[S/O GED stigma?]

For getting hired, GED avoidance is usually part of a Principal-Agent problem. HR isn't rewarded for putting forward an ambiguous candidate, even if they end up being fantastic. However, they may be blamed for forwarding someone who turns out to be a bad match. This tends to bias the forwarding process in favor of "safe" candidates; those who are credentialed beyond criticism, regardless of their actual qualifications. While this is bad for the business in the long-term, it is good for individual HR employees in the short-term, so it leads to certain things having irrational stigmas, such as GEDs or job-hopping.

 

I would be surprised if a GED prevented someone from getting into community college, provided that they did well enough on the SAT.

 

From a cultural perspective, the stigma around GEDs is usually a social class issue. For various reasons, working class people often find that GEDs are the best choice for them, so having one in some places becomes a marker of being working class. The marker alone does not inherently cause a social stigma -- the stigma is from the "anxious middle class", those upwardly mobile individuals who fear that if they allow working class people or working class culture into their lives, they will be prevented from joining the upper class.

 

"Beer Street and Gin Lane", William Hogarth, 1751

 

This is an irrational fear, of course -- the upper class often enjoys working class things, sometimes to the point where the thing itself changes social class. Gin, for instance, before it was associated with an elegant lifestyle, was quite strongly a working class drink; it was rejected by the British middle class of the time as an immoral beverage, compared to wholesome beer. The British upper class took a liking to it while rubbing shoulders with the working class in the navy, and while slumming it at boxing matches. :)

[What does religious freedom mean?]

Religious freedom for communities is often dependent on others recognizing the community as a self-governing body distinct from the viewer. If Italy suddenly decided that Vatican City was too small to be a real country, that really it was just a group of wrong-headed Italians, then it would seem like simple social welfare to correct those Vatican City residents when their norms differed from Italian ones (even if that simple social welfare ultimately involved threats of punishment for noncompliance).

 

For individuals, I think Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he noted that forced compliance may bring the illusion of harmony, but "tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness", since the reason for compliance isn't a change of heart but just to avoid the punishment. There is also the problem of turning norms into laws. Norms are dynamic and community-based. Laws are specific and based on the consensus of the drafter and signers. So attempts to turn norms into laws always leave a little to be desired.

[Can we talk about the Brexit vote??]

Honestly, I only hear about internationalism when at a meeting being addressed by a trade union official. It's not really mainstream politics here either. 

 

And I still can't get my head around electoral colleges, so you are not alone in needing a primer for politics in other nations!

 

For the electoral college, imagine if something like the EU were started today in a Europe that had never had one. Maybe someone suggests that things ought to be decided by a simple popular majority. Ireland and Portugal would immediately complain, because even if everyone in Ireland or Portugal wanted a certain thing, they would be ignored -- they have only a fraction of the population of France or Germany. On the other hand, France or Germany would complain if a "one country, one vote" system were implemented -- under a system like that, a complex initiative involving millions of people could all come apart just because Malta suddenly had an issue with something.

 

So, let's imagine the EU tries to develop a system where there is a baseline number of votes per country, regardless of population, but that still acknowledges the population of the countries in a meaningful way. Now set this conversation in 18th century America rather than modern Europe, and you have the development of the electoral college. :)

 

I think part of what makes it harder to understand today is that the context is removed. The groups that really believed in and promoted state sovereignty in the U.S. (which the electoral college was designed to respect) were mostly concentrated in the South; after the South lost the Civil War, that particular view of how America was going to work became very unpopular.

[Talk to me about kombucha]

I just get super skeptical of anything that is touted as an anti-viral or a cancer cure. It makes me angry because I feel like they are praying on vulnerable populations. If you're a healthy person who feels compelled to try it, I say go for it. I don't judge on that, but I do on the cure selling. I'm glad the FDA told them to knock it off, but once the myth is out there then you end up with the conspiracy theorists out there saying the FDA is trying to hide the real cure for cancer because then the pharmaceutical companies would all go out of business. People are still buying Dave's stuff for that reason I bet. Having worked in infectious disease and oncology trials, I cannot tell you how many people I have heard spout that line. These are the same type of people who paid this vulture in Houston $200 for five gallons of mystical water- desperate people. It's just sore spot from watching so many reject real treatments for ones sold by snake oil salesmen. I'm not taking anything away from a healthy person trying it. But I think there should be a special spot in hell for people who exploit the severely ill and dying.

