“billionaire” has turned into a derogatory term
July 25, 2018 6:37 AM   Subscribe

It is disturbing to see the vocabulary of survival becoming plausibly accessible to the rich. (New Yorker)

Jia Tolentino connects 3 contentious articles (A Refinery29 "Money Diaries" about a "#blessed" 21-year old NY-er, a Forbes feature on Kylie Jenner's path to becoming a "self-made" billionaire, and a NYT article on 2 newcomers who "wanted the full New York City experience") in a discussion about privilege, racism, and outrage-bait.

"What this all added up to was a grim vision of our current situation, in which popular narratives around wealth acquisition have become so convoluted and self-delusional that Elon Musk recently tweeted that the word “billionaire” has turned into a derogatory term.... The problem is not that rich girls are spared educational debt or that they become lip-kit tycoons or that they choose to pay nearly four grand for a two-bedroom apartment in midtown. The problem is that these financial privileges are shrouded in such heavy dissembling, in an instinctive denial of what American wealth really is and what it really means."
posted by devrim (81 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- frimble



 
This is ... a very strange and rambling article. Count me as someone who thinks that, in fact, the allocation of goods and services is the problem, not the degree of "dissembling" or "denial" surrounding it.
posted by enn at 6:52 AM on July 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


"Billionare" is derogatory? How about we just call them "fat cats" instead?
posted by SansPoint at 6:57 AM on July 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


Gilt guilt.
posted by rokusan at 6:59 AM on July 25, 2018 [24 favorites]


Well, Jia Tolentino can't offend the New Yorker's audience, most of whom are well-off, with too much frank speaking.

I don't think "the problem" is that there is so much dissembling; I think that's a symptom. Actually, I think it's a good symptom, although these are early days. Let them be ashamed of their wealth, let them try and convince us that Kylie Jenner is in some sense "self-made". They do this because they are starting to be afraid, correctly so.

The only illegal strike is the strike you lose, as the fellow said.
posted by Frowner at 7:03 AM on July 25, 2018 [55 favorites]


It’s easy to imagine Refinery29’s Money Diarist, decades into the future, reminiscing about her early twenties, when she had a shitty internship and a weekly coffee budget, telling her kids about the years when she was broke.

Recall Ann Romney's stories of their difficult early years, selling stock to scrape by. Ridiculous, but this is how we all deal with privilege -- using our struggles as a shield against the truth that being prosperous in the United States has more to do with luck of birth than individual merit. That's always been somewhat true, but the aggressive decline of social mobility in recent years might've made people less tolerant of this nonsense. And...honestly, good. If we're not going to tax their wealth properly, rich people should be embarrassed until they give all their money away or flee back to their bunkers.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:04 AM on July 25, 2018 [31 favorites]


Class conflict is real.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 7:07 AM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


But our current political system is stacked so firmly in favor of those who wish to keep things this way that we have found ourselves, as usual, litigating these issues in discourse rather than in policy.

So stop being mean to rich people by, ummm, describing them accurately, because everyone knows the US is designed to be that way and you'll just allow them to moan about it?

Or maybe just "Suck it up, plebs"?

A conversation about generational wealth in America is, of course, a conversation about whiteness.

Yeah, not an expert here, but I think it's a conversation that necessarily includes a conversation about whiteness, but the massive increase in wealth disparity (..and regulatory capture and the ascendant plutocracy) in the last couple of decades is a new phenomenon with new effects. The aspect of race seems, to me at least, to have been reduced since, say the late 20th century.
posted by pompomtom at 7:10 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


For once I appreciated the New York Times paywall as I hit my free article limit and just clicking through to the "full New York City experience" article and reading the lead made my blood boil. I'm pretty sure I'd require some heavy drinking to quench my rage if I actually read the whole thing.
posted by Soi-hah at 7:13 AM on July 25, 2018


My former job the the CEO got a $13 million dollar BONUS for "cost cutting measures." In corporate speak, that means layoffs. A lot of layoffs. When people were critical of this, the VP in charge of my group said, without irony, "I'm fucking getting tired of this war on the rich."
posted by cjorgensen at 7:17 AM on July 25, 2018 [52 favorites]


My former job the the CEO got a $13 million dollar BONUS for "cost cutting measures." In corporate speak, that means layoffs. A lot of layoffs. When people were critical of this, the VP in charge of my group said, without irony, "I'm fucking getting tired of this war on the rich."

