents are solidly middle class.
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 11:31 AM on April 14, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 11:31 AM on April 14, 2022 [18 favorites]
This author dislikes natural wine so much she spun it into a whole-ass politics
posted by thedaniel at 11:38 AM on April 14, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by thedaniel at 11:38 AM on April 14, 2022 [17 favorites]
At first I thought you were being snarky with that critique, but the article really does bizarrely transition from some systematic analysis of the problem of wealth distribution to spotlight on the problematic bourgeois nature of the natural wine fad. She's avocado toasting the trend. Does that make her a generation traitor?
posted by Apocryphon at 11:46 AM on April 14, 2022
posted by Apocryphon at 11:46 AM on April 14, 2022
Or rather:
This author dislikes [paying too much for] natural wine so much she spun it into a whole-ass politics
posted by jeremias at 11:48 AM on April 14, 2022
This author dislikes [paying too much for] natural wine so much she spun it into a whole-ass politics
posted by jeremias at 11:48 AM on April 14, 2022
I find myself more interested in the book reviewed than the piece itself. The idea of the “asset economy” certainly fits some of the available evidence. There is certainly a significant role for inheritance in the rigging of human economic (and social) systems.
I will contend that our current economic system is an inheritance-rigged oligarchy. Humans will only be able to create a (relatively) meritocratic society by eliminating inheritance (in reality, significantly limiting it, as it is a great motivator and the idea here is to remove the rigging in favor of the next generation without eliminating people’s motivation).
If you proposed giving someone a 26-mile head start in a marathon because that person had an ancestor who once won a gold medal in a marathon, you would be rightly ridiculed. But human societies and economies are run using the same principles. People who have earned nothing for themselves are handed all the money and the power that goes with it, simply because an ancestor won something long ago.
Friedman’s “Free” Fallacy: The notion that the way to create a market-based meritocracy is to hand all the wealth and the power that goes with it to an Inheritor Class that did not earn a single penny of it, while allowing no input from market forces as to the relative fitness or unfitness of the Inheritor Class.
“Free” in this parlance means “unregulated” and the claim is that unregulated economic activity is best for the world, because it allows everyone to succeed according to their personal merit. Unregulated markets, it is claimed, will provide for a form of natural selection that mimics the natural systems on which human theories of markets are based. This will create a market meritocracy where those who hold the wealth and the power that goes with it can truly be said to be the best and brightest, since they earned it, just like in nature.
Unfortunately, both for Friedman and the rest of humanity, this view misunderstands both natural systems and markets. Unregulated economic systems will always create an inheritance-rigged oligarchy, full of market-violating handouts to an Inheritor Class, rigging the system in order to extract wealth at far above market equilibrium returns. This excess wealth extraction, left unchecked, will eventually lead to system collapse.
The error begins with the mistaken assumption that natural systems are unregulated. Nature is both the rule maker and the regulator/agent of accountability of all natural systems, through competitors and conditions.
Intergenerational material inheritance does not exist in Nature because Nature’s regulation of the system does not allow it. The absence of intergenerational material inheritance ensures a level-playing field for each successive generation, meaning that the successful have truly earned for themselves, rather than relying on the work and wealth of long-dead ancestors.
This is how Nature creates a meritocracy, every individual faces the same conditions, with the same opportunities and the same material limitations, so that the successful can be said to have truly “earned it for themselves”.
Market meritocracy requires equal opportunity. Equal opportunity requires an equal start on a level-playing field, with clearly understood rules that are enforced equally against everyone. This provides every individual the freedom and opportunity to succeed to maximum of their individual abilities and to truly say “I earned it”. Material Inheritance denies this equal opportunity in favor of handing all the wealth, as well as the power that goes with it, to an Inheritor Class that did not earn a single penny of it, poisoning market meritocracy. In this way, unlimited material inheritance will always create an inheritance-rigged oligarchy.
That's how it looks to me, anyway.
posted by Lazy Buffalo at 11:49 AM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
I will contend that our current economic system is an inheritance-rigged oligarchy. Humans will only be able to create a (relatively) meritocratic society by eliminating inheritance (in reality, significantly limiting it, as it is a great motivator and the idea here is to remove the rigging in favor of the next generation without eliminating people’s motivation).
If you proposed giving someone a 26-mile head start in a marathon because that person had an ancestor who once won a gold medal in a marathon, you would be rightly ridiculed. But human societies and economies are run using the same principles. People who have earned nothing for themselves are handed all the money and the power that goes with it, simply because an ancestor won something long ago.
Friedman’s “Free” Fallacy: The notion that the way to create a market-based meritocracy is to hand all the wealth and the power that goes with it to an Inheritor Class that did not earn a single penny of it, while allowing no input from market forces as to the relative fitness or unfitness of the Inheritor Class.
“Free” in this parlance means “unregulated” and the claim is that unregulated economic activity is best for the world, because it allows everyone to succeed according to their personal merit. Unregulated markets, it is claimed, will provide for a form of natural selection that mimics the natural systems on which human theories of markets are based. This will create a market meritocracy where those who hold the wealth and the power that goes with it can truly be said to be the best and brightest, since they earned it, just like in nature.
Unfortunately, both for Friedman and the rest of humanity, this view misunderstands both natural systems and markets. Unregulated economic systems will always create an inheritance-rigged oligarchy, full of market-violating handouts to an Inheritor Class, rigging the system in order to extract wealth at far above market equilibrium returns. This excess wealth extraction, left unchecked, will eventually lead to system collapse.
The error begins with the mistaken assumption that natural systems are unregulated. Nature is both the rule maker and the regulator/agent of accountability of all natural systems, through competitors and conditions.
Intergenerational material inheritance does not exist in Nature because Nature’s regulation of the system does not allow it. The absence of intergenerational material inheritance ensures a level-playing field for each successive generation, meaning that the successful have truly earned for themselves, rather than relying on the work and wealth of long-dead ancestors.