 

I've never really figured out how to see G.T. Dave. I think when I'm an optimist, I veer towards deluded or perhaps overly hopeful, when I'm a pessimist, towards someone who no longer feels anything for others.

 

The L.A. Times did a write-up on him in 2008:

 

"Everyone who came over always asked, 'What's that smell?'" Dave recalls. "You'd take off the lids, and it burped at you. I thought, 'Everyone thinks we're the Addams Family.'"

 

His opinion of the concoction changed dramatically in 1994, when Laraine was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a lumpectomy, followed by about a year of chemotherapy and radiation. But she credits kombucha with helping her beat the disease and preventing it from spreading--a point that is stressed in the marketing of GT's Kombucha.

 

Dave is convinced that kombucha arrested Laraine's cancer by boosting her immune system and flushing toxins from her body.

 

"My mother is and will always be my everything," says Dave, who is single and living with Laraine until his new house on the Westside is finished. "The concept of her not being in my life shook me up. The idea that a health food helped her really spoke to me. It inspired me to think that something like this could help other people."

 

[. . .]

 

Laraine's cancer is not the only illness to have struck the Dave family. G.T.s' other brother, Justin, succumbed to bone cancer in 1996. "If he had been drinking it, he would have survived," Laraine says flatly. "We tried to sneak it into his smoothies, but he didn't want it."

 

That's not to say that kombucha is just vinegar-water -- Paul Stamets mentioned in his article sending a kombucha culture to a pharmaceutical company that was looking for mushroom extracts to patent after having no luck with his other samples. They were very excited about its potential, at least until they realized that Stamets had no clue how the kombucha SCOBY worked:

 

Soon I found myself sitting in a board room of a pharmaceutical company with lawyers and contracts discussing the particulars of patents, sub-licensing agreements, market territories, and dollars running into the millions—if FDA approval was granted for a novel drug. As a whole, the group was, you might say, "straight-laced", conservative, and exceedingly better dressed than I was.

 

The time had come to lay the cards on the table—the time for full disclosure. I asked them about the results of their tests. "Very interesting" they started. "Our tests show that this thing produces what could be a novel antibiotic, effective against methicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus " (The common bacterium responsible for " Staph " infections. Due to the wide use of antibiotics, strains of S. aureus had evolved resistance to many antibiotics.)

 

The company's benchmark test was designed to discover new antibiotics in the race between science and bacteria's ability to evolve. Their tests did not type the antibiotic produced by the Blob. Later studies, termed "dereplication trials" would serve to match the Blob's antibiotic with those already patented. It may be novel. It may not. If novel, patents could be pursued. To this end, they were willing to spend $50,000-$100,000 immediately on more tests.

 

Now it was our turn. They asked "What is it?" A long silence ensued. I hated telling them what little I knew. This was not my forte—mushrooms were. I secretly wished one of our mushroom strains would have garnished this much enthusiasm. I was noticeably uncomfortable.

 

I told them that, as best as we had been able to determine, from analyses by several independent mycologists, that the Blob was a polyculture of at least two yeasts and two bacteria, living synergistically.

 

The silence was deafening.

 

"Say what?"

 

Perplexed looks crossed their faces, soon followed by exasperated expressions of deep disappointment. Which of the organisms are producing the potentially novel antibiotic? Was it one or several? Was it one in response to the presence of another organism? Was it one in response to several organisms? The sheer numbers of permutations would complicate trials and given the FDA's disposition, a polyculture is de facto contaminated.

 

The meeting was abruptly adjourned. Soon thereafter, I received a bill for nearly $10,000 which fortunately, after much haggling, I didn't have to pay. I don't know if they did any more studies. I do know they have a living culture. Go figure.