Ugh. VPs seem to say the worst things because they are the rare rich who still interact with regular people (without having to pretend to care about them like politicians or celebrities). I imagine most rich people are just Lucille Bluthing it up in private, though.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:21 AM on July 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


My former job the the CEO got a $13 million dollar BONUS for "cost cutting measures." In corporate speak, that means layoffs. A lot of layoffs.

I have 15 years of experience working as an EA in the finance industry. The last time I was job hunting (about 2 years back) I'm certain that it hurt my search when I told any recruiters "no finance jobs, please."

This kind of bullshit is one of the reasons why I have that "no finance jobs" line in the sand. (It is also one of the reasons why I was job hunting in the first place.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:22 AM on July 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


SansPoint: ""Billionare" is derogatory? How about we just call them "fat cats" instead?"

Robber Baron still works for me.
posted by octothorpe at 7:23 AM on July 25, 2018 [35 favorites]


"I'm fucking getting tired of this war on the rich."

Jaysus... what did they say after you threw the petrol bomb?
posted by pompomtom at 7:24 AM on July 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


The conclusion, once it gets there, is probably right: financial precarity is trickling up. What else can happen when you allow wealth to gather, unchecked, in so few pockets?

That said, the wealthy acting as if they come from humble means (and maybe even believing it) has been going on forever. I could write a list a mile long, but one of the first memories I have from college is a dormmate bemoaning the price of a pair of jeans he just had to have, and what a burden ($150; I don't think everything in my closet cost $150, at the time). (I just looked him up; he faffed about for ten years, then went to law school and immediately started working for one of the very-top law firms.)
posted by uncleozzy at 7:28 AM on July 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


"Billionare" is derogatory? How about we just call them "fat cats" instead?

Don't shame cats, they don't deserve to be lumped in with these assholes.
posted by Fizz at 7:35 AM on July 25, 2018 [29 favorites]


...what did they say after you threw the petrol bomb?

Thanked you for being a GasCo customer, and asked if you had a GasCo loyalty card?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:38 AM on July 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


"The aspect of race seems, to me at least, to have been reduced since, say the late 20th century."

...no, it absolutely has not.
posted by Ashen at 7:41 AM on July 25, 2018 [22 favorites]


How about we just call them "fat cats" instead?

Don't shame cats, they don't deserve to be lumped in with these assholes.


No, no, don't fat shame cats. They have plenty else to be ashamed of. I'm looking at you, Mr. Wiffles. Don't pretend you don't know.
posted by The Bellman at 7:47 AM on July 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


Count me as someone who thinks that, in fact, the allocation of goods and services is the problem, not the degree of "dissembling" or "denial" surrounding it.
I think one significantly exacerbates the other, and fixing one could help us fix the other in meaningful ways.

But just... ugh.
posted by Fish Sauce at 7:51 AM on July 25, 2018


The rhetoric of bootsrapping is the soundtrack to years of chipping away at social services in this country, so it's worth at least being suspicious of it.
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:00 AM on July 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


Dear mods,
Look, I'm calm today. I promise, I will not advocate violence against wealthy people today. I've learned my lesson and now I'm better.
Please do not harm the clueless wealthy people mefi friends. It would be bad, very bad, and we would have to put you in a time out.
Also, if they voluntarily choose to redistribute the trappings of wealth, late some evening, perhaps while they're out of town and you decided to help, and during your volunteering you tripped and fell and dropped your molotov... errr... candle, and their entire estate burned to the ground, well accidents happen. Who could possibly blame you?

Also, socialism, it's your best entertainment dollar.
posted by evilDoug at 8:20 AM on July 25, 2018 [16 favorites]


Elon Musk recently tweeted that the word “billionaire” has turned into a derogatory term

What a fucking whiner. Yeah, life’s unfair, man.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:24 AM on July 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


Is it me, or do wealthy people always describe themselves as "middle class"?
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:26 AM on July 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


Is it me, or do wealthy people always describe themselves as "middle class"?

To be fair, that's how their accountants make it look on their tax return.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:37 AM on July 25, 2018 [27 favorites]


I've said this before. I'll say it again. Nothing increases enthusiasm for radical socialism better than spending time around people with money.
posted by kevinbelt at 8:45 AM on July 25, 2018 [28 favorites]


Or, as they say, if you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.
posted by mmiddle at 8:48 AM on July 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


My first girlfriend used to say that her family was “solidly middle class,” which was definitely not the case. She’d gone to private school her whole life, and everyone she knew was wealthy, so in her mind she could think of plenty of people who had much more than she did. I would be like, my family has way less than you, so what does that make me?

