Sounds like the rich set right before WWI.
Titanic, anyone?
My definition of the “leisure class”-the kennedy family. Each of them gets a big trust fund at age 21, so they don’t have to work (old man kennedy was very wealthy). They usually attend college, and graduate in law of something other than engineering or science. They then persue political careers, and wind up raping women, crashing cars, and getting involved in scandals. Occasionally, they actually produce some worthwhile results.
Eventually, their livers/brains give out (an exampleof this is Senator Ted Kennedy).
The kennedy family is the best example I can think of, and proof that most ofthis class are worthless parasites.
“Leisure,” hell—The Hilton Sisters worked their 20 little toes and 20 little fingers to the bone!
The Kennedys do an enormous amount of charity work. An example is the Special Olympics in which they are actively involved. It’s a big clan, so there they certainly have had their share of scandals. I’d put the Kennedys agianst the Bush twins any day, however.
From DanBlather
“The Kennedys do an enormous amount of charity work. An example is the Special Olympics in which they are actively involved. It’s a big clan, so there they certainly have had their share of scandals. I’d put the Kennedys agianst the Bush twins any day, however.”
Well, so much for this thread. 
Ok…IS Bush (or the Bush clan) part of the Leisure class? I don’t have specific sites atm, but I was under the impression they were business men…i.e. they WORK for a living, when they aren’t being politicians. Comments? (I could be wrong about this, as I’m not a big Bush fan…if I am, please site).
BTW, I would agree with Dan about the charity stuff…I’ve heard they are very involved in that. Also, no matter how big your fortune, I find it hard to believe that SOMEONE isn’t working hard on maintaining the Kennedy fortune over there…
From lander2k2
“That very small percantage of people born into extreme wealth and who can live a life of super-abundant luxury and leisure off interest alone.”
Lander2k2, do you still also think that this small class of obviously worthless hedonists, as you put it: “…at the end of the day the leisure class is senior to and has exclusive influence over the system itself.”? Are you using ‘leisure class’ and ‘rich elite’ interchangably, or just loosely? I’m curious.
BTW, thanks everyone for an interesting discussion. I still don’t see how there could be a ‘class’ of individuals that can lie around all day doing nothing, day after day, and maintain their fortunes. I’ve seen too many rich folks who actually WORK and have lost it all to believe that, even with the biggest fortunes, you could spend at those incredible rates and maintain your fortune by investment and interest alone. But as I say, I’m not in those highest circles…I just know a few shlubs (like my wifes boss) that make a mere $1 Million a year…give or take a few hundred k. Does anyone have a good example of someone who is in this ‘leisure class’? I haven’t seen any proof that the Kennedy clan is (for the most part).
-XT
I feel I’m qualified to speak on liberal attitudes (i.e. virtuous poor versus evil rich), as I am a die-hard liberal.
No one thinks the poor are virtuous by virtue (forgive that construction) of being poor, or if they do, they’ve fallen victim to a societal-wide prediliction to equate suffering with virtue (Personally, I blame that one on Christianity, but that’s a different thread altogether).
However, they (the poor) ARE suffering. Yes, we six figure earners don’t sit around all day, watching our plasma TVs etc, etc, etc. But if our cars need work, we get it done. If we’re out of food, we can buy it (yeah, like we’re ever out of food!). We don’t usually need to worry about how we’re going to come up with this month’s mortgage, and if we are worrying, it’s because we borrowed more than we could realistically afford in the first place. If we want to see a movie, getting a sitter isn’t going to make the difference between whether or not we can afford to go.
Oh, you say, but that’s because they’re lazy, they don’t want to work, yada, yada. Yeah, right. As a computer programmer, I certainly work harder and longer than my friend who works in a dry cleaning establishment, right? Yeah, those guys working construction and those women waiting tables have it REAL easy! Are all poor people working as hard as they could be? Of course not. Are you? I know I’m not.
