Class, Status, Prada

Matthew Yglesias is unhappy with the New York Times:

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/05/huh.html: I'm glad someone decided to write about class in America -- an important subject -- but the Times's first take is just filled with baffling assertions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html?pagewanted=print: There was a time when Americans thought they understood class. The upper crust vacationed in Europe and worshiped an Episcopal God. The middle class drove Ford Fairlanes, settled the San Fernando Valley and enlisted as company men. The working class belonged to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., voted Democratic and did not take cruises to the Caribbean. Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents. Social diversity has erased many of the old markers. It has become harder to read people's status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin. The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared....

Why does it appear that class is fading as a force in American life? For one thing, it is harder to read position in possessions. Factories in China and elsewhere churn out picture-taking cellphones and other luxuries that are now affordable to almost everyone. Federal deregulation has done the same for plane tickets and long-distance phone calls. Banks, more confident about measuring risk, now extend credit to low-income families, so that owning a home or driving a new car is no longer evidence that someone is middle class.

Obviously, those things are happening. But if you can't tell who owns the expensive stuff and who owns the less expensive stuff you're not paying very much attention. Surely we all know the difference between a really fancy car and a less-fancy one, no? A gigantic house and a small house?

I think Matthew has misread Janny Scott and David Leonhardt. They are, I believe, trying to make three points: (a) consumption is more "middle class" than ever before, so that (b) it appears as though class is unimportant, but (c) in reality choosing the right parents matters more than ever in America today:

The economic advantage once believed to last only two or three generations is now believed to last closer to five.... [I]n the past, Professor Solon added, "people would say, 'Don't worry about inequality. The offspring of the poor have chances as good as the chances of the offspring of the rich.' Well, that's not true. It's not respectable in scholarly circles anymore to make that argument." One study, by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, found that fewer families moved from one quintile, or fifth, of the income ladder to another during the 1980's than during the 1970's and that still fewer moved in the 90's than in the 80's. A study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics also found that mobility declined from the 80's to the 90's.

The incomes of brothers born around 1960 have followed a more similar path than the incomes of brothers born in the late 1940's, researchers at the Chicago Federal Reserve and the University of California, Berkeley, have found. Whatever children inherit from their parents - habits, skills, genes, contacts, money - seems to matter more today.... But there is broad consensus about what an optimal range of mobility is. It should be high enough for fluid movement between economic levels but not so high that success is barely tied to achievement and seemingly random.... [T]here should remain an incentive for parents to cultivate their children. "Most people are working very hard to transmit their advantages to their children," said David I. Levine, a Berkeley economist and mobility researcher. "And that's quite a good thing."

One surprising finding about mobility is that it is not higher in the United States than in Britain or France. It is lower here than in Canada and some Scandinavian countries but not as low as in developing countries like Brazil, where escape from poverty is so difficult that the lower class is all but frozen in place.... [T]he United States differs from Europe in ways that can gum up the mobility machine. Because income inequality is greater here, there is a wider disparity between what rich and poor parents can invest in their children. Perhaps as a result, a child's economic background is a better predictor of school performance in the United States than in Denmark, the Netherlands or France, one recent study found.

"Being born in the elite in the U.S. gives you a constellation of privileges that very few people in the world have ever experienced," Professor Levine said. "Being born poor in the U.S. gives you disadvantages unlike anything in Western Europe and Japan and Canada."

This argument--that rising standards of living as a whole are making it appear that class is unimportant while in fact class matters more than ever--is an old one. It is one of the centerpieces of George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier. Orwell is distressed by the consumption of "cheap " by the relatively poor. He thinks: The system is taking advantage of the relatively poor by enabling them to consume commodities that they think are luxuries, but that in fact are not or are no longer so. It is conning them.

In the middle of the Great Depression in Britain, Orwell expected that the economic catastrophe would bring dismay, discontent, protest, and revolt. Yet it did not do so. Why? Orwell thought that even though "whole sections of the working class... have been plundered of all they really need" by high unemployment, they had also been "compensated... by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life": fish and chips, artificial-silk stockings, tinned salmon, cut-price chocolates, movies, radio, tea.

Note the words: "palliative," "mitigate," "surface." Orwell is in the final analysis not pleased at all by the fact that:

the youth... for two pounds ten on [installments]... can buy himself a suit which... at a... distance looks... tailored on Saville Row. The girl can look like a fashion plate at an even lower price.... [I]n your new clothes you can stand on the corner, indulging in a private daydream of yourself as Clark Gable or Greta Garbo."

For Orwell writing in the 1930s this pattern of cheap middle-class consumption masks the reality--that the working class has lost relative income, relative wealth, and relative power. It makes tolerable what should not be tolerated: that the upper class has much too large a share of the pie.

Part of what is going on is that it is a mistake to say that the shop-girl of today has the same standard of living as a duchess of a century ago because the key element of being a duchess is being exceptional. To the extent that goods are valued not for the services they provide by themselves but as indices of exclusivity, it is pointless to produce them for more people because then they become less exclusive and so less valuable. Paul Krugman, for example, has placed himself on Orwell’s side: he would rather be middle-class in the fifties than working poor in the nineties-—even though the material standard of living of America's working poor in 1990 is higher than that of America's middle class in 1950. He:

know[s] quite a few academics who have nice houses, two cars, and enviable working conditions, yet are disappointed and bitter because they have never received a [job] offer from Harvard and will probably not get a Nobel Prize. The live very well... but they judge themselves relative to their reference group, and so they feel deprived. And on the other hand, it is an open secret that the chief payoff from being really rich is, as Tom Wolfe once put it, the pleasure of "seeing ‘em jump." Privilege is not merely a means to other ends, it is an end in itself.

It may be a very big mistake to think that human happiness is necessarily and significantly increased by piling up larger and larger heaps of material goods. Richard Easterlin in his Growth Triumphant points to evidence from public-opinion surveys that suggests that money does not buy happiness over time or across countries, and believes (though I think he is wrong) that people are no happier in the U.S. today than they are in India today, or were in the U.S. a century ago. Happiness is attained when you achieve your dreams and solve your problems. Material abundance helps you do so, but it also teaches you to dream bigger dreams and pose yourself more complicated problems. Easterlin thus concludes that modern economic growth is a "hollow victory": the "triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity."