Haha, and I just remembered that the answer came a couple years later when she studied abroad in Africa. She was like “I went to the countryside and stayed on a simple cot in a shack with a dirt floor, and got up at dawn to feed chickens and goats, and we had to carry water from a well - I have so much more respect for what you grew up with in the country!” And I was like “I think you got the wrong impression...”
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:51 AM on July 25, 2018 [38 favorites]


Elon and Notch should get DNA tested to see if they're siblings.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:07 AM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


It seems ironic that I had to open this article in a different browser in order to defeat the paywall, because I let my New Yorker subscription lapse because I couldn't afford the $100 a year to renew my subscription after the trial period was over.
posted by Automocar at 9:22 AM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


I think that fear of falling is a pervasive part of being/considering yourself middle-class, even if you're so upper-middle-class that everybody below you is pretty sure that if you fall it'll be onto a nice soft feather bed.
posted by clawsoon at 9:37 AM on July 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


“We are all ‘self-made.’ What, because we came from a family that has had success? To me, that doesn’t really make sense”
*something something starting on third base and thinking they hit a triple.*

popular narratives around wealth acquisition have become so convoluted and self-delusional that Elon Musk recently tweeted that the word “billionaire” has turned into a derogatory term.
Aw, fuck off. I doubt that there's any billionaire that didn't profit from exploiting workers or consumers or receiving generous tax cuts or government subsidies, while fighting to keep every cent they have away from the public good.

People are starting to realize this kind of obscene wealth that isn't even imaginable* to the common people is not achieved through ethical means, at a time people around the world are complaining about austerity cuts, disinvestment on public-owned utilities or having no healthcare or any sort of because "there's no money". If having the sads because people are mocking your aluminium kiddie coffin is the worst you've felt this year, congratulations, around 99.9% of people in the world had a worse year, you fucking prick.

*I was doing a thing where I considered what kind of percentage of net worth from the Musks and Bezos I needed to do the shit I've been dreaming professionally for the past 10 years or so. It was something in the millionths (or the thousandths because I keep forgetting what exactly "a billion" is in these terms). This really broke my brain for the day.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:42 AM on July 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


I think a lot of (white, upper middle class) families are going to be shocked when their expected inheritance is much smaller than expected because the older generation are leveraged to the hilt.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:43 AM on July 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


if you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.

Also: "Money is how people with no talent keep score."
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:44 AM on July 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Billionaire should be a derogatory term. A healthy society would correctly view this level of avarice and inequality as morally outrageous and respond with condemnation at all levels. That we elevate these people to superhero status while feeling their boots on our necks just shows how much we've internalized our own dehumanization.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 9:47 AM on July 25, 2018 [80 favorites]


I don't think "the problem" is that there is so much dissembling; I think that's a symptom.

I think actually it is a problem, and the problem is because it allows people to say things like 'the 99%' when they are the top 2% but by god at least they're not the top 1%! It's this weird thing that does make it hard to differentiate and gets you into enormous fights - like someone I once knew who insisted she was working class despite her parents having a second house in the Hamptons and having heavily subsidized her first two apartments. And that woman was absolutely all 'I want to be involved in the solutions to these problems'.
posted by corb at 9:57 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've been listening to The Coup a lot lately on this topic: Fat Cats, Bigga Fish

I think a lot of (white, upper middle class) families are going to be shocked when their expected inheritance is much smaller than expected because the older generation are leveraged to the hilt.

We're watching this play out in real time. An illness in the family has us looking at wills and inheritance, and the in-laws are fully leveraged on some extremely questionable property purchases. The person who is in position to inherit sole control of all assets has already said they plan to buy a boat, a new truck, and such, despite the fact the ill person has expressed a desire to fund college for her grandkids. It's clear that isn't going to happen, and that any expected inheritance is probably going to be spent foolishly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We need to reinvest in our society, and part of that has to be significant inheritance taxes. Billionaires exist because they extract that wealth from society at large, and it's time to redistribute that wealth.
posted by Existential Dread at 10:01 AM on July 25, 2018 [9 favorites]


The person who is in position to inherit sole control of all assets has already said they plan to buy a boat, a new truck, and such, despite the fact the ill person has expressed a desire to fund college for her grandkids.