Yes, I know, it took years of training to get the skills you have, and so forth and so on. I’m not saying we should all get the same pay. What I AM saying is that to cut what are, to the poor, truly vital services that make their difficult lives a TINY bit easier, so that you and I can knock off a few hundred on our taxes, is, er, morally questionable in my book. But of course, it’s not to knock a few hundred off of our taxes that this kind of thing is happening. It’s to save the really BIG boys hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Think about it. A million dollar a year executive (not all that unusual these days) is probably making 20 times what the highest paid person in his/her company who actually produces something that company SELLS is making. And just a million is on the low end these days, especially when you consider bonuses, stock options, perks, etc. What can these people POSSIBLY offer that makes them THAT much more valuable than a guy (possbily just as well qualified) who would be willing to do exactly the same job for say, a couple hundred $K? But of course, it isn’t about performance these days; it’s the star system. If you have the name, you command the bucks regardless of your performance (American Airlines as a recent example), and from down here, it looks as if the way you make the name is simply to get to know the right people.
What I’m driving at here is that, while being poor is morally neutral, you gotta admit that these days there’s a fair reason for suspicion of considerable wealth. I don’t think the arguments about fiscal policy on these boards have cared nearly as much about the low six-figure earner as they have about the big boys, the ones the current administration belongs to and clearly legislates to benefit (yes, I AM a liberal). Where the low six-figure and high five-figure earners come in is that we see this fiscal policy as favoring US as well, whereas to the big guys, the difference between $20K a year and $200K a year is probably pretty insignificant - we’re ALL the little people down here. But we just roll over and vote these policies in, apparently never realizing that sooner or later, we WILL pay for it. But they (the big guys) won’t.
Yes, this is something of a rant. So sue me.
How do a couple of jerks prove that this “class” (by your definition - anyone from a wealthy family who doesn’t study science or engineering) is a bunch of worthless parasites? There are plenty of poor and middle class people who rape, crash cars and commit all kinds of crimes. The Kenedy’s have their own money so they aren’t really parasites to anyone other than each other.
AvhHines, you make some interesting points, and I’d be happy to debate them with you if you like…make a thread about the ‘suffering poor’ and we can take it there. Do you have anything about the leisure class? Do you feel that there is a significant group of folks out there with piles of money who do nothing at all? You talked about a million dollar a year executive, but thats a working man, reguardless of how you look at it. I’m looking for proof/cites/opinions/wild ass speculations on a class of folks that basically sit around smoking cigars lit with $100 dollar bills on their $10 million boats 365 days a year doing nothing at all…except spending ungodly summs of money just for the hell of it. IS there such a ‘class’? As a secondary point, why do people THINK that there is such a class? Why are the rich though of as bad/evil/immoral/etc etc? I’d love to hear more from you on this…as well as from all the previous posters.
-XT
Firstly, I don’t regard these folks as inherently “worthless hedonists.” Very potentially, but not inherently. Those with extreme wealth have the potential to bring about great positive effects in the world. I’m not talking about sponsoring charity events and the like. I’m talking about building institutions and infrastructure that are of great and fundamental worth to humanity. However, when those born into endless wealth become fixated on protecting and expanding their wealth and living like pompous kings, then they have the means to funnel great prosperity out of society while doing nothing to contribute to the society supporting them.
As for “leisure class” and “rich elite,” the two terms overlap a lot and both terms could be applied to some, but they have different implications. The “leisure class” emphasizes a super-wealthy, yet unproductive characteristic. “Rich elite” emphasizes the highest echelon of the wealthy that can and do exert incredible influence with their wealth. In practical terms I would categorize the British royal family as a leisure class family while the Rockefellers would fit the rich elite category more appropriately. However, like I said, the terms do largely overlap and are to a degree interchangeable.
What does anouncing yourself as “liberal” accomplish? Is it supposed to excuse throwing out reason and logic in favor of good intentions an self righteousness?
I would be willing to run General Electric for a mere $100k. That does not mean that I am qualified to manage a multi-billion dollar corporation. Few people are.
I have no problem with a a CEO earning millions when he makes the company a success.
How do you think you “get a name” or “know he right people”? People just don’t hand over small fortunes just because they played lacross with a guy in college.
Most of these guys don’t just wake up one day as a CEO. It’s like anything else. Once you get a reputation for success, opportunities tend to seek you out.
We have to admit no such thing. That’s just something that poor people say to make themselves feel better.