This is how Nature creates a meritocracy, every individual faces the same conditions, with the same opportunities and the same material limitations, so that the successful can be said to have truly “earned it for themselves”.
Market meritocracy requires equal opportunity. Equal opportunity requires an equal start on a level-playing field, with clearly understood rules that are enforced equally against everyone. This provides every individual the freedom and opportunity to succeed to maximum of their individual abilities and to truly say “I earned it”. Material Inheritance denies this equal opportunity in favor of handing all the wealth, as well as the power that goes with it, to an Inheritor Class that did not earn a single penny of it, poisoning market meritocracy. In this way, unlimited material inheritance will always create an inheritance-rigged oligarchy.
That's how it looks to me, anyway.
posted by Lazy Buffalo at 11:49 AM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
I'm having a hard time differentiating between how much of this is her own personal guilty hand-wringing (most of it), how much is actually worth worrying about as a righ-getting-richer wealth transfer that's making it harder for people at the bottom to get out from the bottom (definitely some of it), and how much is actually normal. People now aren't getting married in the same numbers or at the same ages as generations ago, and the American approach to marriage has been different than it is in other countries for at least a century, but it used to be standard (and still is in parts of the world) that when couples married it implied a concrete dowry and a certain amount of setting them up for their home. Or that they would move in with their in-laws' family and contribute to the larger household for the rest of forever. One thing that's changed is that people aren't marrying (sometimes but not always by choice), and going it alone is more expensive across the board.
Generational wealth shifts. We need to do a better job of taxing that wealth, especially at the 1% level. But I think implying that the fact of it shifting is at the root of the problem of wealth inequality is dodging the issue.
posted by Mchelly at 11:50 AM on April 14, 2022
Generational wealth shifts. We need to do a better job of taxing that wealth, especially at the 1% level. But I think implying that the fact of it shifting is at the root of the problem of wealth inequality is dodging the issue.
posted by Mchelly at 11:50 AM on April 14, 2022
Given that her husband manages his family’s regenerative farm, I wonder if that farm produces natural wine?
posted by atrazine at 11:51 AM on April 14, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by atrazine at 11:51 AM on April 14, 2022 [10 favorites]
this read like it was generated by GPT-3 but there's things to unpack from it I guess, 'specially since I'm a quasi-Georgist and all that.
profiting from sitting assets is pure parasitism and leads all economies to ruin eventually as the have-mores keep pulling and pulling wealth from the have-lesses.
Housing doesn't have to be all this f---ed up, but there is immense power to keep it so, and getting worse. California tried with the proposition to remove Prop 13 protection on commercial properties, but that failed due to ~ people ~.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:54 AM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
profiting from sitting assets is pure parasitism and leads all economies to ruin eventually as the have-mores keep pulling and pulling wealth from the have-lesses.
Housing doesn't have to be all this f---ed up, but there is immense power to keep it so, and getting worse. California tried with the proposition to remove Prop 13 protection on commercial properties, but that failed due to ~ people ~.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:54 AM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
the article really does bizarrely transition from some systematic analysis of the problem of wealth distribution to spotlight on the problematic bourgeois nature of the natural wine fad
Given that her husband manages his family’s regenerative farm, I wonder if that farm produces natural wine?
Oh wow I totally was just assuming that the genesis of the article was "who the fuck is buying all this expensive-ass natural wine? It's not old people. Is it all of the faux-poor young people I used to know? Did our generation back-ass its way into wealth without anyone noticing?"
But now I'm almost HOPING it's economic analysis spon-con.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:55 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Given that her husband manages his family’s regenerative farm, I wonder if that farm produces natural wine?
Oh wow I totally was just assuming that the genesis of the article was "who the fuck is buying all this expensive-ass natural wine? It's not old people. Is it all of the faux-poor young people I used to know? Did our generation back-ass its way into wealth without anyone noticing?"
But now I'm almost HOPING it's economic analysis spon-con.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:55 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Definition: The middle class are owners of means of production, but must also labor in order to maintain their class. The upper class are those who are able to maintain their class off of rents and investments alone. The upper middle class is the grey area between that.
The start of this article also mentions the newly-vogue professional managerial class, which might somehow correspond to the upper middle class. Good interviewer with one of the coiners of the phrase, Barbara Ehrenreich, here in Dissent.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:59 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
The start of this article also mentions the newly-vogue professional managerial class, which might somehow correspond to the upper middle class. Good interviewer with one of the coiners of the phrase, Barbara Ehrenreich, here in Dissent.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:59 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
… ALDIs wine is great
posted by BlunderingArtist at 12:11 PM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by BlunderingArtist at 12:11 PM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
These articles are blighted by a certain kind of economic innumeracy of the kind of person who likes to write them. Those authors fail to reckon with the numerosity, fairly high incomes and geographic concentration of the millennial professional-managerial class and "small" business owners.
You don't need parental wealth to get a $300,000 down-payment on a $1.5 million house. You need a $500,000 family income and a few years of savings discipline, or a $300,000 income and few more years of savings discipline.
There are hundreds of thousands of millennial households with these kind of household incomes, because (in a few major metros) they simply aren't hard to obtain for a well-educated business person, doctor or private-sector lawyer in his or her 30s.
Now this is a very small, and fortunate, share of the total population ... but it's a far more sizeable share of the population in the circles in which the kind of people who write these articles operate.
posted by MattD at 12:38 PM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
You don't need parental wealth to get a $300,000 down-payment on a $1.5 million house. You need a $500,000 family income and a few years of savings discipline, or a $300,000 income and few more years of savings discipline.
There are hundreds of thousands of millennial households with these kind of household incomes, because (in a few major metros) they simply aren't hard to obtain for a well-educated business person, doctor or private-sector lawyer in his or her 30s.
