Are you being facetious? Of course, high school kids are not trying to dress like Fred Astaire or use cigarette holders. But those are fashions, not class.
Class is a concept separate from fashion, that would exist even if everyone dressed the same (like prison).
Kids *obsess *about what class they are, within their own little world of course, far more than even adults. Looking cool and popular is just another way of showing status – and class is merely a definition of status.
Not only that, but because we don’t have primogeniture in the US, the family fortune gets split in every generation where there’s more than one child. Staying wealthy for more than three generations is genuinely difficult, and it does take talent (as well as a bit of luck) to pull it off.
You missed my point. A 30-year-old who hasn’t yet inherited the family fortune and is living on a large allowance or trust fund doesn’t have to do a lot of money maintenance. Parents and grandparents (and possibly older siblings) are doing it for them.
How? Certainly the big investments are public (everyone can guess what your houses are worth, or the 12% you own of a public corporation), but smaller investments and foreign investments don’t have to be declared publicly. How would you know whether I own a million-dollar collection of rare coins if I don’t talk about it?
Maintenance would involve periodically increasing the money to keep up with inflation. Banks, stockbrokers, accountants, etc. all have to be paid. Revenue generating businesses have to be maintained and kept profitable.
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I know people who deal with large amounts of money simply by sticking it in a diversified conservative portfolio, leaving it alone, and living on the interest generated. It’s not hard.
Then your rant should be expanded to include pretty much most kids. Most kids want stuff that they haven’t earned financially, and that includes rich, middle-class, and poor kids. Many middle- and upper-middle-class kids get cars without spending a single penny for it. They may be clunkers or hand-me-down vehicles, but they are gifts that they are unentitled to nor were they particularly “earned”. And they get plenty of other wishes fulfilled by nature of their parents’ sizable bank accounts. They are no different than the poor kids who want “rich people” clothes. They just don’t have parents who are able to give in to their whims.
I agree that when a kid reaches the age when they keeping whining about wants, they need to start looking at ways of earning money to attain them. At the age of 14, I remember vacuuming and dusting the entire house one day so I could earn enough money to buy Sinead O’Connor’s “I Don’t Want What I Haven’t Got” at the used music store. But…I also wanted a car when I was 16 and although I had a job like a good little teenager, not nary a penny from that work went into getting the 91’ Hyundia Excel that showed up in the driveway on Christmas morning that year. So I can’t share your anger at poor kids wanting to have what other kids just take for granted. By their very nature, kids want things without considering who’s going to pay for it. Your harshness shows a lack of compassion and understanding of human nature.
I like your generalizations, though. Those lazy self-entitled homeless people. Those kind and generous rich people. Isn’t it all so…pat.
I was responding to Perciful’s exasperation with poor kids “rioting” because they couldn’t get any “rich people” clothes. My response, which I’m guessing you didn’t really get, is that the kids were desiring to look “cool” rather than “rich”. I was NOT saying that they do not have a class system, just that it doesn’t always correspond to “what rich people wear”.
Take this silly bracelet phase the kids are into these days. How much do those things cost? Two dollars a pack or something like that? Now if you’re a kid and you’re whining because you want a silly bracelet, are you doing so because you want to look “high status”, or because you just want to belong (i.e., being “cool”)? Those are two different things, in my eyes.
Likewise, if everyone has designer jeans and you don’t want to be the outsider, you will tend to want designer jeans too.
To me, that’s very different than the kind of status ambition that adults have. A social climber does NOT want what the masses have. They want something they perceive as belonging to only an elite few. They don’t want an Ipod. Every one has an Ipod, which means they probably suck. No, they want the peanut-sized, custom-made Krumpzac[sup]TM[/sup], the $9000 gizmo from Switzlerland that you can only buy IN Switzerland, at a quaint shop far in the mountains that is open only by appointment. They don’t want a middle-manager job; that’s a dime a dozen. They want the executive director job. They don’t want to listen to the local Two-Obnoxious-Guys morning show, like “everyone else” listens to. No, they want to listen to BBC news on the HD-2 NPR channel. Because not everyone has HD radio, and an even smaller subset listen to NPR (and can tolerate those monotonous voices).
Kids generally aren’t savvy enough to know what the elite few have,. But they are experts on what the masses have. So they’ll watch American Idol “because that’s what everyone watches!” They’ll cry if they can’t get an Ipod because “everyone else has one!” With each year, the less hold the masses have on them. But I don’t think kids really stop taking their cues from “everyone else” until they’re practically ready to graduate from high school.*
*Even kids who are anti-“everyone else”, like the so-called “freaks” or the Goths, are still taking their cues from the mainstream. They just do the opposite of what’s “cool”. But like the mainstream folks, their sense of “high status” is defined by conforming well to the norms of their group, rather than doing things they perceive some “higher” group doing.
How? Certainly the big investments are public (everyone can guess what your houses are worth, or the 12% you own of a public corporation), but smaller investments and foreign investments don’t have to be declared publicly. How would you know whether I own a million-dollar collection of rare coins if I don’t talk about it?
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Servants talk, so do ex-spouses and the clerks at insurance offices. How do you think gold-diggers and scam artists find their marks?
How? Certainly the big investments are public (everyone can guess what your houses are worth, or the 12% you own of a public corporation), but smaller investments and foreign investments don’t have to be declared publicly. How would you know whether I own a million-dollar collection of rare coins if I don’t talk about it?
