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[Dunamisdeos]

I hadn't finished it, but I suspected that tone was prevalent throughout when he claimed he is part of a proud meritocracy that earned what they have not like those 1% and he was certainly not born into money right after describing the way he grew up at the country club and that his family's financial rivals were named Rockefeller.

He still makes a number of points that are interesting.

[Kagus]

I thought that was kind of the idea, showing off the delusions the 9.9% have about them being in the 9.9% or not. That he had become aware just how much denial he actually practiced, just like the rest, and was now demonstrating how easy it is to fall into the same pattern.

[Reelya]

Also, some of the reasons for stratification might not be palatable to writers like himself.

e.g. there's a concept "assortive mating". What this means is that "like marries like". e.g. in the current era when women can be, and in fact often are, lawyers and doctors, the "well-behaved, flannel-suited crowd of lawyers, doctors, dentists, mid-level investment bankers" are made up of men and women who often marry someone from that same class. But for every double-high-income family, that makes it more likely there's also going to be a "double-low-income" family, e.g. mothers wanting their daughter to marry a doctor - for the financial security - used to be common enough that it was a cliche. It's not anymore, because doctors don't want to marry some random uneducated girl who's merely good looking, they want another doctor or lawyer type person who they can talk to, and introduce other people to at parties as "my wife, the investment banker". e.g. when status = good career, and both men and women have careers, having a "status wife" is now about how you can boast about her career as well as your own.

Look at the shit people give Matt Damon for marrying a waitress. He likely pulled someone out of near-poverty by making that decision, but everyone apparently would have been more comfortable if he married a "like" person - someone from the upper-middle class.

And pointing this out isn't against women having employment. e.g. if you view "social policy" as "social technology" then you can use the metaphor of the cell phone or the car. e.g. cars are generally a good thing, having cars arguably saves more lives than it takes, e.g. life expectancy rose after the introduction of the automobile. But it would be wrong to turn around if someone complains about car accidents and say "you're just against cars, you want to roll life back to the pre-car era. Luddite!"

i.e. because men and women are now e.g. lawyers, two lawyers can get married, creating a boost in double-lawyer families, which pushes them into the stratosphere in terms of wealth and economic security. But this comes at the expense of other women who, in an alternate world could have married one of those lawyers. e.g. the lower social classes have very low rates of marriage, and the reasons for this is we've veered from a world in which most girls have to marry a man for the economic security, into a world in which most girls can't marry a man for the economic security. e.g. "you can work" quickly morphs into "you have to work". So the old cliche is that a man's income (e.g. resource value) dictated his value for pairing off with a life partner. But that's more true of women, now, too. Economic independence is a double-edged sword: you're free to soar, but also free to sink. And people will value you on how well you did.

Any sort of social change is a double-edged sword, and it's not being "anti" the change to point out all that with the 99% of good consequences, there are also some unintended consequences.

[Doomblade187]

I thought that was kind of the idea, showing off the delusions the 9.9% have about them being in the 9.9% or not. That he had become aware just how much denial he actually practiced, just like the rest, and was now demonstrating how easy it is to fall into the same pattern.

Yeah, I thought that was the general point of it too, so by him saying that they wouldn't use the fancy tutors they weren't like the rest. The most interesting point I saw was comparing the ad for a nanny to that of a Governess. He paints it as how the job description implies that the job-taker wants no more in life. That said, some people who work in childcare really do want that to be their lifelong career, so you can also say that the ad wanted someone dedicated to their profession. Which, now that I type that out, means the same thing to a great extent.

Disclaimer: I understand that many people do want to spend their lives working with children.

Reelya: Maybe everyone else in his income bracket was also jelly that she got to marry him.

[Reelya]

Not paying a nanny is just sweeping the social issues out of sight and mind.

e.g. in the Victorian-era when wealthy houses had lots of servants, getting rid of the servants would do nothing for poverty: the having of servants wasn't the cause of the wealth gap. Getting rid of your servants would merely push them all into the literal "poor house" where they're worked Gulag-style. And similarly, if everyone gets rid of their nannies to become more class-conscious, what the fuck good does that do? It just pushes all those women into either food stamps or horrible minimum wage jobs.

e.g. a responsible Victorian family would be best off keeping the servants, but paying them better and making sure that the servant's children get a decent education, so that they don't have to be servants, too. e.g. if you have an American family with parents who are lawyers, then firing the nanny doesn't give her a shot at being a lawyer - only a small percentage of people have what it takes to become lawyers at all.

There's nothing wrong with taking some of your income for being lawyers and spending it on paying people to do things you don't have time for. The only difference - the difference people like the writer care about is that a nanny is visible. It's a visible reminder of social stratification. e.g. they probably have no qualms buying products with that money made by the same types of women in factories, or purchasing food grown on farms by the same type of people. But really, a nanny is just a hark back to the "extended family" that predates the nuclear family: you have an additional person, a woman, moving into the house, she receives money to live on, and also food and board. Basically, she fulfills the role an aunt would in a traditional extended family.

[Doomblade187]

Oh, I never said to get rid of nannies. My apologies if I came across that way. I read that passage as the people trying to hire someone who they expect to stay lower class for the foreseeable future. As per the pay scale and opportunities, yes, that is definitely the most responsible thing to do.

[Reelya]

Not you, I was responding to what you said the author wrote. Also with the live-in nanny thing, even if that was minimum wage, it's full meals and rent provided, which is a way better deal than working at e.g. Walmart out on the highway.

But somehow we worry about the plight of the nannies more than we do about the working poor at Walmart and McDonalds. That's probably because the article-writing class have direct contact with the nanny-class but not the real hard-working poor class.

[Lord Shonus]

Look at the shit people give Matt Damon for marrying a waitress. He likely pulled someone out of near-poverty by making that decision, but everyone apparently would have been more comfortable if he married a "like" person - someone from the upper-middle class.

While your overall point is valid, I don't think this is a good supporting argument. A lot of the people who gave Damon a hard time are the sort that put celebrity on a pedestal. Damon's "sin" wasn't that his wife was much poorer than he is, it was that she wasn't a famous celebrity. I've seen Damon in "celebrities who married civilians" lists (the name of which just underscores the whole "celebs are Not Like Us" thing going on) that equated his wife with rather wealthy people.

[Reelya]

Even points out an additional point that you don't, that while assortative mating would have you think that "that makes it more likely there's also going to be a "double-low-income" family," this is actually not the case- they simply don't get married, period

I did actually cover that same point, where I mentioned "the lower social classes have very low rates of marriage" in the last paragraph. e.g. whereas before it was the resource-value of mainly the man in question, it's now the resource-value of both parties that's taken into account. e.g. that's two sets of stars that must align at once.

[Descan]

Found this very insightful

I haven't finished reading it but "endless birthday party for people whose chief accomplishment in life was just showing up."

I mean. That's exactly what a birthday party is. "Hooray, you appeared exactly (x) years ago! Congrats!"

You could look at it the opposite way.  You survived (x) years.

I'd say that's still just showing up.

[scriver]

Refusing to leave?

[Descan]

Close enough. :B

[Kagus]

"After crash-landing on a remote island, I survived for three years on crab musk and very small coconuts... And it was all worth it, to finally be rescued!"

"Man, you just won't take the hint, will you?"

[Kagus]

Omae wa mou, the 9.9%.

NANNY?!

[Shazbot]

Nannies can be college-educated women in their early twenties making healthy salaries by contract or illegal immigrants who barely speak the household language being paid cash to avoid taxes. Looking at American nannies and au pairs as some Victorian-era class divide isn't accurate.