Now this is a very small, and fortunate, share of the total population ... but it's a far more sizeable share of the population in the circles in which the kind of people who write these articles operate.
posted by MattD at 12:38 PM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
I can’t imagine how much money you’d need to have saved to pay for a quality nursing home out of pocket for a decade and still have some money left over for your kids
If you don't have a pension, a minimum of 3 million in the USA, and this number will only get bigger.
posted by Pembquist at 1:01 PM on April 14, 2022 [5 favorites]
If you don't have a pension, a minimum of 3 million in the USA, and this number will only get bigger.
posted by Pembquist at 1:01 PM on April 14, 2022 [5 favorites]
"The author opens with an anecdote about other people in her privileged social circle pretending to be poor, or at least pretending not to be rich, and then getting tired of pretending. Then three-quarters of the way through, around the place I started skimming, she confesses that she too has married money and was also just pretending not to be rich for the first bit of the article."
The author: "It felt like a conspiracy dawning in a bad 90s film."
This is the spot to make a "the call is coming from inside the house" joke, isn't it?
posted by kevinbelt at 1:13 PM on April 14, 2022 [5 favorites]
The author: "It felt like a conspiracy dawning in a bad 90s film."
This is the spot to make a "the call is coming from inside the house" joke, isn't it?
posted by kevinbelt at 1:13 PM on April 14, 2022 [5 favorites]
Hahaha yes I've literally never even heard of "natural wine" despite moving in distinctly hipster millennial circles. 'Round here if you order a "natty" you get a Natural Light.
I associate the term with "Natural Ice," which I think is just a variant of the natty light.
The author opens with an anecdote about other people in her privileged social circle pretending to be poor, or at least pretending not to be rich, and then getting tired of pretending. Then three-quarters of the way through, around the place I started skimming, she confesses that she too has married money and was also just pretending not to be rich for the first bit of the article.
That was a really awkward transition in the article, particularly following the long sidebar discussion of natural wine. For me, it undermined the first section rather than supported it.
Now, on social media, artists a few years younger than me were posting about the purchase of their “first home”—and neglecting to mention that their parents had supplied them with the down payment for their mortgage.
I'm older than the author (solidly Gen X) but I remember when I started noticing this at probably about the same age as when she did -- people who I knew for a fact were earning the same as us, but were buying beautiful historic homes, or having an ostentatiously ecological house with amazing views built from scratch. It was really puzzling until I finally figured out it was family money, because no one talked about it.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:57 PM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
I associate the term with "Natural Ice," which I think is just a variant of the natty light.
The author opens with an anecdote about other people in her privileged social circle pretending to be poor, or at least pretending not to be rich, and then getting tired of pretending. Then three-quarters of the way through, around the place I started skimming, she confesses that she too has married money and was also just pretending not to be rich for the first bit of the article.
That was a really awkward transition in the article, particularly following the long sidebar discussion of natural wine. For me, it undermined the first section rather than supported it.
Now, on social media, artists a few years younger than me were posting about the purchase of their “first home”—and neglecting to mention that their parents had supplied them with the down payment for their mortgage.
I'm older than the author (solidly Gen X) but I remember when I started noticing this at probably about the same age as when she did -- people who I knew for a fact were earning the same as us, but were buying beautiful historic homes, or having an ostentatiously ecological house with amazing views built from scratch. It was really puzzling until I finally figured out it was family money, because no one talked about it.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:57 PM on April 14, 2022 [11 favorites]
If you don't have a pension, a minimum of 3 million in the USA, and this number will only get bigger.
and if you do have a pension, a minimum of 3 million in the USA, and this number will only get bigger.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:18 PM on April 14, 2022
and if you do have a pension, a minimum of 3 million in the USA, and this number will only get bigger.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:18 PM on April 14, 2022
>the article really does bizarrely transition from some systematic analysis of the problem of wealth distribution to spotlight on the problematic bourgeois nature of the natural wine fad. She's avocado toasting the trend. Does that make her a generation traitor?
Natural wine is not going to be liked by most people. With tasting notes like 'farm or barn yard', 'wet hay', 'hairspray' and 'goat blanket' that's a strong nope for sensible people.
Plus then you get the crypto-purity bunch who are alongside if not dabbling in the portion of anti-vaxx and food choices that are the slippery slope to proud statements of their views that white people are superior.
Walter offers: "Anti-progressive generation traitors, gods damnit! Say what you will about the tenets of wealth-inheriting small-c conservatives, at least it's an ethos!"
posted by k3ninho at 4:14 PM on April 14, 2022
Natural wine is not going to be liked by most people. With tasting notes like 'farm or barn yard', 'wet hay', 'hairspray' and 'goat blanket' that's a strong nope for sensible people.
Plus then you get the crypto-purity bunch who are alongside if not dabbling in the portion of anti-vaxx and food choices that are the slippery slope to proud statements of their views that white people are superior.
Walter offers: "Anti-progressive generation traitors, gods damnit! Say what you will about the tenets of wealth-inheriting small-c conservatives, at least it's an ethos!"
posted by k3ninho at 4:14 PM on April 14, 2022
The pearl clutching around the natural wine is sort of off-putting. As Gen X the main differentiator I have seen in wealth among friends are those that are subsidizing their parent's finances (medical care, rent, caprices) as they get older and more mired in poverty and those who have parents who are able to help out with the grandkid's tutors, clothes, vacations etc. Probably it does all go back to asset/homeownership wealth. And assets and homeownership are not a prerequisite, but often a marker of stability. The weird "gotcha" of the author marrying into a landed family is so classic - I wonder if she should have discussed whether youth and beauty are also an asset class.
posted by Word_Salad at 4:20 PM on April 14, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by Word_Salad at 4:20 PM on April 14, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm just here to say that I'm a currently-rich millennial and I've literally never even heard of natural wine till I read this. I must run in the wrong circles.