[Talk to me about kombucha]

It seems like there was also a Northwest group that predated the Californians; mycologist Paul Stamets writes about being baffled by a hippie friend who in 1980 gave him a kombucha mother in a mason jar along with a tall tale about its mystical origins.

 

From The Manchurian Mushroom: My Adventures with the Blob, an article in the Winter 1994 edition of Mushroom:

 

 

I first was introduced to Kombucha around 1980 when a friend brought me a Mason jar filled with what might be best described as a close relative of the Blob. You know, that corny Sci-fi thriller from the 1950's starring, I think, a very young Steve McQueen. But this Blob seemed a bit more cohesive and since the lid was tightly screwed on, I felt secure from immediate attack.

 

He passed it on to me with some ceremony, even reverence, in a ritual that had been repeated for centuries. He called it a miracle cure that could fight cancer, slow or reverse the aging process, i.e. a panacea, a remedy for the ailments afflicting human kind. People in Tibet lived into their 100's because of it, he said. The cardinal rule was that it was a gift, never to be sold, but to be cared for and passed on freely to anyone willing to accept it. Anyone who profited from selling it would reap personal disaster and be doomed to a life of ill-fate.

Naturally skeptical, I looked at this gelatinized rubbery goop submerged in water and was completely baffled. What was it? "The Manchurian Mushroom", he replied, smiling enigmatically.

First off, I thought this Blob does not look like any mushroom I had seen - in culture or otherwise. I wondered if he was playing a practical joke. But his sincerity seemed real and he urged me to keep the Kombucha alive by giving it sugar, tea and water. "It came from Tibet" where "monks have used it for hundreds of years".

 

[. . .]

 

I called Dr. Daniel Stuntz at the University of Washington and asked him if he had heard of this thing. He hadn't. On my next visit to Seattle, I brought him one of the daughter colonies and told him very little about its history.

Naturally inquisitive, Dr. Stuntz took on the Kombucha as a low priority project. Weeks later, he told me it seemed to be a mixture of yeast and bacteria, somehow held together by a mucous membrane of unknown identity. He was totally baffled and asked more questions.

I told him what I could, hesitatingly, because of the extravagant claims. Years later, I heard from others in his laboratory that he was truly mystified, finding that the coexistence of yeasts and bacteria in this gelatinous matrix a highly unusual symbiosis.

[Talk to me about kombucha]

 The origin of the AIDS claim is a little murkier -- ads for kombucha culture started quietly showing up in the classified section of The Advocate (a popular LGBT-interest magazine) in the mid-90s, but the roots of the idea are more obscure.

 

A bit more digging leads to an update. :) The November 1994 issue of New Age Journal did a feature on kombucha that traced the connection back to an article in the August 1994 issue of Positive Living, the newsletter of the AIDS Project of Los Angeles, titled "Reborn on the 4th of July". The article was a profile of AIDS survivor Joe Lustig, a Long Island man who insisted that kombucha was the secret to his renewed lease on life. This created a local boom that helped fuel the growth of the early American kombucha groups.

[Talk to me about kombucha]

Eewww. That sounds disgusting. And they tout it is a cancer and AIDS cure?! Yep. Let's give some people with depressed immune systems a drink with a slew of uncontrolled bacteria and fungi in it. Sounds like a great plan. Sigh. I like they compare to drinking pond water in your link. That made me laugh.

 

Gaining a balanced view is a tedious process; sites like rationalwiki are often in it for the rush of the debunk, and it can show in their tone. :)

 

(Gustav Lindau, the German mycologist who introduced kombucha to the West)

 

Kombucha is a folk beverage first discovered in the Courland region of Latvia about 100 years ago. Despite its name, it is not Japanese. Most likely it is Russian or Manchurian.

 

The organisms used are not a random mish-mash, but their precise makeup has not been studied much by the scientific community; most brewers rely on folk knowledge to produce it, much like beer brewing before Pasteur and the other brewer microbiologists. This has sometimes lead to high-profile accidents, as people try to make it without training or knowing what to look for.