On the other hand, it may not be a very big mistake to think that human happiness consists in expanding our powers and capabilities to accomplish things (not the least of which are maintaining our comfort and satisfying our curiosity), and that wealth is a powerful tool to those ends. There is a standard American response to the claim that money doesn't buy happiness: "Your money doesn't buy you happiness? Then send it all to me. It will help buy me mine."

Comments

[anne]

Excellent post :)

[Walt Pohl]

Money does not buy happiness. It buys _power_.

[pebird]

Can we get back to the classic definition of middle class - owning some piece of income producing property?

It is NOT an income-based definition. We can say middle-income, lower-income, high-income, stratospheric-income, win-the-lottery-50-times-income, BillGatesian-like-income. But class is property ownership based.

Now, the middle "class" gets to owns income-sucking liabilities - mortgages, retirements, health care, education, transportation.

We don't want to talk about the disapperance of the middle class (small property owners, farmers, shopkeepers, small businesses, landlords) - because we would only have 2 classes left. Oops. Instead, we have the NYT quoting someone who makes $150K a year saying she's "upper class".

If it wasn't for low class there wouldn't be no class at all.

[Nick]

It buys power? What does power buy you? Happines? LOL

[Tom Marney]

No, it buys gratification.

[Nick]

Oops, I meant to say that the last comment was in response to Walt Pohl.

As for the blog entry, all I can say is BRAVO! It's an outstanding topic and I think the NY Times did an excellent job.

Just as Krugman correctly pointed out, the importance of goods and services aren't the consumption themselves, but the exclusivity. Orwell was aghast because what had previously been only attainable by his peers (i.e., the elite) was now, in ersatz, being purchased by the lower classes. It was the vulgarization of upper class exlusivity.

Would you rather be a duke or duchess in 1550 or would you rather be middle class today? If you subscribe to Mr. Orwell and Krugman, then you'd choose the duchess every single time.

Which I guess makes me crazy, because I don't care what the Jones are driving, nor what the political elites are consuming. It's all wasted energy to sit here and stress out about the fact that my keyboard here isn't the best money can buy. Or that I only got one job offer from Harvard and not two.

In fact, what Orwell and Krugman are stating is that what makes people happy is seeing themselves as better off than those around them. By saying that he prefers being the Duke, who is poor by today's standards, Krugman says he's only happy if he thinks others around him are worse off than he is. I'm aghast. I'm incredibly disappointed. I'm not saying my opinion of Krugman is irrevocably altered but here is a scion for the left coming down hard on the side of arch-reactionary materialist "pettyism". I'm speechless.

It would follow from what they (Krugman and Orwell) say that no matter what you give people, they're insatiable and will want more. It's a very depressing disparagement of humankind's potential for happiness... But the silverlining might be that if inequalities are eliminated, then maybe happiness is also improved. People would not have to see that someone else has more than they do. There would be less envy of those that drive a nicer car or vacation to nicer locations. But how depressing to have to reduce everything to the least common denominator.

And in fact, if Krugman's view is really the prevalent one, then I propose that an egalitarian society is an unhappy society. Because how could you be happy unless those around you are worse off than yourself? I can't believe I just wrote that. I need to go shower to clean off the feeling of filth of this whole episode. UGH!

[Susan]

Great piece. I get tired of people running around thinking we're all wealthy because we have so much crap

[P O'Neill]

The WSJ also did a mobility story on Friday. Less focus on anecdotes, more on where the evidence stands. They even got Gary Becker to say

>>
"I do believe that it's still true if you come from a modest background it's easier to move ahead in the U.S. than elsewhere," he says, "but the more data we get that doesn't show that, the more we have to accept the conclusions."

[pebird]

Nick - you've got to read the posts. Krugman would rather be middle class in the 1950's (not 1550's) than working poor today. You must be pretty young - the 1950's weren't caveman times. Nothing about dukes or duchesses (but that's a good try). Krugman was actually criticising the culture of resentment. Granted, it's not entirely clear from the context of the quote Brad extracted.

Your most revealing line was "...no matter what you give people...". Yes, what people earn are actually GIVEN to them. Perhaps it is you that wishes to return to the time of Dukes and Duchesses.

[masaccio]

Here is my favorite quote from the article:

A few sociologists go so far as to say that social complexity has made the concept of class meaningless. Conventional big classes have become so diverse - in income, lifestyle, political views - that they have ceased to be classes at all, said Paul W. Kingston, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. To him, American society is a "ladder with lots and lots of rungs."

"There is not one decisive break saying that the people below this all have this common experience," Professor Kingston said. "Each step is equal-sized. Sure, for the people higher up this ladder, their kids are more apt to get more education, better health insurance. But that doesn't mean there are classes."

What he apparently means is this:

" Kingston's recent work has been directed to the question, "Are there classes?" The Classless Society (Stanford University Press) draws on a large body of research to demonstrate that presumed 'classes' are diverse in family backgrounds, divided in their political and cultural orientations, and unconnected byt common sentiments or interaction. And so class theory fails, he argues. This critique draws a sharp distinction between class structure and inequality (a persistant reality) and insists on a realist conception of class that treats class structuration as a multidimensional variable.

found here:
http://www.virginia.edu/sociology/peopleofsociology/pkingston.htm

The series cannot be off on a good footing if the reporters cannot figure out how to translate his actual views to the printed page. Kingston clearly thinks that income is not a proxy for class. Whether he thinks that there are other markers is unclear.

[Aaron Friedman]

In reply to those (like Nick) who think relative status unimportant, Robert Frank has a brilliant analogy in "Choosing the Right Pond" (1985, pp. 116):

"Perhaps those high-income readers who do not consider their current high relative standing that important will find it illuminating to consider a simple thought experiment. In this experiment you are to imagine yourself in the following situation: As a high-income resident of the United States, you are suddenly confronted with an opportunity to be transported to a much richer planet. The trip is to be free of charge, but with no option to return.

"You are a genuine standout here on Earth. You earn $100,000 per year and live in a tastefully decorated home in a quiet, fashionable neighborhood. Your children are enrolled in the best schools and are very popular among their classmates. You are happily married to a person you hold in high esteem, who regards you likewise. You are a person of integrity, a highly respected expert in your profession, and are in good health. You enjoy peace of mind and the admiration and affection of a large groupd of friends, who regard you as one of the most charming and caring people they know.