This is basically exactly what trusts are for, to skip assholes splurging while their kids suffer.
posted by corb at 10:05 AM on July 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


I mean if they don't like being called 'billionaire' so much I can think of one very easy way they could rid themselves of that definition
posted by nogoodverybad at 10:08 AM on July 25, 2018 [22 favorites]


"I was doing a thing where I considered what kind of percentage of net worth from the Musks and Bezos I needed to do the shit I've been dreaming professionally for the past 10 years or so"

So, just for fun, I just did some calculations. How much cash would it take to live fairly luxuriously for the rest of my life, if I never earned another dime? Budgeting for three houses (you know, one for the beach, and a ski chalet or something) at $1m apiece, college funds ($100k/year for four years, five hypothetical kids [I only have one currently]), trust funds for those largely hypothetical kids ($250k each), new cars for me and my wife every five years ($50k each), and $250k a year of walking around money for 50 years, all that comes out to less than $20 million. Or, to put it as a fraction of Jeff Bezos's net worth, 0.14%. That's something to think about, huh? You could easily cut that in half, or less, and still live quite comfortably.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:22 AM on July 25, 2018 [14 favorites]


Is it me, or do wealthy people always describe themselves as "middle class"?

About 2 percent of people describe themselves as "upper class."

Some people suggest that's because given the shape of the income distribution - the percentage increase in income grows with each percentile - there's always sharper contrast when you look up than when you look down. So those in-house lawyers are jealous of the VPs, but don't see as much of a difference between them and the salesforce. And the VPs know they are somewhat better off then the lawyers, but they know there's a huge gap between them and the senior VPs, etc.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:24 AM on July 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


Hey if anyone has contacts would you IM each of their personal assistants to remind the billionaires that "EAT the RICH" is actually a metaphor, I mean really, the quantity of them wouldn't sufficient and even with hot sauce they'd be nasty-nasty-foul tasting if not seriously toxic.
posted by sammyo at 10:26 AM on July 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


I think actually it is a problem, and the problem is because it allows people to say things like 'the 99%' when they are the top 2% but by god at least they're not the top 1%! It's this weird thing that does make it hard to differentiate and gets you into enormous fights - like someone I once knew who insisted she was working class despite her parents having a second house in the Hamptons and having heavily subsidized her first two apartments. And that woman was absolutely all 'I want to be involved in the solutions to these problems'.

The thing is, though, is that the top .00001% are the issue. The difference between being in the top 2% and the top .00001% is actually enormous. You really and truly are still working class even if you are a professional in a high-paying field like law, because you still earn your money from wages and not from the return on capital. If a very-well-off-but-still-working-class person wants to be involved, GOOD.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 10:32 AM on July 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


Even if someone had managed to become a billionaire through exploiting no one, it'd still be amoral to be a billionaire.

Simply put, our morals don't permit someone to have gross excess while others go without. We can argue over how much is "enough," or how we should expropriate that wealth, but quite simply, owning over $1 billion is clearly wrong. In our guts, we understand that one person sitting on a throne of canned goods next to someone else who's impoverished and hungry is just wrong.

The numbers have become so enormous and difficult to comprehend that we don't understand just how incredibly rich these folks are.
posted by explosion at 10:39 AM on July 25, 2018 [27 favorites]


Eat.
The.
Rich.
posted by Splunge at 10:48 AM on July 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Of course it's a slur to be a billionaire: you're sitting on a huge pile of assets that could literally change the lives of everyone around you who is homeless, or running a GoFundMe for their medical bills, or trying to decide between heat and food, or how they're going to get to work, or whatever other horrible decisions they have to make to try to survive. You're not being shamed for having accomplished whatever it is you think you've accomplished. You're being shamed for being able to make a huge difference and choosing not to, because you just don't feel like it.
posted by bile and syntax at 10:57 AM on July 25, 2018 [31 favorites]


But you guys don't understand, they're job creators!

Fuck billionaires.
posted by graventy at 11:00 AM on July 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


You really and truly are still working class even if you are a professional in a high-paying field like law, because you still earn your money from wages and not from the return on capital.
No. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, to a lesser extent business owners, other "professionals" are the middle class. That's what the middle class is: the professional class. Even your VP of whatever still makes a ton of money from wages; that alone wouldn't make them working class. You're right that it's not just about income level, it is also about where that money comes from (and other stuff, but not relevant to this discussion), but it's not as broad as "wages vs. capital." Working class people are, like, crane operators and stuff who often make pretty decent money but still do blue collar work. People who are poor are just poor.