 

The cancer cure part is related to the modern American revival -- GT Dave, the first commercial manufacturer of ready-to-drink kombucha, used that as part of the marketing for his brand before the FDA told him to knock it off. The origin of the AIDS claim is a little murkier -- ads for kombucha culture started quietly showing up in the classified section of The Advocate (a popular LGBT-interest magazine) in the mid-90s, but the roots of the idea are more obscure.

 

In 1994, the New York Times tried to get to the root of the revival. According to Molly O'Neill's December 28th article, "A Magic Mushroom or a Toxic Fad?", it arrived in America by way of Austria, and quickly became a "California thing". :)

 

The American Kombucha vogue began in 1992 when Tom Valente [sic Tom Valentine], the publisher of Search for Health, a bimonthly magazine in Naples, Fla., touted its virtue to the 5,000 readers of his magazine. Mr. Valente became the American distributor of one of the few books on the subject, "Kombucha: Healthy Beverage and Natural Remedy From the Far East," by Gunther W. Frank (Wilhelm Ennsthaller, Austria, 1991).

 

Laurel Farms, the most visible of the commercial Kombucha cultivators, began growing and shipping the fungi in Los Angeles in 1994. Healthy customers are charged $50, the chronically ill $15. Each of the 400 slippery disks shipped monthly from Laurel Farms bear a sticker that reads "Expect a Miracle."

 

Supposedly GT's kombucha mother was indirectly from Laurel Farms -- the founder, Betsy Prior, shared it with Beverley Hills juice shop owner David Otto (or perhaps more likely he purchased a starter), who in turn shared it with GT Dave's father. :)

 

The Independent in the UK also had an article on kombucha a few months after the New York Times, "Grow Your Own Miracle Cure" by Edward Hellmore, that goes into more info on the provenance of the LA kombucha mother:

 

Apparently the roots of this cult can be traced back to a "well-known Hollywood producer who got it from Manchuria". Afficionados like to say this was in fact Tyler Moore. He in turn gave a piece to Sister Denise of the Brahma Kumaris Meditation Centre in Hollywood, who gave some to Sister Joan, who then passed it on to Betsy Pryor, co-owner of Laurel Farms, a leading commercial grower.

The "got it from Manchuria" part seems a little far-fetched -- I'm not really sure how kombucha fared in the region after the Sino-Soviet split and the Soviet collapse. (Personally, I would guess that they got the mother from Germany.)

[what is upper middle class to you?]

Interesting thought......... but most of the wealthier people I know irl are more liberal. Well, they tend to be socially liberal, fiscally conservative but overall, they lean left. Not far left but moderate left.

 

This might actually suggest that they are small-c conservative -- before the change in definitions caused by the Southern Strategy in the 1960s, Republican in the U.S. meant something more similar to Libertarian, in that folks were socially liberal (for the time) and fiscally conservative.

 

[what is upper middle class to you?]

Well, I think in real terms you are correct about land, and it will come home to roost.  I would say though that at the moment, economic power really does seem to have been divorced from land - your money will likely be more productive in banking than land ownership, or by having it tied up in a web of corporate interests. 

 

And I'd say that the patronage works in that direction as well to a large degree.  Your farmer may well be in quite a lot of trouble if he can't get a bank loan. 

 

I think it's an artificiality, the result, essentially, of usury throughout the system, and so ultimately unstable, but I think it has more to do with the power dynamics of the 20th and 21st centuries than land does.

 

That's true. In practice, a patronage-free lifestyle is very difficult in a usurious society, as there is always another patron waiting in line behind the last one. One reason I mentioned the hypothetical farmer owning their own well is that a common hidden patron is the water company -- a house without running water can be condemned (and therefore legally seized) in many areas.

 

An event that I found helpful for improving my understanding of the dynamics of this was the bankruptcy of Detroit -- many people who owned their own homes and thought they could sit tight through the disaster even though they didn't have any money coming in were proven wrong by various normally harmless mechanisms that became dangerous when the money stopped.