I don’t know why but I decided to find out how my summer crush made out in life. Curiosity? Well the first thing I found out is that he has a very common name! But I started with their Black Point Cottage and the Yacht club. I found out his family lied. He didn’t go to Scotland that summer but to a boys prep school in Illinois called, Fenwick. Turns out he has family that goes way back in Oak Park. No wonder they spent the summer on the shore! So then he went to St. Norbert College and I kind of lost him but found a picture of his wife and she looks very down to earth. She ran a book club. I saw his street and that he put the family home on North Grove into a trust for his children and moved out of state with his wife. I could not find one photo of him or what his profession was but I’m glad he did well.
I guess I’m happy he had a good life and his kids seem to be doing well.
Cite for homeless ids wanting to dress up like rich people? Or do you mean wanting to wear clothing that’s not filthy and ragged? And I’m still waiting for a cite for your statement that homeless kids in your area are “rioting” because they want better clothing that what the homeless shelters are giving them.
Homeless parents are homeless because they’re lazy? Not because they might have lost a job while living paycheck to paycheck like a huge percentage of the population, and one missed check or layoff put them in their car?
I’ll read the rest of the thread in a minute, but already this is totally :dubious:. A good bar/pub/whatever is about the people rather than the music or drink.
And having read the thread I’ll just have to accept that there’s a big cultural divide here. I know an Earl, a proper one, whose family have been involved in politics and murder and shenanigans for many centuries. His local is a really scummy one, even by Scottish standards, but he often goes in for a pint, sits there at the end of the bar doing the crossword, and chatting to whoever else is in. Tbh that’s a lot of alkies and junkies, but whatever. Is that a high class place?
And to be honest the last time I was in there the music was mostly BIG GAY ANTHEMS. Scissor Sisters, Abba, Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish, Divine, Hazel Dean Hi-energy stuff.
I’m not understanding it either. Some of the rich might have their country clubs, or to a lesser extent, private city club bars where the average person can’t go, but that’s the only kind of “rich person’s bar” I’m aware of. At the other end of the scale I’m sure there’s truly scuzzy bars I could only imagine going into if I was an alcoholic with no other options for staving off the DTs. But in between those two extremes it’s not like there’s a huge range of different “classes” that bars are supposed to attract. I’ve certainly never heard of “townie” bars as distinct from student hangouts in a town where there’s a uni.
Look this is a bit beyond high class vs low class. If you ever want to truly understand the poverty of the lower class you have to be in the trenches. I volunteer so I can’t “cite” it except to explain what I perceive to be the problem. I have a good friend that works with homeless families and children as a social worker. She is the one that told me about the “designer thread disaster”. She is an atheist and a former Jew and she throws her hands up in disgust. I am trying to help her by showing her that she is not responsible for trying to fix these broken people by placating them. Only the people themselves can do that.
It takes generations to make or break poverty. More then our lifetimes. So we do what we can but we can only be an example of what to do. No more and no less.
I am also a Christian so I feel obligated to be involved out of Love. I have to say all the love in the world may just help one person to rise above his own problems. The Church has always helped the poor but we didn’t go overboard. The reason why is because there will always be poor people and the problem is unsolvable. There have been poor people since the beginning of time and there will be until the end of time. It’s just the way the world is. I won’t quote the bible but the answers are in there. That is why we can’t fix it. It just is. Get the government involved and we quadruple the problem. The poor are the churches responsiblity.
I have seen first hand what happens to “charity” when it is not given freely from the heart with no thought of recompense or recognition. It fails and it fails badly. My own son went to volunteer with me last week and he was shocked. He said, “Mom, why are the workers stealing from the poor”? I told him because they are not volunteering out of love but out of something else. When the poor are robbing us blind with demands of designer clothing instead of being grateful for what they get then we are a failing them. I literally wanted to barf when at the end of our shift I went to say goodnight and everyone was ransacking the fridge. How disgusting!These people are fat and not poor? But they are taking the food out of the mouths of the poor… Maybe we need to fix that first? No, that is unsolvable too without divine intervention.
I can’t cite or explain low class except that it is a choice for some and some others destiny because of being born blind or having mental problems. Still Helen Keller rose above it. Her quotes are timeless.
My take- “If it takes me my whole life to change one persons life in some way that changes their families life for the better my work with the poor is worth it”. I gave to one washed up young woman until it hurt. She is still a mess with 5 children at 24 and baby Daddy in jail but she has one piece now. One small piece I gave her and it wasn’t clothes. It was the gift of honest labor. She works now and has continued to work for years. She is the first in 3 generations that work hard. I couldn’t give that to her except to show her it works by doing it myself. i gave her my love and showed her the way. That is a small miracle. I just kept showing her the way. I got frustrated and let down. I wanted to give up. She finally tried and found it to be better then what she had. She may come out to be middle classed if she keeps it up and her children will have the advantage of seeing a mother that worked every day.
I have many cites but these two are good. They make sense to a person that works with the poor. If you are a liberal -TRY AND BE OPENMINDED. This is not a bandaid but the truth.
Kolga, If you are passionate about the poor then go out and get involved. Go and see what I’m talking about. Make it a weekly priority but don’t send a check do it personally. Be a mentor. I love volunteering. The lower the job the better. The lower the job the more you interface with the people that need to see you.
I wouldn’t know. I mostly go out to faux-dive bars in Manhattan.
Here’s a question. The London Bar in The London Hotel in NYC. High class hotel bar catering to Manhattan’s wealthy elite or pretentious overpriced bar for tourists and nouvea riche looking to catch a glipse of Gordon Ramsay?
Pretty much. Ultimately what defines a bar is the crowd and ambiance. Is it full of drunk college kids? Working class men? Wealthy bankers and lawyers? Tourists? Out of towners who came in to party for the night? Is it loud? Quiet? Crowded? So on.