posted by potrzebie at 4:41 PM on April 14, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 4:41 PM on April 14, 2022 [8 favorites]
FWIW, I think natural wine is a much more common thing in Europe and AU/NZ; the author of the article appears to be based in Australia. It doesn't seem to have caught on in the US very much at all yet.
posted by mhum at 4:55 PM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mhum at 4:55 PM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Nah, natural wine is definitely a thing in the right U.S. circles. $30 is a weird price to fixate on, though. That's, like, two Applebee's entrees. Not something you'd drink nightly with dinner if you're pinched for cash, but who drinks wine every night with dinner? I can think of many more effective symbols of millennial luxury consumption. (Poor millennials. Sybarites of avocado toast and thirty-buck chuck.)
posted by praemunire at 5:24 PM on April 14, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 5:24 PM on April 14, 2022 [6 favorites]
I was absolutely sure this article was from someone who lived in California, or at least in the US, and was a little surprised to see that it's from an Australian. I guess some first-world problems are universal.
California is where, thanks to a booming economy but also a lot of NIMBYism, if you owned a home(specifically, land) in/near a major city, it's likely to have doubled or tripled in value since the turn of the century. And instead of trying to build more homes, most residents have decided to pass laws that prevent their own expenses from increasing and also reduce the amount of inheritance taxes. A lot of wealth concentration happening here specifically around home ownership.
posted by meowzilla at 6:18 PM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
California is where, thanks to a booming economy but also a lot of NIMBYism, if you owned a home(specifically, land) in/near a major city, it's likely to have doubled or tripled in value since the turn of the century. And instead of trying to build more homes, most residents have decided to pass laws that prevent their own expenses from increasing and also reduce the amount of inheritance taxes. A lot of wealth concentration happening here specifically around home ownership.
posted by meowzilla at 6:18 PM on April 14, 2022 [3 favorites]
Not having kids side eyeing all the talk about life being expensive as usual. But I drive a Honda Civic so I think that says it all.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:36 PM on April 14, 2022
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:36 PM on April 14, 2022
It’s been long observed, in the UK and US, that house ownership skews a person’s politics toward conservatism.
Where can I find statistics on this?
posted by bendy at 12:30 AM on April 15, 2022
Where can I find statistics on this?
posted by bendy at 12:30 AM on April 15, 2022
Marrying up should not be the sole way to stabilize your life.
Says every perpetually-single person ever.
posted by bendy at 12:39 AM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Says every perpetually-single person ever.
posted by bendy at 12:39 AM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Not something you'd drink nightly with dinner if you're pinched for cash, but who drinks wine every night with dinner?
Maybe it's a class thing again, but I sure know lots of people who drink a bottle of wine a day (or more). Maybe there's some dinner, I dunno. They're not drinking wine at thirty dollars a bottle, though.
posted by Dysk at 1:26 AM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Maybe it's a class thing again, but I sure know lots of people who drink a bottle of wine a day (or more). Maybe there's some dinner, I dunno. They're not drinking wine at thirty dollars a bottle, though.
posted by Dysk at 1:26 AM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
What's odd FTA is that I'm only slightly older, and I only know one family whose parents* helped them buy a home. The rest must be keeping it really quiet if they got that kind of help.
we're 41 and living in a house that belongs to taquito boyfriend's solidly upper-middle-class mom, otherwise we'd still be paying out the nose to rent a shittier place in the Phoenix metro
we don't talk about this cause it's embarrassing & feels gross to discuss how much more parental help you're getting than your friends are
so I can only assume our friends either wonder about it or have internalized incorrect ideas about how much gamedev pays
posted by taquito sunrise at 2:20 AM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
we're 41 and living in a house that belongs to taquito boyfriend's solidly upper-middle-class mom, otherwise we'd still be paying out the nose to rent a shittier place in the Phoenix metro
we don't talk about this cause it's embarrassing & feels gross to discuss how much more parental help you're getting than your friends are
so I can only assume our friends either wonder about it or have internalized incorrect ideas about how much gamedev pays
posted by taquito sunrise at 2:20 AM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
There are absolutely people who drink a bottle of $30 wine a day. If you split it between two people at dinner that seems like at the high end of normal to me - 2.5 glasses of wine per person.
Somewhat off topic, but still.
posted by branca at 6:50 AM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Somewhat off topic, but still.
posted by branca at 6:50 AM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
My partner and I are in a weird position: there's no property on my side of the family, but even if we inherited property from his side (may it take 100 years), that property has so vastly increased in value, we couldn't afford to buy out his siblings for their shares. (And even a share wouldn't pay for housing here.)
That's aside from the fact that there may be no inheritance at all: as they age, his parents will likely need to downsize to somewhere more accessible and may even need supportive housing - which means they'll need to get the full market value for their property (as they should) to support themselves.
My grandparents had a similar situation: they benefited from the white, working class boom of the 40s-60s: nether had a high school diploma, but had good union jobs, bought and paid off a house, retired to the country in their 60s, felt embarrassingly rich in their 70s and 80s (as expressed through generous gifts to their grandchildren), but lived much longer than they expected. By their 90s, they had very few assets and were in subsidized long-term care. It meant there was no fighting over the will: they had no assets other than photographs (a treasure in my mind) and my grandfather's slightly wonky amateur landscape paintings (I got one, yay!).
posted by jb at 7:22 AM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's aside from the fact that there may be no inheritance at all: as they age, his parents will likely need to downsize to somewhere more accessible and may even need supportive housing - which means they'll need to get the full market value for their property (as they should) to support themselves.