When I think of a “leisure class” I think of someplace like England in previous generations or centuries, and people who lived in big country estates with lots of servants and spent all their days fox-hunting and thought anyone who actually had to work for a living was hopelesly vulgar and common.
But yes, here in America we have always had people who inherited enough wealth that they never had to work if they didn’t want to (the Kennedys might be a good example, as might one or both presidents Roosevelt), so they’re free to live lives of hedonistic debauchery if they choose, or to devote themselves to cultural, intellectual, or philanthropic pursuits without having to worry about where the next paycheck is coming from.
What we have in America today is a new and very large ruling class, a “white overclass,” of which the idle-rich leisure class is a only a small and eccentric subset. The straightest dope I’ve yet found on this subject comes from Michael Lind’s 1995 book, The Next American Nation., pp. 141-145 (Free Press paperback edition):
Understanding the white overclass requires revising the most common misconceptions about class. The discussion of social class has been confused for generations by Marxist thinkers, who made the mistake of completely identifying class with economic function. Like the Marxists, old-fashioned American liberal pluralists tend to misunderstand class. What they refer to as class is typically not a social class at all, but a mere occupational or income category, such as service-sector workers or millionaires. Meanwhile, the New Left which came to prominence in the sixties has tended to drop the idea of class altogether, in favor of race and gender. . . . In recent years, conservative ideologues have added further confusion by defining political factions and lifestyle subcultures as classes. . . .
In order to think about class in twenty-first century America, we must first clear our minds of these Marxist, liberal, New Left, and conservative definitions of class, and return to the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu.
A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class – the group of similar families – has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. . . .
The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. . . .
. . . The white overclass is the child of the former Northeastern Protestant establishment, produced by marriage (not only figurative but literal) with the upwardly mobile descendants of turn-of-the-century European immigrants and white Southerners and Westerners. Unlike the Northeastern establishment . . . this relatively new and still evolving political and social oligarchy is not identified with any particular region of the country (though it is concentrated in East and West Coast metropolitan regions). Nor does the white overclass dominate other sections through local, surrogate establishments, as the Northeastern establishment once did. Rather, overclass Americans are found in the higher suburbs of every major metropolitan area, North and South, coastal and inland. Unlike the sectional elites of the past, members of the white overclass are not even identified with the regions in which they happen (temporarily) to live. The white overclass, homogeneous and nomadic, is the first truly national upper class in American history.
The white overclass is the product, not merely of the amalgamation of Anglo- and Euro-Americans, but of the fusion of the rentier and managerial-professional classes. This blurring of the upper and upper-middle strata is a relatively new development in the United States. In earlier generations, there were distinct landowning and rentier classes, with their own lifestyles and institutions – cotillions, seasons spent in the country, and the like. The elaborate rituals that governed upper-class life, such as dressing for dinner, were designed to conspicuously display wealth, including a wealth of leisure time. That was a long time ago. There is a class, or rather a category, of the clebrity rich, and there are still pockets of old-fashioned rentiers in the U.S. – in Virginia, there are still planters who do not work and who hunt foxes with hounds – but these subcultures are detached from the summits of power. Members of the upper class who want to make a mark in the world tend to adopt the style of life and dress and speech of the managerial-professional elite. Even though they do not have to, most members of the small hereditary upper class go to college and get executive or professional jobs, and work, or at least pretend to. Instead of serving as a model for well-to-do executives and lawyers and investment bankers, the hereditary segment of the American overclass conforms to the segment immediately below it, the credentialed upper middle class.
. . . The composition of student bodies at Ivy League schools is a good surrogate for the composition of the white overclass. If you factor out black and Hispanic students admitted under affirmative action programs, you ar lef with a student body that is disproportionately of British or German-Scandinavian Protestant and European Jewish descent. There are relatively few evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the overclass, despite their significant numbers in the general population. If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive. If you are Methodist, Baptist or Catholic, have a B.A. from a state university, work in or for a small business or for a career government service, watch the Nashville Network on cable, and are saving for a vacation in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Branson, Missouri, or Orlando, Florida (Disneyworld), you are probably not a member of the white overclass – no matter how much money you make.
