This article connects the virtue of appearing professional to overspending on luxury goods as if they are identical.
I'm reminded of the "chav" subculture in Britain and their love of Burberry. (Extreme example: http://i.imgur.com/8QxFSh5.jpg) I don't get the feeling that they're trying to open doors to the British upper-class, but rather using it as a status-symbol within their own community.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with that; everyone wants to look good for their peers. But I feel like the author is trying to make it more noble than it is.
I thought of the same thing. I do not think, that you buy status symbols to move to an upper class, I think they are uniforms to identify yourself within your own class and move to the top of it.
Excessive manicure, hair extensions etc. are expensive but seem like a stupid investment. They (in my mind, subjectively) lower your social status, because they are uniforms of the lower class.
Moving one class up, a big car is expensive, but you still will not be accepted in the (upper) middle class if you do not have a proper job or you wear a uniform of the lower class. The question arises whether your house is paid of or not and why you bought that car if it is not
The farther up you rise in the Bildungsbürgertum [0], the more subtle the indicators get: Do you use foreign words, that indicate your French/Latin language education? Which instruments do your children play? Do your children play football (soccer) or tennis?
The point of these status indicators is, that you can not fake them easily. You can not pay of your house if you do not have a proper paying job. You have to get a certain education to show of certain skills. If you have these things you already belong to the respective class.
Edit: Wanted to add one more thing: My most favourite social status indicator is the number of children. It seems to me, that having more than 3 children is an indicator of either the lower class, because the marginal costs of an additional child are mostly paid by the state, or the upper class, because you they can handle the marginal costs on their own again. The middle class often does not want to pay these costs.
> My most favourite social status indicator is the number of children. It seems to me, that having more than 3 children is an indicator of either the lower class, because the marginal costs of an additional child are mostly paid by the state, or the upper class, because you they can handle the marginal costs on their own again. The middle class often does not want to pay these costs.
I don't get this. How good of an indicator can it be if >3 is both upper and lower? And is the middle class really pinned at 3?
I do not know, if it is really true, it is just how I perceive it here in Germany. Seems plausible taking into account, that Germany both has the second lowest birth rate worldwide and a relatively large middle class.
You can see the social status as a vector of social indicators that together define which class you belong to. The "> 3 kids" indicator assigns or strengthens your assignment to a class, depending on which other indicators you have.
In most of America, we don't have a ridid class system.
At least where I grew up, how much money you had, and what clothes you wore meant absolutely nothing. In fact, it often worked against you if you happened to have rich parents--the whole spolied rich kid thing.
As adults, I guess Americans start to stereotype, but we don't have hard and fast demarcations between low class and upper class.
I'm not saying Americans aren't racists, but the whole class thing was never a big deal where I grew up, or I didn't notice it?
I have noticed a bit of a change lately, but it's still not a ridid system.
I have never heard a guy talk about the economic class a women fits into--Never! They find that special person and will do anything to win them over. In other words, they find that person they find Perfect, and want a relationship--period. (The're usually rejected, but that's another topic.) I have seen women judge people on how much money they come from, but it's not as strong as in other countries, and it usually/always comes from jealousy. Yes, looks do matter. It's a commodity, especially when you are younger. How much money you have doesn't come into the picture until later in life, but that's for men. A pretty, caring female is not judged on how much money she makes. In a lot of circles, it might even work against her? Some of you will call me a sexist over that statement, but it's just something I have noticed. A rich guy who looks/acts like Donald Trump will get his pick. A rich women does not get the same perks. Yes--it's wrong, but I can care less over the happiness of the wealthy. (There I go, I am using wealthy as a demarcation of class? Yes, in American we do talk about the wealthy, and 1 percenter's, but we don't associated it with class, morals, manners, or intelligence. (Donald Trump is a perfect example of a "upper class" person in America. It just doesn't work?)
Over the years, I have sat watched movies/series about the upper classes(usually in Great Britain), and always found them hilarious. I know it's because we don't have a monarchy--thank goodness--personally I couldn't stomach all that pomposity, and family lineage b.s..
(This is coming from a 40 someting, who's always lived in liberal communities.) I don't want to argue--I never even come back to posts. I hope I didn't offend anyone concerning their perceived class?)
Even if you will not answer me, I want to state, that I think your points a highly subjective and I find all of them questionable. The inherent optimism to rise up by your own does not make a society classless.
