"Stop pretending you're not rich" (salaries, banks, stock)
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Charles Murray wrote a book about this 5 years ago as well: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010
Murray took more of a bottom up stance when it comes to the poor staying poor, but had a very similar stance on the upper middle class in the fact that he said they are purposefully segregating themselves from 'normal America'.
Indeed. But Murray’s main point was about culture, rather than wealth. A young person who gets a philosophy degree and ends up working part-time at Starbucks, living with roommates in a ramshackle loft, eating canned tuna and spaghetti, may still prefer classical music, spending his free-time at the local public library. On the other side of the divide, is the owner of a construction business, who loves NASCAR and country music, who gulps Bud Lite, and takes his family in the Ford Excursion for vacation to Gatlinburg, TN.
Basically, one side of the divide are Dale Earnhardt and Dolly Parton. On the other are Dvorak Alexandre Dumas… and that’s just the D’s.
They love to think of themselves as hard workers who played fair and won what they deserved, rather than as people who were born on third and think they hit a triple.
except this isn't how life or baseball works... you don't "win" by staying on third. You win by getting to home plate. Yes, it makes it more likely but not easier.
So the analogy that going from first to second or second to third is harder than going from third to home doesn't make sense. At third plate, people pay more attention to the runner so it makes it harder to get home than it does to other bases.
part of the baseball thing that makes sense to me is that someone born on third plate has a team behind them they can trust. If a poor person tried to play the game and had no one behind them, even if they hit well, unless it is a home run, they would be stuck on base with no one to hit them home. they are forever stranded there until game over.
Murray's book is about that support behind the person, from all those "rules" and connections that help them out. It's what is propping up the people with money, and not them having money that keeps the poor down.
It's not just having talent, it needs to be groomed and supported for it to shine. Everyone thinks of themselves as diamonds in the ruff, but it's still worthless if no one wants to polish it/buy it
Indeed. But Murray’s main point was about culture, rather than wealth. A young person who gets a philosophy degree and ends up working part-time at Starbucks, living with roommates in a ramshackle loft, eating canned tuna and spaghetti, may still prefer classical music, spending his free-time at the local public library. On the other side of the divide, is the owner of a construction business, who loves NASCAR and country music, who gulps Bud Lite, and takes his family in the Ford Excursion for vacation to Gatlinburg, TN.
Basically, one side of the divide are Dale Earnhardt and Dolly Parton. On the other are Dvorak Alexandre Dumas… and that’s just the D’s.
Definitely agree, but in the end they are both talking about segregation away from the 'real' normal America, which is largely driven by income. Reeves isn't talking about wealth, the focus seems to be income. Many in the top 20% have no wealth to speak of, but have high incomes and are putting that income to work to 'better their families lives' which includes a nice home in a nice neighborhood, great public schools or great private schools, an elite college, etc.
Definitely agree, but in the end they are both talking about segregation away from the 'real' normal America, which is largely driven by income. Reeves isn't talking about wealth, the focus seems to be income. Many in the top 20% have no wealth to speak of, but have high incomes and are putting that income to work to 'better their families lives' which includes a nice home in a nice neighborhood, great public schools or great private schools, an elite college, etc.
Yes, that’s true… wealth/income divide is of course its own separate issue. One of the points in the present discussion, I gather, is that “the elite” are better at converting income into wealth, whereas Proles who hit the lottery or start a lucrative business or become highly-compensated employees, are going to mismanage that income, and will fail to inculcate in their children a deft respect for money.
Yet another thorny subject is pecuniary vs. all other considerations. Who is the “elite” – the guy who fluently speaks 5 foreign languages, who works as a social-worker at the city department dealing with fresh immigrants, earning $35K/year… or the small-town jock, who barely makes it through the state U law school, but opens a smashingly lucrative injury-law practice, and has his face festooned all over highway billboards? “Normal America” is evidently pop-culture mass consumption, reality-TV and football. The social-worker guy, who has read Rumi in the original Persian, and Thucydides in the original Greek, is not “normal” – even though he’s forced to subsist on peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches
Once Volcker read the tea leaves on the November election and began aligning Fed policy with that of the incoming administration. Reagan wanted to finish the "Whip Inflation Now" job that both Nixon and Ford had failed at. Carter didn't have great success on that front either, but things had begun to settle out by mid-1980, and Reagan ended up piling on the wrong side of the see-saw. Created what was at the time the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. Record since broken by Bush-43 of course.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SportyandMisty
The Carter years were years of Stagflation.
Well, except for the robust GDP growth and declining unemployment. The Carter years were not some golden age, but they were easily ahead of what went before and came after.
Carter was not re-elected chiefly because the Ayatollah used the hostage crisis to interfere in the US election.
As for insanity, it was dished out in abundance during the Reagan years, to include emptying mental hospitals onto our city streets.
Iran interfered with u.s elections? The nerve!!
Would that particular ayatollah have been the one that came in around the time the Iranian civil war overthrew the brutal regime the U.K. and u.s installed with a coup detat in the 50s? And then after he was finally overthrown, we allowed him to come to the u.s for "cancer treatments" to avoid Iranian persecution for his crimes against humanity?
Interfering in elections can be quite serious indeed!
why should he be "better" than the small town law firm guy?
The point isn't to make a normative judgment, but to note that in my example, the social-worker guy is "abnormal". He'd be widely panned as being the weirdo, and from a cultural viewpoint, the elitist. The small-town lawyer meanwhile stands for "real America".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pub-911
The Carter years were not some golden age, but they were easily ahead of what went before and came after.
The "executive dining room" jokes remind me of the British sitcom "Are You Being Served?", once frequently aired on PBS. I don't mean to exacerbate the attempts at whimsy here.
But returning to the topic at hand, the Carter years were a severe frustration for investors in the stock market. 1981 wasn't exactly pleasant either, but then things took off, around mid-1982. Thereafter, the Reagan years became memorable for anchoring what was probably the greatest stock market boom in history. And I say this without in the least being a Reagan fan.
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