My grandparents had a similar situation: they benefited from the white, working class boom of the 40s-60s: nether had a high school diploma, but had good union jobs, bought and paid off a house, retired to the country in their 60s, felt embarrassingly rich in their 70s and 80s (as expressed through generous gifts to their grandchildren), but lived much longer than they expected. By their 90s, they had very few assets and were in subsidized long-term care. It meant there was no fighting over the will: they had no assets other than photographs (a treasure in my mind) and my grandfather's slightly wonky amateur landscape paintings (I got one, yay!).
posted by jb at 7:22 AM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Marrying up should not be the sole way to stabilize your life.
Says every perpetually-single person ever.
I don't know why you'd assume that people who (sometimes?) have partners would be like, "yeah this is great, love to live in fear of a breakup that would not only destroy me emotionally but also financially."
It's a crap system no matter what your relationship philosophy or luck look like.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:30 AM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Says every perpetually-single person ever.
I don't know why you'd assume that people who (sometimes?) have partners would be like, "yeah this is great, love to live in fear of a breakup that would not only destroy me emotionally but also financially."
It's a crap system no matter what your relationship philosophy or luck look like.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:30 AM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
I do think it's worth pointing out that one needs an above median income to even make use of family money to buy property. We have a slightly-above median household income for our city, but even if someone paid the downpayment, we wouldn't be able to carry a mortgage. I did an online calculator, and our income would allow us to get a mortgage of about $400-500k Canadian, which is less than what most one-bedroom condos in our city cost. Even non-profit condos start at $600-700k for very small three bedrooms. Since we already have 4 people in our household (myself, partner, parent and nibling) and are praying for a fifth (offspring), that's really not going to work for us. (Even 3 bedrooms is getting crowded with 5).
We're pinning our hopes on co-op waitlists coming open instead.
posted by jb at 7:33 AM on April 15, 2022
We're pinning our hopes on co-op waitlists coming open instead.
posted by jb at 7:33 AM on April 15, 2022
Marrying up should not be the sole way to stabilize your life.
If you marry down, you get someone who can teach you how to get out of the grocery store with a much lower bill! Also, no arguing about how to spend money, provided you are both slightly paranoid misers.
posted by jb at 7:35 AM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you marry down, you get someone who can teach you how to get out of the grocery store with a much lower bill! Also, no arguing about how to spend money, provided you are both slightly paranoid misers.
posted by jb at 7:35 AM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a GenXer, really taught to not take sides in this whole class warfare thing because I've always known I'm screwed... I gotta understand... are they saying I can start castigating boomers AND rich millenials?
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:27 AM on April 15, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:27 AM on April 15, 2022 [8 favorites]
This whole discussion reminds me of inheriting from my own parents. My siblings are 20 years older than I am so they were each given house down payments by my parents, who went on to live another cancer-filled couple of decades, which of course cost everything they had.
When they died (before the real estate boom) of course the inheritance (a house in rural Tennessee) had to be sold and split evenly. Afterwards my siblings of course had to be paid for their expenses fixing it up. The last interaction I ever had with either of them was driving the 10 year old Outback I was living in to the post office to mail each of them a $17,000 check. I never did pay off that car.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 10:34 AM on April 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
When they died (before the real estate boom) of course the inheritance (a house in rural Tennessee) had to be sold and split evenly. Afterwards my siblings of course had to be paid for their expenses fixing it up. The last interaction I ever had with either of them was driving the 10 year old Outback I was living in to the post office to mail each of them a $17,000 check. I never did pay off that car.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 10:34 AM on April 15, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'm older than the author (solidly Gen X) but I remember when I started noticing this at probably about the same age as when she did -- people who I knew for a fact were earning the same as us, but were buying beautiful historic homes, or having an ostentatiously ecological house with amazing views built from scratch. It was really puzzling until I finally figured out it was family money, because no one talked about it.
Oh God, I had that exact same experience and I remember it so well.
There was a period of years in which I thought (in a hazy unexamined way) that other people were just way financially smarter than I was. As though they had clipped coupons to afford that house, or were, like, stock market geniuses.
And then a friend let it slip that her parents had paid for her house in cash and she was paying them back with no interest. And oh by the way she also owned a condo they had bought her, which generated rental income. And the veil was lifted from my eyes.
we don't talk about this cause it's embarrassing & feels gross to discuss how much more parental help you're getting than your friends are
I get that but FWIW I felt a bit gaslit by my friends not talking about it. Like 'hello welcome to my mansion I do the exact same work you do.' It was puzzling, and it did not make me feel good. I felt better once things made sense.
posted by Susan PG at 1:14 PM on April 15, 2022 [15 favorites]
Oh God, I had that exact same experience and I remember it so well.
There was a period of years in which I thought (in a hazy unexamined way) that other people were just way financially smarter than I was. As though they had clipped coupons to afford that house, or were, like, stock market geniuses.
And then a friend let it slip that her parents had paid for her house in cash and she was paying them back with no interest. And oh by the way she also owned a condo they had bought her, which generated rental income. And the veil was lifted from my eyes.
we don't talk about this cause it's embarrassing & feels gross to discuss how much more parental help you're getting than your friends are
I get that but FWIW I felt a bit gaslit by my friends not talking about it. Like 'hello welcome to my mansion I do the exact same work you do.' It was puzzling, and it did not make me feel good. I felt better once things made sense.
posted by Susan PG at 1:14 PM on April 15, 2022 [15 favorites]
There was a period of years in which I thought (in a hazy unexamined way) that other people were just way financially smarter than I was. As though they had clipped coupons to afford that house, or were, like, stock market geniuses.
YES it was so bewildering. Because I also knew that like, I was doing everything "right" -- keeping my housing to 30% or less of my gross monthly, never carrying a balance on my credit cards, yadda yadda yadda. So that left either:
a) my coworkers are wildly irresponsible and spending 100% of their salaries on rent
b) my coworkers somehow negotiated salaries 3-4x the size of mine for the same work
c) ???? underpants gnomes ???