If the middle class truly does develop some awareness, fine, but a lot of their behaviour and attitudes are dumb as shit, and are making things worse, not better. It is very important to change how we discuss these things because the language we use shapes our thinking, and our thoughts shape our actions. Right now it's fairly clear that the middle class, especially the upper middle class, is using the language of the actual poor and working class to prop up a system that hurts them, but that hurts them less than it hurts everybody use. They aren't the people pulling the ladder up behind them, but they are the people kicking the rest of us in the teeth while they try to grab the bottom rung before it vanishes.
posted by Fish Sauce at 11:01 AM on July 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


So if you got a dollar in your pocket, put your hands in the air
Ten dollars in your pocket, put your hands in the air
If it’s a hundred or a thousand that’s fair
But there’s no such thing as an innocent millionaire ...

That dollar in your pocket is an insult
Ten dollars in your pocket ain’t enough
The reason that so many of us are have-nots,
is that the haves have way too much
Let’s get ‘em


- Guante, "You Say Millionaire Like It's a Good Thing (prod. Ganzobean)" from the album A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry
posted by elmer benson at 11:15 AM on July 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


I think the advent of cheap consumer credit has done a lot to mask class differences. I'm "rich" I guess, but I don't feel guilty, because I don't have a fancy house/boat/RV/grad degree/new car. I don't have those things because I pay cash for everything and know exactly how much I'd be forgoing in investment income and retirement savings if I bought them. Meanwhile, tons of people who I see every day do have those things -- but they presumably bought them on credit, and aren't saving much of anything. It's pretty easy to be rich and not feel rich, when everyone around you is in debt up to their eyeballs.
posted by miyabo at 11:19 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Kittystardust: I’m 26, work min. wage, and at my workplace, I am surrounded by people in similar circumstances. On the regular I hear them kissing the ass of some “great man” or another. In perhaps not as succinct a way, I have tried to explain to them exactly what you’ve just said. Thanks for putting it in finer terms.
posted by constantinescharity at 11:24 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't have those things because I pay cash for everything and know exactly how much I'd be forgoing in investment income and retirement savings if I bought them.

I mean, by many reasonable standards you'd be "rich" anyway? Because plenty of people who don't have "a fancy house/boat/RV/grad degree/new car" would also consider the ability to pursue anything approaching "investment income" or "retirement savings" to be a ridiculous dream. Whether "guilt" is an appropriate reaction to that or not depends on one's point of view.

It's also worth remembering that being able to afford certain things via credit doesn't necessarily mean that paying cash would somehow make it possible to save for retirement. The two categories of credit and income are not fungible, and forgoing credit doesn't increase income. Millennials wouldn't suddenly be able to afford starter homes just by giving up avocado toast, &c, &c.
posted by halation at 11:28 AM on July 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


I think a lot of (white, upper middle class) families are going to be shocked when their expected inheritance is much smaller than expected because the older generation are leveraged to the hilt.
I'm a "baby boomer" who had now-departed "greatest generation" parents and that already happened to me. But then I've been ahead of the curve on a lot of things.

And one of the truest quotes ever re-quoted was Honore de Balzac's "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:31 AM on July 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


Count me as someone who thinks that, in fact, the allocation of goods and services is the problem, not the degree of "dissembling" or "denial" surrounding it.
Why not both, as the walrus did not say to the carpenter?
posted by clew at 11:33 AM on July 25, 2018


""Billionare" is derogatory? How about we just call them "fat cats" instead?"

I rather call them psychopaths. It's almost impossible to generate that kind of insane wealth and power without fucking people over and skirting, bending and (quite likely) breaking laws.
posted by bawanaal at 11:35 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I was spandex-riding my bike the other day, angry as usual, using the hills to beat my antipathy into submission, and the thought occurred to me: trying to pay less taxes should be seen as unpatriotic.
posted by rhizome at 11:38 AM on July 25, 2018 [11 favorites]


New related documentary out now: Generation Wealth (previously)
posted by armacy at 11:46 AM on July 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Lawyers, doctors, engineers, to a lesser extent business owners, other "professionals" are the middle class. That's what the middle class is: the professional class. Even your VP of whatever still makes a ton of money from wages; that alone wouldn't make them working class

This reminds me of the excellent discussion of meritocracy/social mobility in this episode of The Bruenigs podcast.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 11:50 AM on July 25, 2018


Read this once:

You're lower class if you think class is about how much money you have.