I can not think of a western country that is as extremely divided as America. No limit at the top, no limit at the bottom.
People do not talk about the class of people they meet, because the mostly meet people of their own class in the first place. You go to similar schools, attend similar colleges and live in similar neighbourhoods.
Europe has its nouveau rich, that do not really belong to the 1%, too, the same way, that America has its aristocrats, too. I mean, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Bush vs. Clinton again?!?
I think if you dig deeper you'll see that the only somewhat aristocratic family in your statement are the Bushes. The Clinton's are just power hungry, ugly, bourgeois. The Obama's are just a vessel for many things.
Otherwise, spot on, and fantabulous analogy about the limitless top and bottom!
> I have never heard a guy talk about the economic class a women fits into--Never! They find that special person and will do anything to win them over. In other words, they find that person they find Perfect, and want a relationship--period.
Being German I think differently about this topic. For finding prospective partners you also don't talk about money (that is hardly ever done in Germany - kind of a social taboo), but you talk a lot about education (indirectly you get from which class the other person is and/or how much money they will probably make in the future). You increase your chances very much if you have some kind of academic education that the other one respects (what kind of this is, is a really complicated game, but tendencies are: medicine - great, mathematics - good (at least if you are still sociable; great if you have a PhD), humanities - it's complicated ;-( , female engineer or computer scientist - great). Nearly all of the male PhD students in mathematics at the same floor as me that are married, are married to a female medicine student. I don't consider this as a coincidence. The same holds for other "educational" topics, say preferred taste of music (if you want to move up, it's surely not bad to like classical music) or whether you play(ed) a musical instrument (good sign if both did) (which is also considered as a kind of education in Germany).
So, yes, in Germany you don't talk about class, but by talking about education you get lots of cues.
From the article: "And nothing is more logical than trying to survive."
HN commenters may "feel" like "the author is trying to make it more noble than it is." But in reality, the obvious point of the article is to educate the reader on the "logic" behind decent survival.
I prefer the author's focus on logic to commenters' "feels". Perhaps these vague feels exist because mainstream media tries to make Dickensian stories out of African-American struggles; mawkish sentiment to make the audience "feel" like they care. Inculcating kneejerk expectations.
Being able to signal that you are respectable is very important, especially if you are a member of a minority group that faces constant stereotyping, and I think the author makes this point very vividly.
However, the way you signal that you are respectable is not through conspicuous consumption, but through things like accent, education, knowledge of social norms, shared friendship networks, etc. Poor minorities are definitely underprivileged when it comes to those things - and this is a very serious issue, but spending on things like expensive Nikes or a Gucci bag won't suddenly ingratiate you to authorities or the upper social classes. If anything, the 'ghetto fab' aesthetic specifically rejects the restrained and minimalistic taste displayed by members of the elite.
So - I think the author makes a very good point that minorities face lots of difficulties and stereotyping, but she tries to make conspicuous consumption seem far more noble than it is... people buy expensive jewelry as a status marker within their own tribe, not as a way to better themselves.
I think you and nostromo describes the situation well from a European, or British, perspective and I think this is different from the US perspective covered in the article. I think the cultures around material status symbols are very different, and social mobility too. In Europe the signals are around things which can't easily be changed over one or even two generations, so material wealth has a different purpose.
There are of course many different measures of social mobility so this may not be a generally accepted fact.
I feel that language dominates all other signals in Europe, which may be the reason why it doesn't make much sense to buy luxury goods to signal status.
Conspicuous consumption definitely works, regardless of what some individuals may (believe they) feel about it.
Take HN for example. Many well-known startup-y devs joke about those who visit here, like most do with Youtube commenters. After sheepishly mentioning "I sometimes find a useful article there..." the disdain for me becomes palpable and I no longer bring it up out of embarrassment.
Nevertheless, wearing the HN shirt is likely effective in some cultures (like a secret handshake). Even if in others it's a Mark of a Fool. And even if it brands you as a wannabee, bosses and investors may see you as a useful wannabee.
That conflation doesn't exist very strongly in the article at all imo.
The piece was about signals. Using the language and mimicking the dress of those acting as gatekeepers to send in-group signals that open doors/ease engagements. "Hey, I'm one of you, treat me better."
I'm sure I've read a study that claimed that in communities that will be assumed to be poor, more obvious shows of wealth are more common. Which seems a fairly common sense result and would explain a preference for a white t-shirt with an expensive logo rather than a plain white t-shirt. And generally the core functional requirements (warmth, shade etc.) of clothes must be a tiny fraction of what we use them for in society given fashion, tribalism and status signalling.