"On the new planet your income would be $1,000,000 per year. But instead of being near the top of the income scale as you are here, you would be at the bottom. The home you would be able to afford there is much larger and better appointed than the one you live in here. Yet it is located in a marginal neighborhood, one that people urge their children not to venture into. You would pursue the same occupation there as you do here. But the people on the new planet are so skilled that they regard your profession in the way we think of repetitive, assembly tasks here. The schools your children would go to there compare very favorably with the ones they go to here, but among schools on the new planet they are thought to be ill-equipped and poorly staffed. Although your children will amass more knowledge in those schools than they do in the ones here, they will struggle on the academic borderline, instead of bringing home A's as they do here. Although your children are much sought after by their classmates here, you will discover on the new planet that most parents attempt to steer their children to more suitable playmates. You will recount the same anecdotes there as you do here, but your friends there will regard them as simple and boring, instead of clever and erudite as your friends here regard them. Although your spouse will love you equally there as here, you know that, once there, he or she cannot fail to notice how the achievements of others surpass your own."

So which would you choose? High relative status provide so much respect that it's easily worth the $900,000 opportunity cost you pay by staying on your original planet, isn't it? As for those immigrants today who choose, for economic reasons, to become American poor instead of Central American middle class -- well, they expect their children to rise up in relative status. And they often return to their country of origin to lord it over those who stayed behind.

[wkwillis]

Republicans have to use quintiles so that social mobility doesn't look so bad. Moving from the top of the bottom quintile to the bottom of the top quintile is equivalent to working overtime one day a week.
Moving up two levels from the 1/4/15/60/15/4/1 pareto groups is much harder than moving from the bottom of the 60 centiles in the middle pareto group to the top of the 60 centiles in the middle pareto group.
Figure that the economic pareto groups are
1% jail, asylum
4% permanent welfare, disability
15% temporary welfare, Mcdonalds work
60% the people of this country
15% nurses, foremen, plumbers, machinists, engineers
4% doctors, engineers pre2000, managers, store owners
1% executives, small businessmen
Social mobility is moving from a nurse to a doctor, or from ordinary employee to a foreman.
Not many people move from temporary welfare to foreman, very few from welfare to manager, and almost none from welfare to executive.

[Robert Waldmann]

excellent post and you get a prize for quoting something from "The Road to Wigan Pier" other than the bit about the socialist in tight green pants and how the word "socialism" has a sort of magnetic attraction for pacifics begitarians and other loonies. This was quoted by Norman Podhoretz (no surprise) and Robert Coles (haven't we all quoted that passage).

Orwell's hatred of cheap luxuries was not just based on the sense that they were distractions. He absolutely loathed the desire to be middle class as much as anything (except the desire to be upper class). In "The Road to Wigan Pier" he also lamented that the atmosphere of the home of a union leader seemed middle class. Orwell the egalitarian was supported by Orwell the puritan detester of luxury illusory or otherwise.

There are some tensions in your post. You interpret Orwell as thinking that the poor are tricked into thinking they are middle class. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt seem to agree and similarly lament. Matt is young and hip and in Adams Morgan so he has a sharp eye for real luxury. I guess one could say that working class Americans are tricked into thinking they are upper middle class, but Yglesias and Orwell being upper upper middle class and lower upper middle class respectively can see that they are being scammed.

Still if consumption doesn't matter and just the impression of ones relative standing matters, such a scam would be fine. I mean why should we care that someone has a Saville row suit if everyone thinks they have a suit just about as good ? If it's all about the illusion of class, not material wealth, then there is nothing the matter with Kansas after all.

[Mark Thoma]

“Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.”

“In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, some-what indefinite, conventional standard of wealth; just as in the earlier predatory stage it is necessary for the barbarian man to come up to the tribe’s standard of physical endurance, cunning, and skill at arms. A certain standard of wealth in the one case, and of prowess in the other, is a necessary condition of reputability, and anything in excess of this normal amount is meritorious. Those members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat indefinite, normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the esteem of their fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in their own esteem, since the usual basis of self-respect is the respect accorded by one’s neighbours. Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of their fellows. Apparent exceptions to the rule are met with, especially among people with strong religious convictions. But these apparent exceptions are scarcely real exceptions, since such persons commonly fall back on the putative approbation of some supernatural witness of their deeds. So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the complacency which we call self-respect. In any community where goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others with whom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess something more than others. But as fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier standard did…”

Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

[Doug]

As long as the middle class has a big screen TV, cable TV and a comfortable couch to watch NASCAR then they don't care about the upper class or who is in the White House. COMPLACENCY!

[Thomas T. Schweitzer]

Brad:
here we go around the same old block for the umpteenth time. How many times has this sort of question appeared on your blog in the last three years?
To repeat myself: Happiness (in the material sense) does not depend on the size of real disposable income; it depends on the real disposable income you receive, compared to the one you expected. But expectations get revised on the basis of past experience. Therefore permanent Happiness is not possible. Also, our profession knows deplorably little about how expectations are formed. It ought to be the subject of (several) major research projects...

[david]

That Gary Becker quote above has to be made up. Brilliant.

I had a student from Newport Beach tell me this semester that "Veblen really makes sense. He's, like, really, like, talking about where I grew up." Kids say the darndest things and all, but I was pleased.

[Carol]

Middle class, lower class etc probably don't matter much to most of the occupants thereof, if they can make ends meet in a reasonable manner and can get their children educated, and their health needs met. Social mobility is something aspired to mostly by those aspiring to it, and not really by most occupants of any social stratum.

Most "class" structure is about power relations, and the feeling that you have more power than someone else. Power symbols (cars, clothes, etc) are used to signal that the owner thereof has power (in our society lots and lots of money). If the owner thereof has power, the persons relating to that owner are to cater to the owner's whims and desires, regardless of how stupid, idiotic or crazy they are. For example, in the military, the pay scale of officers is relatively flat compared to that of business enterprises. But the accoutrements of power are much more obvious, and the height of the leaps those in lower strata are to accomplish is gauged by the panoply of regalia on the officer's uniform. The power relationships in the military are obvious.