[I do not understand beer culture]

One thing that might help is to pull it apart a bit -- there is global beer culture, national beer culture, and then beer subcultures within it. Even though it is the same beer, in different places it plays a different role. A fun place that helped me start thinking about the subject was a short book called Passport to the Pub on the sociology of British pub drinking, designed with the foreign tourist in mind. :)

 

One possible reason might have to do with gender norms. In many places, men are socialized to see excessive chattiness as a weakness, even among friends. So when they find themselves in a situation where conversation is appropriate, somehow nobody seems to know how to begin. Beer acts as a social lubricant that loosens that inhibition. Why people go from chatty drunk to under-the-table drunk is maybe a more complicated question.

[Can we talk about the Brexit vote??]

​​

Not familiar with him, but that sounds like he never opened a history book.

 

Unpleasant jobs will always have job openings. Whether they pay well depends greatly. It might pay well or it might be slavery. Usually it's just reliable decent employment, which is no small thing to attain either.

​​

He was a Scottish economist -- definitely worth a read if that is an area that interests you. (His books, like The Wealth of Nations, are now all in the public domain.) Maybe my understanding of him is flawed; he was fairly well-read for his time.

 

​Here's the part I was thinking of:

​

​​​The wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or  dishonourableness of the employment. Thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman tailor earns less  than a journeyman weaver. His work is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith.  His work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier. A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom   earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a labourer, does in eight. His work is not quite so dirty, is  less dangerous, and is carried on in daylight, and above ground. Honour makes a great part of the reward of all  honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under- recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is  a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common  trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of  work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.

 

Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its  advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from  necessity. In the advanced state of society , therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade what  other people pursue as a pastime. Fishermen have been so since the time of Theocritus. A poacher is  everywhere a very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the  licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those employments makes more people  follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity,  comes always too cheap to market to afford anything but the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.

 

Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of labour. The   keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is exposed to the brutality of every  drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business. But there is scarce any common  trade in which a small stock yields so great a profit.

[Can we talk about the Brexit vote??]

But is that really true, or is it that British people don't want to do those jobs for the wages companies want to pay?  Normally then, if the market were controlling, companies would have to pay more or offer better benefits in order to get workers.  

 

In the US, for example, tech companies would rather have a foreign worker they can pay $50,000 a year than an American worker who expects to have decent housing in San Francisco and pay off college debt, and therefore expects to make $100,000 a year or more.  (Just throwing out these numbers.)  The idea that "no one wants these jobs" is sometimes an incomplete thought that really means "no one wants these jobs at what we want to pay".  

 

ETA cross posted similar thought above.

 

What interests me about this is that it seems to contradict Adam Smith's idea that risky or unpleasant jobs will always pay more than safe or pleasant jobs (that there will be a compensating differential).

​

​I guess the question I am curious about is why that would be so...

[Ethical question: Should I tell? UPDATE: I'm not gonna say anything. Thanks.]

That does sound tough... a subdivision covenant sounds kind of like a social contract; maybe Jean-Jacques Rousseau will have better advice than me. :) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46333/46333-h/46333-h.htm#CONTENTS

[what is upper middle class to you?]

It will probably change again dramatically in the next 50 years with the rise of tech billionaires.  Their grandchildren will be raised with unheard of money, and likely be much more politically liberal than previous generations with inherited wealth.

 

That will definitely be an interesting scenario. My guess is that those with East Coast ties will be absorbed into the Eastern Establishment -- if the company was founded by an Ivy League dropout, populated by MIT grads, and financed through NYC venture capital, there will be a steady pull back East, even if the company is based in the West.

 

The really interesting ones will be those without East Coast ties -- companies founded by Stanford dropouts, populated by Caltech grads, financed through Silicon Valley venture capital. Will they still strive for the soft power markers of the Eastern upper class, or will they create their own mythology?

 

As far as unheard of money, I think it's important to keep in mind inflation -- sometimes it's hard to describe just how rich the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age really were.

[Where is the best place to buy an unlocked iPhone 5?]