And it took years to learn that not only IS it underpants gnomes, but that the underpants gnomes are parents and grandparents and spouses.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:25 PM on April 15, 2022 [10 favorites]
YES it was so bewildering. Because I also knew that like, I was doing everything "right" -- keeping my housing to 30% or less of my gross monthly, never carrying a balance on my credit cards, yadda yadda yadda. So that left either:
a) my coworkers are wildly irresponsible and spending 100% of their salaries on rent
b) my coworkers somehow negotiated salaries 3-4x the size of mine for the same work
c) ???? underpants gnomes ???
And it took years to learn that not only IS it underpants gnomes, but that the underpants gnomes are parents and grandparents and spouses.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:25 PM on April 15, 2022 [10 favorites]
There was a period of years in which I thought (in a hazy unexamined way) that other people were just way financially smarter than I was. As though they had clipped coupons to afford that house, or were, like, stock market geniuses.
Exactly! It made me feel really down and like I was dumb for a while, until I figured it out from small things that people would mention. Once I caught on, then I was able to see all of the hints and clues, and also stopped feeling down about myself in comparison.
>>we don't talk about this cause it's embarrassing & feels gross to discuss how much more parental help you're getting than your friends are
>I get that but FWIW I felt a bit gaslit by my friends not talking about it. Like 'hello welcome to my mansion I do the exact same work you do.' It was puzzling, and it did not make me feel good. I felt better once things made sense.
One of the things I've appreciated in the last few years is having friends who are much more open about these things, including both those who are helping family, and those being helped by family. Treating these things like they are shameful doesn't help anyone, sort of like how keeping salaries secret only helps the company, not the workers.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:33 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Exactly! It made me feel really down and like I was dumb for a while, until I figured it out from small things that people would mention. Once I caught on, then I was able to see all of the hints and clues, and also stopped feeling down about myself in comparison.
>>we don't talk about this cause it's embarrassing & feels gross to discuss how much more parental help you're getting than your friends are
>I get that but FWIW I felt a bit gaslit by my friends not talking about it. Like 'hello welcome to my mansion I do the exact same work you do.' It was puzzling, and it did not make me feel good. I felt better once things made sense.
One of the things I've appreciated in the last few years is having friends who are much more open about these things, including both those who are helping family, and those being helped by family. Treating these things like they are shameful doesn't help anyone, sort of like how keeping salaries secret only helps the company, not the workers.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:33 PM on April 15, 2022 [3 favorites]
Natural/organic wine is certainly available in the US, and although I'm usually spending more like $15-20 a bottle there were definitely weeks during the pandemic where we went through a couple a night. I'm guessing your
cohorts are just less drunk than us.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:13 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
cohorts are just less drunk than us.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:13 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Natural wine aside, this feels like it could have been lifted from a Jane Austen novel. Marriage for economic stability, generational wealth (or lack thereof) has always been a thing.
Even Lizzy Bennet admits that she did not care for Darcy until she saw his beautiful mansion at Pemberley. Colin Firth in a wet shirt also helps. Oh wait that's not in the novel, is it?
posted by basalganglia at 5:43 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Even Lizzy Bennet admits that she did not care for Darcy until she saw his beautiful mansion at Pemberley. Colin Firth in a wet shirt also helps. Oh wait that's not in the novel, is it?
posted by basalganglia at 5:43 PM on April 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Piketty regularly cites novels as worked examples of varying life strategies in different economic regimes. It did take me longer to get through Capital, pausing to read novels. Also The Aristocats.
posted by clew at 8:53 PM on April 15, 2022
posted by clew at 8:53 PM on April 15, 2022
'Cause everybody hates a tourist · Especially one who, who thinks it's all such a laugh.
posted by Molesome at 11:14 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Molesome at 11:14 PM on April 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
When I was 30-ish I had no idea if my friends' parents owned their houses or rented. There were a few people who I knew were from old money and presumably owned theirs, but other than that: no idea.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:01 AM on April 16, 2022
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:01 AM on April 16, 2022
I get that but FWIW I felt a bit gaslit by my friends not talking about it. Like 'hello welcome to my mansion I do the exact same work you do.' It was puzzling, and it did not make me feel good. I felt better once things made sense.
that is absolutely fair, & I'm embarking on a derail here that is probably TMI & not germane to the larger organic wine discussion, so apologies in advance
realized when I said "embarrassing" that was an unconscious attempt to normalize the feeling & make it more relatable, when what I really meant was "we're both ND, have some trouble adultly functioning, have been chronically underemployed, & this ties into some deep deep personal shame we both have about having needed parental help (which we were lucky enough to have) to survive & eat & be relatively comfortable, when deep down we're convinced we're worthless garbage humans who deserved no such help & don't deserve food or nice things & should have been left for the streets, so it's fraught up in here"
anyway that's one for the ol' therapist
I'll work on being more proactive about mentioning the family help in conversations, hadn't properly considered that it might make other people feel bad in addition to confusing them slightly, & that's on me
(our place is not a mansion by any stretch but a nice 4-bedroom fills about the same position in my social circle in this housing market)
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:05 PM on April 16, 2022
that is absolutely fair, & I'm embarking on a derail here that is probably TMI & not germane to the larger organic wine discussion, so apologies in advance
realized when I said "embarrassing" that was an unconscious attempt to normalize the feeling & make it more relatable, when what I really meant was "we're both ND, have some trouble adultly functioning, have been chronically underemployed, & this ties into some deep deep personal shame we both have about having needed parental help (which we were lucky enough to have) to survive & eat & be relatively comfortable, when deep down we're convinced we're worthless garbage humans who deserved no such help & don't deserve food or nice things & should have been left for the streets, so it's fraught up in here"
anyway that's one for the ol' therapist
I'll work on being more proactive about mentioning the family help in conversations, hadn't properly considered that it might make other people feel bad in addition to confusing them slightly, & that's on me
(our place is not a mansion by any stretch but a nice 4-bedroom fills about the same position in my social circle in this housing market)
posted by taquito sunrise at 1:05 PM on April 16, 2022
I felt hoodwinked in the past few years. My parents sent me to undergrad at 17 knowing, but not really telling/explaining to me, that the loans were in my name and that I was responsible for them. I finished school a year “early” in the throes of the 2004 recession, and couldn’t find a career-job until I went back and learned a trade.