It is no wonder that the powerful are horrified when one of their class rejects the symbols of power and decides to wear cheap clothes and drive cheap cars, and work among the powerless. That person is "demeaning him/herself" and a traitor to the power class. You have people born into the power class who can be very poor, but they will struggle endlessly to maintain the illusion of power, just so that people will respect them for the power they have.

I am sure I could fish out enough Veblen or Galbraith to say that in an even denser and more otiose fashion.

[Thomas T. Schweitzer]

When I first arrived to Canada from Stalinist Hungary, in early 1953, my first job was working for minimum wages, inverting 7*7 matrices on an oldfashioned Frieden electric (not electronic) calculator, and was deliriously happy. Today I would not be happy with that type of work, even at three times that pay. But if my current income would be tripled I would be happy: I could finance my grandsons' university tuitions.

[Padraig]

Anyone else notice the wierdness in the article about how we don't want so much social mobility that success is purely probabilistic? It's completely backwards: right NOW success is probabilistic, since it's based on birth. Complete social mobility would pretty much HAVE to mean meritocracy, otherwise how would people move from one class to another? It's like saying we don't want so much free trade that the barriers to trade get too high.

Also, to quote Adult Swim: "What's better than being rich and getting laid? ... Staying poor and getting laid."

[shah8]

Man, I think some people really miss the point here...

Orwell is angry at the tendency of people to confuse material wealth with self sufficiency. He is talking about how people are satisfied with the benefits of industrial society and easily distracted by the baubles it brings. You have to make this distinction: Better schools, better health care, or cable tv, SUV, or jacuzzi. The choices that people makes affects the kind of society we might live in. An egalitarian like Orwell wants maximum social mobility. In order to get maximum social mobility, the important things, like education and health care, etc, etc *must* be spread in quality as widely as possible. However, Orwell is fustrated about the general human need to keep up with the Jones and the logic of conspicuous consumption.

So long as people chase after the *trappings* of wealth instead of the source of wealth, the "bling" will hold them down, from the cost to maintain it, and the debt required to own it. This makes people as a class *much* easier to manage than a mass of people with more independent sources of wealth.

Nonwithstanding the dystopian implications of materialist society (drifting towards fascism/communism), Orwell also probably resents how vicious people get over fairly meaningless things. From shooting students over sneakers to forcing the poor to pay for medicaid, much of the people who have a little more than the working class and the impoverished classes can act pretty determined to preserve alot of illusions, that they have the things the rich have. This can make any notion that there is a nobility to the human spirit a laughable notion. Which is not a little depressing.

[peeperkorn]

Yes, an excellent post.

When talk comes round to class, the result is so often superficial. People you think would have made a serious study of it (economists etc.) dissapoint by rehashing ideas we absorbed as youths. I don't know much better -- I'm just saying I don't need an expert to inform me that "America is the land of opportunity" in 500 words. Brad (by contrast) goes right ahead to tricky business, thankfully.

[Jonathan Lundell]

Thomas Schweitzer: of course, if incomes generally tripled, it'd no doubt have a significant effect on your grandsons' tuition rates.

There's an interesting study from the US Dept of Education (blogged here: http://lobitos.net/wordpress/?p=34) suggesting that school performance is largely determined by factors that are already fixed at birth (parents' education, income, age, etc) and almost not at all by bootstrap-pullling.

How much does that figure in intergenerational class mobility?

[tante aime]

Robert Rubin, of former Clinton Era fame, has made the same historical abstract in his recent lecture at UC.

Most interesting was his graph of 20%-ile income versus
time, when expressed as a percentile of income itself
(normalized, for statisticians). All percentiles grew
more or less equally until just after the post VietNam
recession. Then, after Reagan came into office, the
upper 1/5th percentile of income took off by leaps.

Rubin's interrogatory was this? Would the rubberband
snap back, (would the percentile gaps close), or would
the rubberband break, and the US:global economy crash?

The answer lies, of course, within that upper 1/5th.
The real upper 1/5th of the 1/5th, the upper 1/25th,
the top 4% of income growers, capital gains and estate
tax exemptionistas, whose wealth, if we were to fathom
it in our own lives would simply be incomprehensible.

Imagine earning $250,000 a *day* in salary, not counting your investment returns! The upper crust earn that kind of money. You could buy a Rolls Royce every week of the year then give it away, endlessly, and still have more wealth left when you retired, than any five generations of your heirs could spend, even if they never worked a day in their lives, even if they multiply like rabbits.

And that's the whole point. Multiplication divides.

Once you go from equity cash investment into leveraged
investment, once you derivatize and optionize investment, the lever of asset multiplication becomes geometrical. Find any single resource stream, the most miniscule junior share of any monopolized, globalized
asset or income, and the wealth so generated is beyond
comprehension, even as the asset generators, the
workers and the machines, verge on paupery.

Then come the inflation basis that destroys all money
value, the cruel twist to Rubin's well-dressed poor,
saving barely 0.7% of their income now, savings that
are declining in any real value towards some ultimate
asymptote fast approaching. Very fast approaching.

A sinking ship drowns the steerage class, and throws
the middle class into the freezing wild seas, even as
the elites are gilding their lifeboats, tax-free,
and planning to carry off the SSTF with them.

Yet it all looks good on paper.

http://www.sagecapital.com/Archiv/050420_Corrigan_paper.pdf

[Julian Elson]

A hypothesis:

Absolute material status doesn't matter much to the rich, but it does matter a lot to the poor. As a result, absolute economic growth is good for the poor, but pretty much neutral for the rich.

Say both rich and poor people have utility functions that are functions of "absolute wealth" and "status." Rich people's utility is already asymptotic to a maximum with respect to "absolute wealth." Their "status" isn't maxed, though. Poor people have utility functions in which both increases in "absolute wealth" and increases in "status" add substantially to their utility.

Politically, this means that the rich won't care one way or the other about economic growth. All of their efforts will be directed toward increasing their share, either as individuals, as interests (e.g. steel manufacturers, foodstuff wholesalers), or as a class. The poor will probably care more about increasing their share than about increasing economic growth, (after all, that increases both their absolute wealth and their status) but they'll care about economic growth somewhat.

It seems to me that this generally creates a bias toward pro-inequality government policy, since the poor, as a fraction of their political energy, just don't care about reducing inequality as the rich care about increasing it.