 

The fun answer would be Huaqiangbei (åŽå¼ºåŒ—),  one of the world's largest electronics markets 10 miles outside of Hong Kong. :) The Guardian did a photo-tour of a small part of it recently.

 

The realistic answer is probably Ebay. Just make sure you purchase from a reputable seller, to avoid counterfeits and stolen goods.

[S/O class and wealth]

This is kind of an advice or suggestion post.

 

Dh and I love traveling, it is our main priority in life. We make ok money, squarely middle class, our debt to income ratio is very low and we are saving a bit for college and retirement, we even have a decent emergency fun. BUT I want to save more so we can travel more. Dh was raised middle class and is very frugal and a great saver. I am not, I was on the edge of povert and homelessness through my late childhood and teens. I like to shop and buy things but I want an epiphany or something to help me get into the mindset that saving and going without occasionally means more trips abroad. I know all the general money saving tips, I do some of them, but it really is more about my own mindset, if that makes sense.

 

Books? A podcast? Have you ever really read anything that just sunk in and stuck with you?

 

A book that really helped me was Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, about his life and thoughts on the future. Your mileage may vary -- I think it's in the public domain now, though, so the cost of the read would only be your time. (A copy is up on the Internet Archive.)

[what is upper middle class to you?]

Which is interesting because that is what Brits know about our own class system, but we tend to think that the US version is indeed about money.

 

So if someone came from inherited money, went to Harvard but ended up sweeping the streets and living in really rough accommodation, what class would they be?

 

Upper class if they started out upper class. They would simply change the definition of what was considered a successful lifestyle to aspire towards. Most likely being a street-sweeper would be seen as bohemian, a "cool" rejection of norms rather than a mark of poverty, sort of like working as a barista was once seen.

 

A similar thing happened in the 70s with carpentry, if I recall correctly, with upper class kids taking the "Jesus was a carpenter" line and deciding that the perfect place to find themselves was working in carpentry. This was part of a larger "blue collar chic" movement that Tom Wolfe described fairly well in his Rolling Stone essay, "Funky Chic":

 

Funky Chic came skipping and screaming into the United States the following year in the form of such marvelous figures as the Debutante in Blue Jeans. She was to be found on the fashion pages in every city of any size in the country. There she is in the photograph... wearing her blue jeans and her blue work shirt, open to the sternum, with her long pre-Raphaelite hair parted on top of the skull, uncoiffed but recently washed and blown dry with a Continental pro-style dryer (the word-of-mouth that year said the Continental gave her more "body") ... and she is telling her interviewer:

 

"We're not having any 'coming-out balls' this year or any 'deb parties' or any of that. We're fed up with doing all the same old things, which are so useless, and seeing the same old faces and dancing to so-called society bands while a lot of old ladies in orange-juice-colored dresses stand around the edges talking to our parents. We're tired of cotillions and hunt cups and smart weekends. You want to know what I did last weekend? I spent last weekend at the day-care center, looking after the most beautiful black children ... and learning from them!"

 

It also might be worth pointing out that there is a connection between the British-style class system and the American upper-class; remember, they have historically been Anglophiles.

 

This is a long-standing divide that goes back to the roots of the country -- J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur noticed the roots of this divide way back in his 18th century Letters from an American Farmer:

 

The next wish of this traveller will be to know whence came all these people? they are mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans have arisen. The eastern provinces must indeed be excepted, as being the unmixed descendants of Englishmen. I have heard many wish that they had been more intermixed also: for my part, I am no wisher, and think it much better as it has happened. They exhibit a most conspicuous figure in this great and variegated picture; they too enter for a great share in the pleasing perspective displayed in these thirteen provinces. I know it is fashionable to reflect on them, but I respect them for what they have done; for the accuracy and wisdom with which they have settled their territory; for the decency of their manners; for their early love of letters; their ancient college, the first in this hemisphere; for their industry; which to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of everything. There never was a people, situated as they are, who with so ungrateful a soil have done more in so short a time. Do you think that the monarchical ingredients which are more prevalent in other governments, have purged them from all foul stains? Their histories assert the contrary.