My entire life until I was 21 they had told me that (public, in-state) undergrad would be paid for, as my grandad paid for my mom’s schooling and my dad had one ride he blew and then NROTC (this was the 60s, so it wasn’t the most difficult thing to line up). Ha! Joke was on me when CFNC wanted their money and I didn’t have a job because my mother made me quit my shift manager position at Subway because…her expectations, I guess.
They never co-signed for anything. No apartments, no cars, no utilities; nothing. I remember having this crappy apartment with my now ex-husband and we couldn’t afford the deposit for natural gas, and neither set of folks would co-sign so that we could get a break. We went to Walmart and bought space heaters and slept in the living room because it was less drafty than the bedroom.
I paid my school loans off and my way through grad school (still owe about $5k out of $13k for that). I have paid for my adult vehicles (not my $2,000 high school/college beater, but I did have to sacrifice a summer program that I was invited to at a fancy college). I bought my own house at 28 when I was making $9.62 an hour as a fireman for the city. No one co-signed or gave me a down payment. Hell, it took years to rebuild my credit after my divorce, which I also paid for. Rural USDA loan. It’s a shoebox that is now worth $270,000. I can’t afford to sell it. I’ll never live anywhere else until I move into the retirement home.
My parents paid roughly $5,000 for my wedding and $500 for a washer and dryer after I got divorced because my ex-husband cleaned out the apartment while I was at work. I begged them because I didn’t make enough money to go to the laundromat and wash all of my uniforms. I *still* use that washer and dryer.
When my mom died, I had to fight with my dad to get some money she’d told me about but he wasn’t aware of - it did not go over well. It wasn’t a life-changing amount, but it was enough to help me when things went wonky in the years afterwards; I paid off a personal loan and it helped me when I lost my roof in a hurricane and my HVAC died.
I could NOT, for the life of me, understand how people around my age who were not doctors or lawyers or fancy job folks had nice cars and nice houses and went on vacations. Then it came out in my extended family that I never received any help; they all just thought I was bad with money. My cousins were all supported. My aunts and uncles all had their undergrad paid for. And I’m like “no, I’ve done everything in my life by working up to 4 jobs at a time and running a household on my own, and I still live paycheck to paycheck AND squirrel things away in retirement accounts to supplement my meager pension.”
My family is/was upper middle class; the money was there. I was just unworthy (?) of it?
TL;DR: I’m bitter that I wasn’t provided help. I am not bitter that other people receive/d help. I am glad that people aren’t/weren't in my shoes. I’m glad that my current situation doesn’t mean that I didn’t/don’t work hard enough, there are just variables that never applied to me.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 1:53 PM on April 16, 2022 [8 favorites]
My entire life until I was 21 they had told me that (public, in-state) undergrad would be paid for, as my grandad paid for my mom’s schooling and my dad had one ride he blew and then NROTC (this was the 60s, so it wasn’t the most difficult thing to line up). Ha! Joke was on me when CFNC wanted their money and I didn’t have a job because my mother made me quit my shift manager position at Subway because…her expectations, I guess.
They never co-signed for anything. No apartments, no cars, no utilities; nothing. I remember having this crappy apartment with my now ex-husband and we couldn’t afford the deposit for natural gas, and neither set of folks would co-sign so that we could get a break. We went to Walmart and bought space heaters and slept in the living room because it was less drafty than the bedroom.
I paid my school loans off and my way through grad school (still owe about $5k out of $13k for that). I have paid for my adult vehicles (not my $2,000 high school/college beater, but I did have to sacrifice a summer program that I was invited to at a fancy college). I bought my own house at 28 when I was making $9.62 an hour as a fireman for the city. No one co-signed or gave me a down payment. Hell, it took years to rebuild my credit after my divorce, which I also paid for. Rural USDA loan. It’s a shoebox that is now worth $270,000. I can’t afford to sell it. I’ll never live anywhere else until I move into the retirement home.
My parents paid roughly $5,000 for my wedding and $500 for a washer and dryer after I got divorced because my ex-husband cleaned out the apartment while I was at work. I begged them because I didn’t make enough money to go to the laundromat and wash all of my uniforms. I *still* use that washer and dryer.
When my mom died, I had to fight with my dad to get some money she’d told me about but he wasn’t aware of - it did not go over well. It wasn’t a life-changing amount, but it was enough to help me when things went wonky in the years afterwards; I paid off a personal loan and it helped me when I lost my roof in a hurricane and my HVAC died.
I could NOT, for the life of me, understand how people around my age who were not doctors or lawyers or fancy job folks had nice cars and nice houses and went on vacations. Then it came out in my extended family that I never received any help; they all just thought I was bad with money. My cousins were all supported. My aunts and uncles all had their undergrad paid for. And I’m like “no, I’ve done everything in my life by working up to 4 jobs at a time and running a household on my own, and I still live paycheck to paycheck AND squirrel things away in retirement accounts to supplement my meager pension.”
My family is/was upper middle class; the money was there. I was just unworthy (?) of it?
TL;DR: I’m bitter that I wasn’t provided help. I am not bitter that other people receive/d help. I am glad that people aren’t/weren't in my shoes. I’m glad that my current situation doesn’t mean that I didn’t/don’t work hard enough, there are just variables that never applied to me.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 1:53 PM on April 16, 2022 [8 favorites]
You can create all the inheritance taxes you want, but as long as we live in a world of scarcity, you're never going to stop people from using their wealth to give their kids a leg up over the competition.