Thoughts?

[Molly McRae]

I really liked the bit about the importance of choosing your parents.

[Paul G. Brown]

And yet, and yet. . .

It being Sunday, and all, perhaps a sermon is in order. (Ahem). I take my text from Mathew, Chapter 14.

"
3: And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head.
4: And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?
5: For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her.
6: And Jesus said, Let her alone: why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.
7: For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye will do them good: but me ye will have not always.
"

What, by BDL's reasoning, would the poor gain by this exchange? When "Happiness is attained when you achieve your dreams and solve your problems." then the precious oil or the money you could exchange it for can do no good. Indeed, knowing its origins, the oil or the money might create even more unhappiness in the poor recipients of the disciple's largess. (A idea Orwell explores at length in _Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London_.)

There is another way to read Christ's words; let's call it the DeLong Interpretation. The poor, says Jesus, will always be with you. Define poverty any way you like--as material lack, absence of freedom, or scarcity of the grace of the holy spirit--and it follows that some will always have more (and less) of it than others. And if "unhappiness" is a function of "relative poverty" then it might be argued that any effort to eliminate or even reduce "poverty" is futile if the goal is to increase "happiness".

So, says Jesus, it's OK to spill the oil, enjoy the material comforts, or exercise power over others, because systematic efforts to do otherwise can't make a darn bit of difference.

By this argument, all that the study of economics and its application to public policy can hope to achieve is to address problems of material scarcity. Forget "happiness". The rather more modest goal of "a chicken in every pot" is about all we can hope for.

I reject this idea. During the great depression great numbers of citizens in the west were cast into grinding poverty. They were also bitterly unhappy. By improving their material conditions--even if it was only by granting them a dignified income sufficient to buy a second hand Model T--surely elevated their "happiness".

I think this is close to the point Nick was trying to make earlier.

[anne]

Shah8

"Orwell is angry at the tendency of people to confuse material wealth with self sufficiency."

A clever comment. We are always depending on others, though we may wish to to think otherwise.

[Julian Elson]

Note: Overall, I think if non-rich people (such as myself) are happy with their lives, regardless of their relative positions, that's a good thing. I think that we, as people, have a tendency to write off happiness dependent on things of which we do not approve as "false" happiness, and happiness that is drawn from things of which we approve as "true" happiness. Really, though, if people are satisfied with what they have, that's better than them being unhappy with it, even if the latter satisfies Orwell's sense of justice more. Pro-inequality types have an irritating tendency to say things like, "it doesn't matter that you do care about inequality rather than how well-off you are absolutely! You shouldn't! Spite is a vice!" Pro-equality types should not emulate them by saying "it doesn't matter that you don't care about inequality and care about how well-off you are absolutely instead! You should! Concern for social justice is a virtue!"

[Michael Cain]

pebird: "Can we get back to the classic definition of middle class - owning some piece of income producing property?"

I'm just curious as to whether I qualify under this definition. I "own" a piece of intellectual property -- an idea which, after considerable amount of statistical effort, has led to a service for which people are willing to pay money. I don't own it in exactly the same sense that one might own a bakery shop, but I own it in at least the sense that the baker owns her recipes. Turning it into a product doesn't require nearly the investment in physical property as the baker requires, as it turns out, since the service can be delivered by daily e-mail. Is the classic definition sufficient for use today?

[Neil Craig]

"it is a mistake to say that the shop-girl of today has the same standard of living as a duchess of a century ago because the key element of being a duchess is being exceptional"

This is an argument that cuts both ways on equality. If true then there is no point in trying to increase the standard of living of the worst off because, by definition, if they all get that standard of living they are still poor.

It is probably a bad thing for society overall when class membership is severely hereditary since it we arn't using many good brains but this is an argument from efficiency not social justice.

I was more impressed with Julian's "this means that the rich won't care one way or the other about economic growth. All of their efforts will be directed toward increasing their share, either as individuals, as interests (e.g. steel manufacturers, foodstuff wholesalers), or as a class" since this seems to bear a remarkable resemblance to how the "environmental" movement, funded largely by rich foundations, behaves.

[Emma Anne]

I'm feeling like there is something pretty major that hasn't come up yet. I guess it is security, or perhaps stability. It has various facets, but I'll just talk about the biggest one at the moment: health care. If you are lower middle class, you might be able to afford toys that didn't exist in the fifties, and that's nice and all. But if you have a serious or chronic health problem, *whatever* you have is at risk. You can't sell your little cell phone that takes pictures for even *one month's* health insurance. You can be happy being fairly poor - most of us have done it at least as students - but how can you be happy when everything could crumble tomorrow?

[Jim S]

I read the same article from the Wall Street Journal though it was actually syndicated to the Kansas City Star. I was surprised to see the WSJ acknowledge any reality for the middle and lower economic classes.

Since someone mentioned a thought experiment here's a little one for you to ponder. I thought of it because of the constant insistence of the conservative chorus that anyone who works hard can get ahead.

We have a population that lives in a world basically like our own. Same corporate and government structures completely with the exception of the educational system. But the entire population consists of a very special type of clone. Identical beings with the exact same intelligence and emotional makeup as every other member of the population. Same work ethic. Same amount of drive. The educational system is a vast improvement on our own, being perfectly equal for every member of the population. So how many will rise to management? How many will become CEO? In spite of the fact that every member of this society would be equally qualified for any position in it, there would still be only so many spots in middle management, fewer spots in upper management and so many CEO, CIO and CFO spots. The structure of virtually all businesses necessarily limits how many people can move up the ladder. There is no way to eliminate this fact given the structure of our businesses.

If the lowest level jobs of our economic system pay so little that they are in fact keeping people in what our society defines as poverty even as they work hard and try to play by the rules it doesn't really matter if poverty in 21st century America means someone is in some way better off than someone in the past. What is available and what is considered a necessity is different now than what used to be. Consider health care. Back in the 1950s or earlier was it really the same as it is now? Since medicine can do more for us now than it could back then, genuinely being able to save us from diseases that use to kill us and help with the symptoms of illnesses that people used to have to just suffer through, it is considered by all but the most libertarian to be something akin to a right. The fear of illness that can be bad enough to cost a job and thereby make someone bankrupt is a genuine fear for the lower rung of the economic ladder since so many don't have health insurance. It seems whenever I bring up the idea that not having a decent system of health care even for the poor to a conservative they bring up the ER as a viable resource for them, completely ignoring the fact that it's outrageously expensive and they don't magically write off the bill because you're poor. They try to collect. They report to credit bureaus and destroy credit ratings, which in today's world affects the ability to find a place to live and finding a job.