 

In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequence of various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! urged by a variety of motives, here they came. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegitative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil lists of their country, except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens.

 

In New England there was a core group who were really more-or-less fine with Old England in a new place, with maybe a one-time redo. As one headed South and West, you ended up with more melting pot ideologues. So the two ideologies have existed in the U.S. since almost its founding.

 

Why the old New England view became more dominant over time is a more complex question.

[what is upper middle class to you?]

I'm not sure that's really what the landscape looks like these days though.  certainly I don't think the old/new money thing is significant in many cases - old money in many places has, if it didn't get in bed with new money, lost a lot of its power.

 

Realistically though I agree with your sense about land ownership, or I would probably say ownership of your job/income/means of production, if we want to put that kind of control into the definition of middle class, we would have to talk in entirely different terms, because their really wouldn't be one.  Very few, even in the upper middle class group, own their job or their home, or see any necessity to do so.  The group that does have that control, and  has its importance as part of their culture, tends to be the wealthy, or sometimes special communities within the middle class.

 

The traditional picture of Old Money does change -- some have argued this has already happened demographically, if not culturally. However, much like the One Ring from Tolkein's stories, soft power as a tool typically just changes hands rather than being destroyed. :)

 

Success in America may no longer be defined by an Ivy League degree, an Anglophile attitude, and a preference for the arts rather than the trades, but success as a cultural concept hasn't gone away; if you find who controls it in the popular imagination without being controlled by it themselves, you've found the new upper class.

 

I suppose the reason I focus on land rather than income or job ownership is because it is tied to all three inelastic demands: food, water, and shelter. A person can't eat money when they are starving, even if they own the printing press. So in any sort of bargaining situation, whoever controls the inelastic demand will always have the upper hand.

 

The way we usually first see this in the States is through housing costs. The fantastical housing costs in certain places like San Francisco or New York City show that even making quite a bit of money does not necessarily make someone immune to their landlord; the landlord can always raise housing costs to match the new salary.

 

With ownership of the job, it goes back to patronage; if a farmer holds an unpopular opinion and  his neighbors refuse to buy his crops, he can simply eat them himself and remain a poor farmer living on his own land. If a business-operator holds an unpopular opinion and his neighbors refuse to buy his products, the landlord and debt-collectors will soon be on his tail. The business owner's livelihood depends on patronage -- his landlord's patronage directly, his customers indirectly. That makes him working-class, no matter how rich.

[what is upper middle class to you?]

I'm not at all aware that Paul Fussell (not Flussell) wrote anything as a parody.  Class might be funny and somewhat outdated, and his insistence that the Class X was above the other classes was a bit self-serving, but he was taken seriously in academic circles, having taught at Rutgers and the University of Pennsylvania.  I was assigned two books of his in separate classes in college.  One was Class.

 

If I remember correctly the gist of that book is that there are three main groups of classes, and your income can be anywhere on the spectrum - low to high - in either of the three groups.

 

Thanks for the catch -- I always typo his name for some reason. :-) I think the reason I saw it as a parody was the over-serious tone combined with the silly illustrations:

 

[what is upper middle class to you?]

Another good source for historical context might be The Middle-Class Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) by Molière, which talks about this issue from a 17th century French perspective. Maybe a fun play to watch or read if you are looking for more points of view.

[what is upper middle class to you?]

I'm curious where you come up with your definitions. Most people identify amount of money with class level. Most people do not identify importance of status symbols with class level. It seems like such a strange way to classify people. I honestly can't think of anyone in any income range who gives status symbols much importance. People want a better way of life, and for most people, that's a safe, attractive home, good education for the kids, healthcare, time to enjoy life/hobbies/interests. For most people it's NOT a BMW or designer shoes. I think for a lot of us, class level reflects how easy/hard it is to acquire the things that truly matter (not designer shoes).