You're middle class if you think class is about how much education you have.

You're upper class if you think class is about how much taste you have.
posted by clawsoon at 11:51 AM on July 25, 2018 [15 favorites]


I mean, by many reasonable standards you'd be "rich" anyway?

Oh absolutely. The rich are still the rich. But as long as middle-class people can spend tons of borrowed money, the rich people perceive that the middle-class people are living pretty decent lifestyles and don't feel much of a need to help them through government or nonprofits. But in reality most of the middle-class people are deeply in debt and will pay for it later (especially in retirement).
posted by miyabo at 11:58 AM on July 25, 2018


You're upper class if you think class is about how much taste you have.

Such a ridiculous, self-serving way for the rich to look at things. I have good taste, can I be a billionaire now? Just send the check in the mail, thanks!
posted by Green Winnebago at 12:14 PM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


You're being shamed for being able to make a huge difference and choosing not to, because you just don't feel like it.
There's also those that have their own philanthropist endeavours, where they make set out to make a "huge difference", but on their own terms, regardless of expert input and how useful they actually are to society vs. actually paying their taxes and not being an exploitative piece of shit.


(also, I bungled my calculations because I can't code for shit, but 0.05% of a Bezos would still allow me to do that stuff, and that thousandth I miscalculated would still be a life-changer)
posted by lmfsilva at 12:15 PM on July 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


the rich people perceive that the middle-class people are living pretty decent lifestyles and don't feel much of a need to help them through government or nonprofits

But like, they do? I mean, lots of government assistance goes to this segment of the populace (the professional, meritocratic middle class). Mortgage tax breaks & incentives, school districting & funding, higher education access, tax breaks on retirement accounts & investments, infrastructure investment, business incentives, not to mention less direct forms of government intervention that this group financially benefits from like labor laws, financial regulations, inheritance taxes (lack thereof), zoning, the legal system, voter suppression etc etc.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 12:26 PM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


There's also those that have their own philanthropist endeavours, where they make set out to make a "huge difference", but on their own terms, regardless of expert input and how useful they actually are to society vs. actually paying their taxes and not being an exploitative piece of shit.

This is entirely true, and makes me think of how much the Gates Foundation could do to make sure everyone in, say, the Seattle area eats every day and has a roof over their head. Having boatloads of cash probably makes this abstract to people, where for me I work in the disability field and see way too many folks who are homeless, hungry, and lacking in services while luxury condos go up in what used to be their neighborhoods and they get kicked out of the coffee shops they used to hang out at.
posted by bile and syntax at 1:50 PM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


You're upper class if you think class is about how much taste you have.

Ahh, I see you've read David Brooks.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:54 PM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Ahh, I see you've read David Brooks.

I think it might've been Paul Fussell.
posted by clawsoon at 2:40 PM on July 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


If we're going to keep escalating inequality as we've been doing in the US and other nations since circa 1980 (as per Piketty, Saez et al), we're going to see these kinds of stories.

The prosperity gospel is a recent cultural formation that tries to acculturate inequality. Divine sanction for the elite is one of the oldest stories, but p.g. gives it some fun new glosses.

Just behind that we have another mythos, one not too well understood in the 21st century. See, too much of American culture was shaped by the mid-20th-century's unusually low inequality levels. Think about, say, the foundation of Boomers, or the modern higher ed settlement (federal financial aid, massive community college expansion, turning normal schools into 4-year bacs, etc.). So while the world has moved on into a new Gilded Age, we're chafing against that inheritance.

Layered under that is the early 20th century Horatio Alger bootstraps myth, which still persists, although not as broadly as it once did.
posted by doctornemo at 3:28 PM on July 25, 2018 [10 favorites]


Fuck billionaires.

Only if they give me a large amount of cash up front, such that I can pay of my student loans, pay off my medical bills, and buy a house. And even then I'll want to wear a strap-on and a hazmat suit.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:35 PM on July 25, 2018


To slightly misquote a character on The Expanse, "I wouldn't rub up against those narcissistic assholes with your junk."
posted by Lexica at 8:01 PM on July 25, 2018


OK so here's me with some privilege. And here's what kind - I live abroad. In tropical SEA places lately, but also in China. I'm paying $7 a night for clean sheets and a private room and air conditioning in downtown at a two star hotel. I'm paying $1.50 for the best dang fried chicken and rice you've ever heard of. I'm paying $2 for motorcycle taxis across town and $8 for Ventolin.