Poverty in 2005 is different than in 1955, but not necessarily better.

[MTC]

From the "Les Carnets du Major W. Marmaduke Thompson" by Pierre Daninos (1954) [I am quoting from memory]:

"The American, when he sees a rich man getting in to a Cadillac, dreams of the day when he too will be driving around in his own Cadillac. The Frenchman, when he sees a rich man getting into a Cadillac, dreams of the day he will pull that rich man out of that Cadillac, forcing him to walk around on the street LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!"

[apologies in advance for the weak translation]

[wkwillis]

Penicillin is the difference between 1905 and 2005. Antiaging drugs are the difference between 2005 and 2105. What would Bill Gates pay to be 25 instead of 50?
What would you pay to be 25 instead of fifty?

[ArchTeryx]

Power buys gratification, and ego. But most of all, it buys security.

The more money and power you have, the more protected you are from the vicissitudes of life, especially the economic ones. Just look at how well Bush did, despite more failures then a whole poor neighborhood.

[dr sardonicus]

In a society which has rejected the concept of human rights, and considers rights as commodities to be bought and sold, money is what buys us our humanity.

[piotr]

Suppose that we study class divisions in Ruritania and we find out that apart form lower 10% (homeless farmhands) and upper 10% (nobles, merchants and priests), 80% of the population exhibits very similar consumption patterns. We declare that the notion of class is unimportant in Ruritania.

However, Ruritania is a feudal state in which nobles have almost absolute power in respect to their serfs. The elite is narrow and all powerful.

In USA, the secret to happiness of middle class is to be content with "middle classness". As you pass first class on the way to cattle (or is it coach) class, do you ever wonder "hm, do they get more than 1/2 ounce of pretzels?"

[chris]

Too bad we couldn't have gotten a better play on Pravda and Prada as the title of this post.

[Thomas T. Schweitzer]

Paul G. Brown:

Christ said this (if he said it) in the days when annual real prodictivity increase was virtually zero. So we cannot tell whether he talked about real or relative income differences. I think the reduction in infant mortality, the lengthening of life expectancy and the reduction in physical suffering effected by Capitalism is important, even if the (perhaps unchanged) psychological suffering due to one's relative position in the income distribution remains unchanged. As Schumpeter put it (in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, if I remember right): make the right to wear a postage stamp on the bottom of your trousers sufficiently rare, and people will fight like mad to attain that right.

[a different chris]

One of my favorite quotes, attributed to hobo lore I think: "You are possessed by everything you own".

I didn't read the particular writing of Orwell referenced here, so I have no idea how accurately it is presented. But I would like to address the belief that people are "fooled" into thinking things are good because they have a lot of cool gadgets.

I'm not buying that people are so gullible on that particular level. I think that people, and anecdotally know a lot of such, love their McMansions and the Hemi-powered SUV that gets them to work, but still think their bosses (who arguably pay for such stuff) are a-holes and Bush is a worthless rich boy.

Those are my Republican-but-not-very-red co-workers in the technical world. So why are they Republican? Well, they aren't really, they're Republican voters. Let's refer back to my opening quote, which tells you on what level they actually are gullible. That SUV is pretty sweet, and suburban living, if a little bland, has a lot of attractions.

And these very material things take possession of the soul.

It isn't George Bush they liked more than John Kerry, it's their SUV, the engine rumbling into their ear: "Vote for Kerry and I will have to leave you. The Republicans say there is plenty of oil, global warming is a myth. Sure they're scumbags, but maybe they are right in this case. And if they are, you'll spend you life with me. Feel the power under your right foot. Look down upon the rest from my high seat. Don't you love me? Won't you do what you have to to keep me?"

The McMansion, with its crimeless cul-de-sac and clean white school, is doing the same thing. It's telling the owner -again, with helpful Republicans basically putting words in it's mouth- that voting Dem will spell the end of their relationship.

Note that Republican talking points never just say that you'll be more wealthy, more free, with their policies, but are always careful to make sure you know that more social-democratic polices will quickly threaten what you have now. This is a critically important point they want to drive home. It is also a complete lie, but everybody here knows that, even the trolls that pretend not to.

My co-workers know things may well go to hell. They know that blacks are discriminated against, that the McMansion/SUV lifestyle is directly funding Bin Laden, and etc. But you've all known people in bad relationships, ones so bad that they've driven you and their other friends away. When confronted, they say "I know he/she is (blah,blah), but..." and they proffer some delusional BS. People quite literally love their "stuff" and they will -quite regretfully I claim- bomb Arabs, permit deficits both governmental and CA, wave off obvious lies, just to hold on to that object of love, even if it's just a little longer.

So they aren't fooled in the sense of being logically tricked, they're allowing themselves to be fooled because the stuff they bought wound up owning them, and they are compelled by those "owners" to behave the way they do.

[kharris]

"Most people are working very hard to transmit their advantages to their children," said David I. Levine, a Berkeley economist and mobility researcher. "And that's quite a good thing."

That strikes me as a bit broad. Parents working hard to transmit beneficial values and behaviors to their children seems "quite a good thing" but transmission of "advantages" generally seems more ambiguous. Why is it a good thing for parents to transmit the power to extract rents to their children? Why is it a good thing for parents to transmit advantageous educational opportunities to their children, through legacy positions at prestigious universities and at professional schools? Why is it a good thing for children to be made rich without ever working, just because their parents were rich? When I see my local library full of kids, I see the sort of transmission that will provide general good to the country. When I see the presidency encumbered by a guy who knows little beyond the political side of the job, who made rotten grades at the same Ivy League school where his ex-president father made good grades, I see only an erosion of our national values.