Inherited wealth probably existed before the concept of taxes did, almost certainly before centralized governments did, and will probably exist after them, too.
If you implemented a 100% inheritance tax tomorrow (finger on monkey's paw curls), a whole lot of people would immediately devise ways of dying flat-ass broke, and shoveling all their accumulated wealth—which is merely power, represented as numbers—into untaxable assets before they die. And chasing that stuff down is a lot harder than it might seem at first glance, because you can turn economic capital into social capital pretty straightforwardly. People do it every day. You do it through contributing to organizations and directly to other people, you do it by handing out favors and expecting them back in return, you do them by investing in credentials (which is distinct from "education", although we use them interchangeably in the US). You do it by building organizations—of which legalized corporations are just one type of many—and handing over control of them. You do it by "taking care of things" for someone else. There are lots of ways. Many of them are strongly less preferable, in general, to just having people hand over cash in bank accounts. (I prefer the term "soft capital" for these things, rather than "social capital", because some of them are pretty blatantly anti-social.)
The net result of forcing the human impulse to advantage your children into the grey or black market would probably be a decrease in social mobility. Many forms of soft capital are not easily transportable, and tie people into the communities where they were born and raised. They lead to the creation and investiture of, if not exactly an aristocracy, than at least a gentry class that is tied to the land and to the local community. (And yes, I have read "American Gentry", and you should too.)
I am certainly open to arguments that tying people more firmly into their communities isn't necessarily a bad thing—we already do that somewhat in the US, in our preference for home ownership over other asset classes—but there's something intrinsically and uncomfortably Un-American about it which grinds my gears, and I think maybe for some good reasons.
It seems to me that everyone loses when we make wealth non-fungible and non-portable. Going back to a system where someone's entire social standing and identity is tied up in their hyperlocal relationships, where one has to get a letter of introduction to travel to another city or be effectively locked out of society, where people can't move to pursue opportunities... it doesn't seem super great.
We have had systems like this in the past. I have a copy of an etiquette manual somewhere—and it is not super old, probably 1920s or 30s—which covers the subtleties of writing letters of introduction, and the liabilities of writing one for someone who isn't a close relative or implicitly trusted friend. (They are considered fraught with risk because they are de facto a debt instrument against your own soft capital.)
There are many problems with our current system, but one of the benefits is that, by and large, people don't really give a shit who your parents are, in terms of going about your everyday activities. While eliminating the ability to pass cash from one generation to another might seem on the surface like a way to make people's familial connections matter less, I strongly suspect it would have the opposite effect.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:33 PM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
Inherited wealth probably existed before the concept of taxes did, almost certainly before centralized governments did, and will probably exist after them, too.
If you implemented a 100% inheritance tax tomorrow (finger on monkey's paw curls), a whole lot of people would immediately devise ways of dying flat-ass broke, and shoveling all their accumulated wealth—which is merely power, represented as numbers—into untaxable assets before they die. And chasing that stuff down is a lot harder than it might seem at first glance, because you can turn economic capital into social capital pretty straightforwardly. People do it every day. You do it through contributing to organizations and directly to other people, you do it by handing out favors and expecting them back in return, you do them by investing in credentials (which is distinct from "education", although we use them interchangeably in the US). You do it by building organizations—of which legalized corporations are just one type of many—and handing over control of them. You do it by "taking care of things" for someone else. There are lots of ways. Many of them are strongly less preferable, in general, to just having people hand over cash in bank accounts. (I prefer the term "soft capital" for these things, rather than "social capital", because some of them are pretty blatantly anti-social.)
The net result of forcing the human impulse to advantage your children into the grey or black market would probably be a decrease in social mobility. Many forms of soft capital are not easily transportable, and tie people into the communities where they were born and raised. They lead to the creation and investiture of, if not exactly an aristocracy, than at least a gentry class that is tied to the land and to the local community. (And yes, I have read "American Gentry", and you should too.)
I am certainly open to arguments that tying people more firmly into their communities isn't necessarily a bad thing—we already do that somewhat in the US, in our preference for home ownership over other asset classes—but there's something intrinsically and uncomfortably Un-American about it which grinds my gears, and I think maybe for some good reasons.
It seems to me that everyone loses when we make wealth non-fungible and non-portable. Going back to a system where someone's entire social standing and identity is tied up in their hyperlocal relationships, where one has to get a letter of introduction to travel to another city or be effectively locked out of society, where people can't move to pursue opportunities... it doesn't seem super great.
We have had systems like this in the past. I have a copy of an etiquette manual somewhere—and it is not super old, probably 1920s or 30s—which covers the subtleties of writing letters of introduction, and the liabilities of writing one for someone who isn't a close relative or implicitly trusted friend. (They are considered fraught with risk because they are de facto a debt instrument against your own soft capital.)
There are many problems with our current system, but one of the benefits is that, by and large, people don't really give a shit who your parents are, in terms of going about your everyday activities. While eliminating the ability to pass cash from one generation to another might seem on the surface like a way to make people's familial connections matter less, I strongly suspect it would have the opposite effect.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:33 PM on April 16, 2022 [3 favorites]
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Maybe I am out of touch, but at one time in Canada's history this was a very middle class thing.. quite a few young people would receive assistance from parents on the purchase of a new home. Going back to my own parents, it was pretty much a zero-interest loan with generous terms/timeline for repayment, but not uncommon to be an outright transfer of funds, no strings attached.
Things have changed a lot. The idea that a person's parents offering a non-negligible sum of money to help get started really should not be an indicator of a higher wealth bracket, I think it should be the norm.
posted by elkevelvet at 9:37 AM on April 14, 2022 [24 favorites]