 

A couple interesting books on the subject:

 

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Flussell. Written as a "ha ha only serious" parody, which seems like a good way to approach a sensitive subject. The particular sociological markers are dated, of course, and were exaggerated for parody's sake, but still a good introduction to different ways to think about social class in a "classless" society, provided you can see it as a point-of-view rather than a guidebook.

 

Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America by Nelson W. Aldrich. An obtuse writing style, but the best book I have ever read on the distinction between upper class and upper middle class from an American perspective. A good mix of the personal and intellectual, as Mr. Aldrich uses examples from his own upbringing and family history to help explain the larger system.

[And now for the latest episode of "Trying to improve our situation"]

Has he checked out MIT OpenCourseWare? Some of the more prestigious tech universities now have endowments large enough that they are willing to provide some very positive public services, like OpenCourseWare.

 

The thing to remember with learning computer languages is that the career path for them is distinct from normal languages. For a normal language, you'd maybe learn French, and then spend your time deepening your knowledge of grammar and vocabulary while keeping an eye on the latest slang and jargon. With computer languages that will likely lead to career stagnation -- there is limited demand for even the most expert Pascal developer.

 

The way careers with computer languages work is more by the family -- sort of like if instead of learning everything about French, you studied the principles of Romance Languages, and hopped between a working but non-exhaustive knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese depending on which country happened to have the most political power at the time; then when Esperanto unexpectedly bursts on the scene, you can be the Esperanto "expert" too without much difficulty, using that as a stepping-stone into Slavic languages.

[what is upper middle class to you?]

Putting an upper limit on the upper middle class seems misleading to me, because the difference between the upper class and the middle class isn't money -- it's soft power. They used to call this the Old Money / New Money divide.

 

The Old Money upper class wasn't necessarily richer than the New Money upper middle class, but they had more power, because they controlled things money couldn't buy. Marxists would say that they had "cultural hegemony" -- they controlled the definition of success. Consider accents -- in America, people with British accents are often seen as more educated than foreigners with other accents, regardless of their actual educations. This is because the American upper class has historically been Anglophile. Or travel -- migrant laborers and refugees who move from country to country do quite a bit of travel, but they are never called globe-trotters or adventurers, even if they visit the same countries as globe-trotters or adventurers. A person might gladly post photos on social media of drinking Campari at a cafe in Rome, but would be ashamed to post photos washing dishes in the kitchen of that same cafe. The travel is the same, but not the same -- the difference is in soft power.

 

The same is true with a lower limit, as the floor of the middle class is being a landowner debt-free. The poor farmer who has no money whatsoever to his name but who owns where he sleeps unconditionally, owns their own well, and grows enough food that hunger is never a concern, is middle class, even though their lifestyle would be one of middle-class poverty. The reason they still count as middle class is because fundamentally they can always afford to say no -- their basic life needs are already met. They have food, water, and shelter that cannot be taken away from them legally. So when they come to the bargaining table, they have the ability to walk away if the terms are unfavorable; they'll work for money, not for peanuts -- they can grow their own.

 

If they lose that land, they become working class. This is true even if they are quite wealthy -- their existence depends on the patronage of others, and if that patronage goes away, there is nothing to fall back on.

[Can we talk about the Brexit vote??]

Maybe interesting for historical context, here's an audio lecture from 1972 debating the advantages and disadvantages of Britain entering the European Union (Brentrance?): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h64zg

[Is a BA worth anything now?]

Payscale has done some research into this over the past few years. What they found is that often where the degree is from is more important than what it is about. In the same way that even 100 Hong Kong dollars are not worth 20 U.S. dollars, despite both being dollars, a "useless" degree from a Harvard or Stanford often gets a person further than a practical degree from a Chicago State.

 

(Not sure how reliable they are anymore, as certain schools have drastically shot upwards in ROI since the initial reports, which makes me suspect they've figured out how to play to the metrics.)

 

I think this feature of education is often ignored because it seems wrong, somehow -- education is supposed to be the great equalizer, after all. When a desire for something unpleasant not to be true is combined with a financial incentive, you sometimes end up with schools that aren't willing to go into the hard numbers on whether a degree will pay for itself, even if the education has other non-financial rewards.