I keep hearing that what differentiates the US from Europe is "opportunity." So says a certain set of propogandists, anyhow. If you want to argue that the poor cannot be made happier by a less extreme distribution of income, fine, but don't come back next week and argue that some policy or other offers "opportunity" unless it addresses the needs of those stuck in the lower income quintiles. I think opportunity matters, but the evidence cited here is that real opportunity, opportunity that shows up in results, is not fosterd by lower levels of regulation, lower levels of taxation, lower levels of government involvement or any of the other low standards that apologists for the rich seem to favor. Legacy positions at Yale are not the only problem we face in expanding "opportunity."

[Conor]

For a philosophical take on this, "Status Anxiety" by Alain de Botton (2004) is a digestible analysis of why relative status anxiety afflicts us and how we can cope with it. (i.e. by taking solace in art, comedy, politics etc. which attempt to reflect the irrelevance, impermenance or ridiculousness of a status based existence)

[pat]

The citation from Paul Krugman can be interpreted as happiness relying on knowing that one is better than most others. And maybe this is the problem -- if it accurately describes the view of most people in a society, then most people in this society will not be happy. In fact, just having a dilusion of upward mobility is good for the happiness of the general public of this society, no?

[FL]

Where is that Krugman quote from? Did I just miss the link?

[Russil Wvong]

Orwell's take is somewhat more positive in his 1941 essay "England Your England":

"One of the most important developments in England during the past twenty years has been the upward and downward extension of the middle class. It has happened on such a scale as to make the old classification of society into capitalists, proletarians and petit bourgeois (small property-owners) almost obsolete. ...

"The British working class are now better off in almost all ways than they were thirty years ago. ... However unjustly society is organised, certain technical advances are bound to benefit the whole community, because certain kinds of goods are necessarily held in common. A millionaire cannot, for example, light the streets for himself while darkening them for other people. Nearly all citizens of civilised countries now enjoy the use of good roads, germ-free water, police protection, free libraries and probably free education of a kind."

http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye

[pat]

FL:

This is what I had in mind:

"Paul Krugman, for example, has placed himself on Orwell’s side: he would rather be middle-class in the fifties than working poor in the nineties-—even though the material standard of living of America's working poor in 1990 is higher than that of America's middle class in 1950. He:

know[s] quite a few academics who have nice houses, two

cars, and enviable working conditions, yet are disappointed and bitter because they have never received a [job] offer from Harvard and will probably not get a Nobel Prize. The live very well... but they judge themselves relative to their reference group, and so they feel deprived. And on the other hand, it is an open secret that the chief payoff from being really rich is, as Tom Wolfe once put it, the pleasure of "seeing ‘em jump." Privilege is not merely a means to other ends, it is an end in itself."

[FL]

I just wanted to read the whole thing, Pat-- I'm working on a syllabus that might benefit from this Krugman injection.

[Ken]

"Perhaps those high-income readers who do not consider their current high relative standing that important will find it illuminating to consider a simple thought experiment. In this experiment you are to imagine yourself in the following situation: As a high-income resident of the United States, you are suddenly confronted with an opportunity to be transported to a much richer planet. The trip is to be free of charge, but with no option to return."

That's a lot like the decision that confronted our European ancestors. All of them opted to go to the rich New World. (The ones that didn't became the ancestors of today's Europeans instead. This probably explains a lot of differences in the mindsets of the two populations...) Now humans have an apparently insatiable urge to sort themselves into pecking orders - the best we can do is to avoid attaching legal privileges to status (i.e., proper crime control only for "nice" neighborhoods), or arbitrarily restricting the supply of needful things such as health care and thereby limiting them to the rich.

"I think opportunity matters, but the evidence cited here is that real opportunity, opportunity that shows up in results, is not fosterd by lower levels of regulation, lower levels of taxation, lower levels of government involvement or any of the other low standards that apologists for the rich seem to favor. "

Really? It seems to me that if you want to increase the supply of something, and expand the opportunity of the lower classes to obtain it, lower levels of regulation, taxation, and government involvement is the way to go. I'd like to see us use this time-tested method to increase the supply and quality of such things as healthcare and education the way it's been doing for those baubles that some write off as trivialities.

[Russil Wvong]

"That's a lot like the decision that confronted our European ancestors. All of them opted to go to the rich New World."

I don't think that's right. I thought most of the European emigrants to North America were people who were starving at the bottom of the heap in Europe and had the chance to do much better (in both absolute and relative terms) in North America, not people who were well-off in Europe.

"It seems to me that if you want to increase the supply of something, and expand the opportunity of the lower classes to obtain it, lower levels of regulation, taxation, and government involvement is the way to go."

And yet taxpayer-funded Canadian health care seems to produce better results, at lower cost (both absolute and as a percentage of GDP), than American health care.

You can't always argue from the general to the specific. (Birds can fly, penguins are birds, therefore penguins can fly.)

[Russil Wvong]

Julian Elson writes:

"Absolute material status doesn't matter much to the rich, but it does matter a lot to the poor."

Well put.

"As a result, absolute economic growth is good for the poor, but pretty much neutral for the rich."

Interesting hypothesis, but I don't think it's correct historically. Governing elites often put a lot of effort into absolute economic growth. One reason is national security -- material wealth is one of the major factors underpinning military power, and so you need to make sure that your economy isn't falling behind your neighbors'. There's also less tangible benefits like pride, prestige, etc.

On the other hand, the fact that economic development may result in significant changes in the _domestic_ distribution of power may inhibit elites from pursuing economic development. (I can't think of any economic examples at the moment. A technological example would be the banning of firearms by the Japanese samurai.)

From the point of view of the poor, I would think that their interest in absolute economic growth would depend on their perception of how likely they are to get a share of it, in the short term and in the long term.

[john c. halasz]

I found something of the above evocations of the Gospel verse, "The poor will always be with you", a bit odd, since I always understood it to be a piece of parabolic irony, convergent with the Beatitudes of "The Sermon on the Mount",- ("Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth...etc.),- since it aims to puncture the vanity and presumptuousness of our insistent wants and desires, including perhaps our "good intentions", with the perspective of humility, which is also the non-egocentric, more objective perspective: the poor will always be with us, because we ourselves are the poor.

[Mike G]

So, basically, your argument is, having a full belly, central heat, health insurance and cable TV is merely a distraction from the most important thing in life, which is, envy?

[Californio]

Those tech workers in love with their SUVs? They are no different - class wise - from the poor idiots spending 90% of their income on their customized cars with $ 20k rims and wheels. Crass class - I'll take a pass.