A lot of what she says is true, but a lot of it is cultural and transcends borders. If you go up to frugal places in new england, putting on airs will not get you too far... but in other places, more flashy places, it helps.
But this phenomenon is certainly not only American or essentially white. You can go to Japan and you can go to urban coastal china and contrast that with rural china. Or you can go to Nigeria and contrast Lagos with people not from Lagos.
The signaling and the the appearances are not either uniquely american nor are they borne from mainstream american culture. It's pretty much semi-universal.
On the other hand, poor people in China and Japan will try to look as presentable as possible while being quite frugal.
This whole thing brings up a pet peeve of mine and that's the "cultural fit" meme one finds so pervasive in the valley. It's as if someone who has a Motorola 'culture' is a bad 'fit' for working at Cloudera, to make something up.
None the less, you see people slurping up the corporate culture du jour as if a 'jobdesiac'. You could imagine how if essentially mainstream engineers can be categorized as bad cultural fits just from one company to the next, how slightly different cultures would have even more pronounced experiences due to discrepancy.
I promise you that even in the frugalest least flashy place you can find in New England, a black woman who grew up poor in the South will get more respect from just about everyone by dressing in tasteful expensive clothes and speaking with a college-educated vocabulary and “white” dialect/accent.
Maybe it's not the presence of certain features, but rather the lack of others. I.e. the gatekeeping is not by virtue of having certain features, but of not having some "negative" ones?
What if "whiteness" is not a geographical/physical trait but a social construction? What if whiteness varies in the specifics of its processes around the world?
labeling it 'whiteness' muddies things here. This kind of thing arose independently of any culture. But yeah, social mechanism --a cultural shibboleth.
Why do so many native english speakers insist _insist_ upon using French phraseology, even when the French phrase is quite cumbersome, if you understand French and there are native english counterparts? The same could be said about abusing buzzwords.
Basically, the goal is to mimic the received and expected behavior of where you are. If I were in india, it would behoove me to adopt more local norms in conducting business. Acting white and american, would do white americans a disservice.
"Whiteness" is absolutely physical/biological, but if you want to talk about characteristics signifying traits associated with power and dominant status, then yes, they are socially constructed. It's just not called "whiteness."
Actually not so much. In late-19th early 20th century, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, etc immigrants were decidely labeled as "non white" -- to the point of lynching when one of those "non whites" were e.g. found dating a "white girl" (white being mostly WASP).
> if you want to talk about characteristics signifying traits associated with power and dominant status
Whiteness is associated with power and dominant status, but not all categorizations of "characteristics signifying traits associated with power and dominant status" are Whiteness. Whiteness is a subset of CSTAWPADS.
Somehow I think truth might be somewhere between "Poor people are making rational decisions to consume status goods in the hopes of improving their economic outcomes by convincing gatekeepers that they are, in fact, middle class" and "Poor people are spending $2,500 on handbags because poor people value handbags more than they value $2,500."
Case in point: there is no conceivable narrative by which one's sofa gets one welfare benefits or a new job as a shift lead. Poor people apparently are quite aware of this. When asked (in the article referenced by a sibling thread), the young lady's answer to "Why did you buy a sofa?" answer was "Because I wanted a sofa."
Marketers prey on these people, television shows extoll the virtues of appearance, and with credit while expensive available many of these people are just too easy to take advantage of.
you don't even have to be "poor" to be coerced into buying something too expensive for your household, Apple is the best example but many companies strive to build the got to have it mentality and personal electronics is has one of the lowest entry points for immediate recognition. Clothing isn't far behind, nor shoes, but the recognition factor outside a few brands isn't there. Cars are where its at in the middle to upper middle income brackets.
People will willingly spend themselves poor for a feeling of at least equality or success
It's interesting to draw a parallel to piracy - why does piracy exist? When asked, people will often say "Because I can't afford to buy music / movies" - which actually implies that they feel entitled to said products. With piracy, theft is much easier and without repercussions or even a social stigma. With physical goods, less so - but people will still feel like they need or are entitled to certain goods (like expensive smartphones or fashion items).
I don't think answers a person gives about their decisions is ever "real" data. For example, a rich male buying who bought an impractical sports car will give an answer that conflicts with how those around him would account for his actions.