Often I ask myself who I'm exploiting. It's a fair question, the easy answer is third world labor, but I talk to these guys and nah, they don't feel exploited by me. They say I'm paying the fair price and wtf, Indonesia is cheap, they can get by easy on $300 a month, that can feed a family of four here. That sets me thinking, why can't it in the USA?

These people aren't starving, they have free basic healthcare, and rather than call the balance of Jakarta's population "lazy", I'll say that they're taken care of at a level above starvation and a good chunk of them don't see the need to expend effort where it won't be effective in greatly improving their or their family's lot in life. Also make no mistake, in this deeply corrupt country, incomes are taxed, but rice subsidies, gasoline subsidies, and electricity subsidies are often the deciding issue in elections. An extra $15 a month matters when you're 6 to a three room house and grandma remembers starving and the kids can't find jobs to move out but you're making payments on an air conditioner and no one is starving NOW and you all can finally afford smartphones. You don't mess with that vote.

So here I am, and I'm asking myself who I'm exploiting, and the answer I find again and again is that it's the voters I meet every day who aren't gonna tolerate corruption that makes people starve again. Even I, the "rich" American tourist, can survive on $300 a month if I eat and live "local", which is a room in a guesthouse downtown (laundry and unlimited electricity/water and private bathroom/hot shower included) and street food (aforementioned chicken and rice). I am in a country where I can survive on $300 a month, no qualifications except my passport needed, yes the food is safe, because politicians, i.e. corrupt billionaires, don't dare say "fend for yourself". How many Americans would take that offer? Hint, many do, and are here long-term.

Where are you, America?
posted by saysthis at 9:08 AM on July 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


Such a ridiculous, self-serving way for the rich to look at things. I have good taste, can I be a billionaire now?

This is where I think America honestly suffers from its unwillingness to take hard looks at class and wealth, because it kind of conflates the two in a way that Europe, for all its other faults, does not, which makes them hard to deal with as problems. You're always trying to tease apart the two and solve them together, and that just plain doesn't make sense.

Trump is not upper class. Trump is immensely wealthy, and exploitive, but he is not upper class no matter how much he would like to be. And the problem of Trump and of people at that level of wealth is not whether or not other people in society accept him to that society. That feeds no one, helps no one. The problem is him exploiting and ruining people for a little more filthy lucre.

Similarly, the impoverished ex-aristocracy of dozens of nations are not now wealthy, no matter how much they wish they were, and it actually doesn't hurt anyone for them to say 'we were nobles once' and to try to hide the fact they do any physical labor and still do the hobbies they once did and try to dress as they once did.
posted by corb at 9:15 AM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


The folks who own stores that sell goods millionaires buy don't feel exploited, either. They feel patronized and are happy the millionaires exist. Cheap tourism is just this, writ small.

But that said, it's a tragedy of the commons situation. Imagine instead of a handful of American "expats" living in a town, suddenly the population is 50%. The town's economy warps around serving the money, much as Seattle has warped around Amazon and Microsoft. Prices increase and those $2 motorcycle taxis become $5 or $10. Still affordable for the "expats," but not so for natives.

Who is exploited? Not necessarily the folks directly earning your dollars now, but the people who have suffered to allow you the privilege to amass that wealth in the first place. In a very real sense, even suffering middle- or lower-class Americans are exploiting (indirectly) even more-suffering third-world citizens. There's only so much we can do to rectify the situation, at least directly.

However, "who am I hurting right now?" is the wrong question, because yeah, you're not hurting anyone currently. You're living off of the benefits of past suffering.
posted by explosion at 9:28 AM on July 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


Trump is not upper class.
LOL. Yes he is. You think there is some cabal of people that once you achieve 'upper class' that you all become best friends like My Little Pony? Fine, he's not English upper class, because we don't have those titles in the US. But he's US upper class. How could anyone argue he's not? He's the president of the US. There are no people in the world more powerful, and all those titles in the English class system were conveyances of power and wealth, relative to one another. Trump is at the top of those! The title of President most assuredly trumps 'archduke'; probably even 'king'.