True, entrenched, sustainable wealth by its nature is not flashy - for flashy implies spending - regardless of conserving principal. The indicators of wealth are no longer safe predictors. Car? buy on installment. Maid? Illegal aliens make this service available far down on the social scale.

I assert that it is not the presence of "rent producing " real property which indicates class. Perhaps this question: How many times in the last 50 (75, 100, 150??) years has your immediate family sold real property in the United States? Moved? What is the oldest piece of real estate continuously held by your family? While this may not indicate desirable class in depressed rural areas, it is a strong indicator where I am from. (note: uneducated idiot children are a generational net loss, have this happen too often and the family has a reversal of fortune which cannot be corrected.)

[Russil Wvong]

"As a high-income resident of the United States, you are suddenly confronted with an opportunity to be transported to a much richer planet. The trip is to be free of charge, but with no option to return."

Actually, this does happen: Third World professionals, who have high social status in their home countries, do emigrate to North America, where their status is much lower.

[Leila]

Two specific results of class differences in my case:

1) I was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. I went to my local (East Bay) surgeon, the "best" over here, was scheduled for rapid surgery & reconstruction. At the urging of my husband's uncle, and because of the connections of a philanthropist cousin, I got an appointment at UCSF's cancer center for a second opinion. (It's hard to get appointments there) Because our insurance just happens to be really good, I was able to do this with no out of pocket charge.

At UCSF was offered a really fabulous reconstruction, only available there, that has ended up being much easier to recover from than what was offered at the "best" hospital in Berkeley. I have no pain and very little physical restrictions; plus the rest of my treatment has been the best of the best. All because of family connections and husband's top notch health insurance.

2) My older son, 5, has rather extensive developmental delays and has been in the State and then local school special ed system since he was 19 months old. For the last two years he's been going to Oakland Public pre-school. Some of his classmates are middle class, but many are poor. My son is doing extremely well and is getting mainstreamed. His IQ is testing 90-95, with hopes that it will be higher as he gains physical competence.

I'm pretty sure my son is thriving so well because he lives in a family full of college graduates & professors - all four grandparents have graduate degrees, and three of them are actively involved in his daily care. He's getting the same services that his classmates get (OK, maybe he gets more than he would have because I advocate for him at IEP meetings) but he's pulling ahead of most of them. Some of this may simply be innate differences - my son was dealt a relatively good set of cards for a "special needs kid." But some of his success has to be credited to the family environment. We don't try to "enrich" him with lots of programmed activities, but just by pursuing our normal interests, he lives a very stimulating life. His specialists have told us they think he will "function normally" - it's probable that he'll be able to go to college (he began reading at 4), although we don't know if it will be the kind of colleges his parents & grandparents went to. This will directly affect his chances of surviving and thriving in adulthood.

[Leila]

In conclusion, give me the best health care and best education for my children over Prada and Lexus any day. We drive an 8 year old HOnda, I carry a "knock-off" handbag, and I have no interest in possessing status objects. But I'll always be grateful for getting the "Ferrari" breast reconstruction (it cost as much as a Ferrari) and of course I want my child to live up to his fullest potential. According to the NYT article our family social class is pretty high up there (our occupations, software engineer and writer, pull down the numbers) - but you couldn't tell that by looking at me, our house and car, or the kids' schools. That's fine with me.

BTW, on my mother's side we've always been middle class but educated (4 generations of college grads) while my father was born an Arab peasant in a one room house with a dirt floor and no plumbing. American mission schools launched him into Ph.D. & tenured professorship, a common path for smart Arab guys in the mid-20th century. My husband's grandfather immigrated from Russia, penniless, uneducated and asthmatic, but made enough money to get all his offspring educated and set for life. It's true that immigrants could make this class jump in the 20th century. How much longer this will last, I don't know.

[anne]

Leila,

Important comments, indeed :)

[anne]

Emma Anne

Agreed.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/national/class/HEALTH-FINAL.html?pagewanted=all

Life at the Top in America Isn't Just Better, It's Longer
By JANNY SCOTT

Jean G. Miele's heart attack happened on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan last May. He was walking back to work along Third Avenue with two colleagues after a several-hundred-dollar sushi lunch. There was the distant rumble of heartburn, the ominous tingle of perspiration. Then Mr. Miele, an architect, collapsed onto a concrete planter in a cold sweat.

Will L. Wilson's heart attack came four days earlier in the bedroom of his brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. He had been regaling his fiancée with the details of an all-you-can-eat dinner he was beginning to regret. Mr. Wilson, a Consolidated Edison office worker, was feeling a little bloated. He flopped onto the bed. Then came a searing sensation, like a hot iron deep inside his chest.

Ewa Rynczak Gora's first signs of trouble came in her rented room in the noisy shadow of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. It was the Fourth of July. Ms. Gora, a Polish-born housekeeper, was playing bridge. Suddenly she was sweating, stifling an urge to vomit. She told her husband not to call an ambulance; it would cost too much. Instead, she tried a home remedy: salt water, a double dose of hypertension pills and a glass of vodka.

Architect, utility worker, maid: heart attack is the great leveler, and in those first fearful moments, three New Yorkers with little in common faced a single, common threat. But in the months that followed, their experiences diverged. Social class - that elusive combination of income, education, occupation and wealth - played a powerful role in Mr. Miele's, Mr. Wilson's and Ms. Gora's struggles to recover....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/national/class/MARRIAGE-FINAL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

When Richer Weds Poorer, Money Isn't the Only Difference
By TAMAR LEWIN

NORTHFIELD, Mass. - When Dan Croteau met Cate Woolner six years ago, he was selling cars at the Keene, N.H., Mitsubishi lot and she was pretending to be a customer, test driving a black Montero while she and her 11-year-old son, Jonah, waited for their car to be serviced....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/national/class/DELLA-FINAL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Up From the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither
By TAMAR LEWIN

PIKEVILLE, Ky. - Della Mae Justice stands before the jury in the Pike County Courthouse, arguing that her client's land in Greasy Creek Hollow was illegally grabbed when the neighbors expanded their cemetery behind her home....

[Prada handbag]

Was very nice to know.
Anne Agreed.

[Prada handbag]

Excellent post =)))