Although there are residual religious and ethnic differences among members of the white overclass, these are minor compared to what they have in common. There is, for example, a common white overclass accent, which is more or less identical in corporate boardrooms from one end of the continent to another – the “NBC standard,” which is the equivalent of BBC English or Britain’s Received Pronunciation (RP). As formerly distinct local elites have fused into a single national ruling class equally at home in New York and Texas and California, this accent has become the badge of elite status. In order to advance in overclass circles in America, a white American has to suppress any regional or ethnic dialect, whether it be a Southern drawl or a Boston honk or Brooklynese, and learn to speak this flat, clipped, rather nasal version of English. . . .
. . . The overclass eats pate and imported cheeses; the middle class eats peanut butter and Velveeta. The overclass sips wine; the middle class drinks beer. The overclass plays squash and tennis; the middle class plays pool and bowls (both golf, but the middle class does so at second-tier country clubs and public courses). The overclass jogs; the middle class does not. . . . These are cliches, but they are a better guide to the real class structure in the United States than income categories in the census or pseudoscientific sociological measures like the SES (socioeconomic survey).
Thanks, BrainGlutton. Great post. I think if you take the small sector of this white overclass that spends its time at country clubs and top-notch restaurants, then you would find your leisure class. If you took the sector of this class that contributes considerable sums to election campaigns and has connections to organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Royal Institute of International Affairs, then you would find what is referred to as the “rich elite.” That’s how it would seem to me.
Well, what about the CEO of Xerox who drove the company into the ground in no time flat? When he was fired by the Board, they were obligated by contract to pay him like $600,000 / year but then they decided out of sympathy to throw another $200,000 his way. Meanwhile, I know lots of ex-Xerox employees who, how shall we put this, didn’t get quite the same golden parachute.
A guy where I work used to say he would run our company just as badly as the current CEO for half the salary. When the Xerox fiasco occurred, I told him that if he had worked at Xerox, he couldn’t have honestly said that because it is not clear he could have run the company that badly without a very active effort. The guy apparently took a very competent sales force and “reorganized” them in a stupid way that left them confused and their competitors eating their lunch.
And they call this "risk! Risk, my ass!!
If the Xerox board was dumb enough to give a poor CEO that contract, whatever. Too bad about your friend, though. He should get some degrees and lots of management experience and become a CEO.
My definition of “leisure class” is much broader than the ones found here: you are a member of the leisure class if you (and your family, if you have one) can live comfortably without your working for anyone at all. For a single person that might take just $80,000 a year in most of the country, for a family of four it might take $150,000 a year.
Now, you may CHOOSE to work under such circumstances, but it’s your CHOICE you see. You have that glorious thing that most of us don’t, freedom.
If you HAVE to work to keep a roof over your head, you’re just a wage slave like the rest of us. You can change massas, but you still gotta work in somebody’s fields.
The leisure class will always be those who can live very well without lifting a finger, whether they choose to lift a finger or not. On the poor end of the scale you will always find those who do not or cannot work, but you’d have to be crazy as a WSJ editor to think they’re living well.
To me, the term “leisure class” is not a term of opprobrium. If our tech continues to evolve as it has of late, almost all of us will be members of the leisure class in a few years. The capitalist formula will serve us badly when that happens.
Quite frankly, I don’t understand why the employees of Xerox or American Airlines or Enron rise up, go over to their house and kill them like they did in the old days.
Where does that $80k a year come from if you aren’t working?
Exxxxcellent…[WRINGS HANDS TOGETHER]
By your definition, anyone who is a white professional is a member of the “overclass”?
Right now, inherited wealth, lottery winnings, savings from a really lucrative job, stock market killing, etc.
Eventaully, automated production will make it possible for most of us to eat, have a roof over our heads, travel and have nice clothes without lifting a finger. Be interesting to see how we solve that little problem. And painful, probably.
Yes Virginia, there is a leisure class out there and their numbers are much larger than you can imagine You can see them hanging out in street corners and Seven-Eleven parking lots. They never have to work because the government houses them and feeds them for free at the expense of the working class who are extorted part of the product of their work for this purpose.
I’m too am curious to see what happens when we become so efficient at producing we don’t require our entire population to work