The problem with class in the US is we imagine it is not heavily tied to wealth thinking up edge cases like "plumber earns more money than college professor", which #1 no it does not over a career in general and #2 the customer service expectations and working conditions are completely discounted and that we consider the job of 'plumbing business owner' equivalent to 'employee career plumber', which is yet more proof that the US is not based on vague approximations of power and influence, but rather vague understandings about how much money someone has.

Fine, I don't pretend to know Trump and can't psychoanalyze him so maybe he does just want to be accepted as a member of the 'genteel' upper class, but it seems to me that they have already completely accepted him. I guess for all their class and understated power, they still cower to the President.

In short, 'billionaire' wouldn't be a derogatory term if they didn't all behave exactly the same as Trump.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:23 AM on July 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


Trump is not part of the upper class insider's circle. He might be closer than the average lottery winner, or even self-made people, but he's not part of it.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:56 AM on July 26, 2018


I'd argue that even before becoming president, Trump is upper class, but he's a crass, vulgar second generation nouveau riche as opposed to what we traditionally consider "upper class", the old-money aristocrats who are six or seven or more generations deep born into obscene wealth. I think someone here defined Trump as "a poor persons' idea of a rich person", which sound about right. He isn't going to be invited for a low-key party in Connecticut or whatever where every fuck had a relative on the Mayflower, and those people likely won't be coming to a party at his gilded penthouse without a ulterior motive, either.

Not that it makes any difference. The political outcome desired by the nouveau riche and the old-moneys is more or less the same: maintain the status quo and push back against any attempt to reduce their power.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:03 PM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


Fine, I don't pretend to know Trump and can't psychoanalyze him so maybe he does just want to be accepted as a member of the 'genteel' upper class, but it seems to me that they have already completely accepted him.

Eh, he's always been kinda gauche, and nobody in the US loans him any more money. Everyone who thought they might talk sense into him as an industry advisor has bailed, and people aren't exactly falling over themselves to serve in his cabinet.

But maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. Perhaps he's simply a member of the Soviet bloc upper class?
posted by pwnguin at 12:05 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Trump is New Money, through and through. His kids are New Money. Their kids' kids will be New Money. Because Donald was not able to be a success with whatever American-generated money he originally had, he resents his failure, his having to go to worse and worse sources of money, reduced to calling himself a real estate mogul while only ever licensing his name.

They will never think to take a step back and build some (see able) class. They are Russian Oligarch style rich people, two steps away from tracksuits in the Gold Room.
posted by rhizome at 4:19 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Trump is tacky as hell, but I think the stuff about that being why he is unwelcome in elite circles is overblown. It's very possible that his narcissism is now so advanced that he is only pleased with his reception when crowds roar his name...but when he was younger, I don't think the welcome would've been a problem if he were as rich as he pretended to be. The most hilarious/horrifying revelation of the campaign season was that Trump didn't even manage to meet the barest pretense of charitable giving that other rich people do -- he created a charity and used it to pay for his son's $7 Boy Scouts membership! How many charity events did he gatecrash because he was too cheap to pay the donation for entering? How many times did he find himself surrounded by rich people, brag about his own wealth, and then immediately hit them up for money to invest in one of his terrible ventures?

Trump is a buffoon, but there are plenty of upper class buffoons. There are plenty of tacky people in the upper class, too -- though it helps if you have such a monopoly on tastemaking that no one will call you on it for 20 years. My personal take is that the circles that snubbed Trump did so because they thought he had nothing to offer them. It's funny, because...oh God, they were wrong.
posted by grandiloquiet at 6:28 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


You're lower class if you want to eat the rich.

You're middle class if you merely want to guillotine them.

You're upper class if you want to guillotine yourself, freeze the head, and save it for after the singularity.
posted by chortly at 10:13 PM on July 29, 2018 [6 favorites]


I have been reliably informed by learned colleagues that it is actually terrible praxis to eat the rich.
Apparently, due to their apex position on the food chain, they are a risk of heavy metal poisoning if consumed.
It is integral, I am told, that the rich are instead comprehensively composted and slowly added back to the soil out of which crops may then be nurtured.

I have heard that capital is just dead labour so that would appear to hold up.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 3:00 AM on July 30, 2018 [3 favorites]




Trump eats steak well done with ketchup. He may be upper class, but he has no class.
posted by ambulocetus at 5:03 PM on August 13, 2018


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