This points my thinking back toward impulse control and delayed gratification ability being deciding factors when looking at why the sofa seems compatible with a poor young person and a sports car and a rich older person.
But with near negative interest rates, I wonder whether if the excessive sofa isn't the investment vehicle of the future. Telling your network about that indiscretion (and reminding them in your selfies) may have them thinking of you when new sources of income come up.
The idea is that one does not need a $1500 sofa if all one wants is something to sit on.
As an example, I purchased my first sofa costing more than zero at age 43. But I've always had sofas everywhere I lived before that. Sofas that meet the definition of "something to sit on" can be had for roughly zero dollars and are plentiful at that price point.
You would notice the difference if you put one side by side with a new one costing $1500, indicating that perhaps that difference in appearance is the real reason that somebody without $1500 to spare would choose to buy the latter in favor of the former.
No. What she said was she wanted "normal". Have you noticed how the poor people on tv have money for nice clothes and apartments. Basically she didn't want to feel poor. She didn't want her kids to grow thinking they were poor.
The other aspect is this: when you're poor, the moment you have money, usually some beurocratic muppetry will conspire to take it away against for essentially bullshit reasons.
These reasons are unavoidable unless you have a lot more money, but they'll also just be added to the pile of debts you can't avoid anyway. So why not spend that liquid cash now, while you have it, rather then waiting for life to decide to screw you over again and take it away for no appreciable gain?
I sat in on an interview for a new administrative assistant once. My regional vice president was doing the hiring. A long line of mostly black and brown women applied because we were a cosmetology school. Trade schools at the margins of skilled labor in a gendered field are necessarily classed and raced. I found one candidate particularly charming. She was trying to get out of a salon because 10 hours on her feet cutting hair would average out to an hourly rate below minimum wage. A desk job with 40 set hours and medical benefits represented mobility for her. When she left my VP turned to me and said, “did you see that tank top she had on under her blouse?! OMG, you wear a silk shell, not a tank top!” Both of the women were black.
The VP had constructed her job as senior management. She drove a brand new BMW because she, “should treat herself” and liked to tell us that ours was an image business. A girl wearing a cotton tank top as a shell was incompatible with BMW-driving VPs in the image business. Gatekeeping is a complex job of managing boundaries that do not just define others but that also define ourselves. Status symbols — silk shells, designer shoes, luxury handbags — become keys to unlock these gates. If I need a job that will save my lower back and move my baby from medicaid to an HMO, how much should I spend signaling to people like my former VP that I will not compromise her status by opening the door to me? That candidate maybe could not afford a proper shell. I will never know. But I do know that had she gone hungry for two days to pay for it or missed wages for a trip to the store to buy it, she may have been rewarded a job that could have lifted her above minimum wage. Shells aren’t designer handbags, perhaps. But a cosmetology school in a strip mall isn’t a job at Bank of America, either.
Gatekeeping is a complex job of managing boundaries that do not just define others but that also define ourselves. Status symbols — silk shells, designer shoes, luxury handbags — become keys to unlock these gates.
Pierre Bourdieu's "La Distinction" is a great text that investigates this topic in depth. It's (among other things) about taste. How it's inherited through generations, how it's a gatekeeping tool for jobs and status.
What you wear isn't the whole story btw. It's also how you wear it (as exemplified above ("Chavs" wearing Burberry)). One of Bourdieu's examples is art and how one speaks about it (using certain words, knowing the "right" works of art etc. Another example might be wine).
I don't know if Bourdieu is widely read in the US, but he certainly influenced my thinking about class, class boundaries, and taste. Highly recommended.
+1 for Bourdieu. I think everyone should read him.
I thought he was particularly interesting on music. You might expect the upper classes to be opera buffs and experts on classical music. But in fact he found that the middle classes used a knowledge of classical music as evidence of aspiration.
The upper classes sometimes used opera as a status marker, but were more likely to enjoy undemanding music, like easy listening and musicals - presumably because they felt they had nothing to prove.
Interestingly, median prices for a stadium show by a mainstream act are higher than tickets for most seats at the Royal Opera House.
I grew up poor among other poor people, and it never struck me that anyone was buying expensive stuff because they thought that's what would lead them to a better job or some such. They were buying expensive stuff because they wanted it. There's this new feel-good ideal that it's not poor peoples' fault they're poor, but no one ever supplies data to back it up. Only well-written personal stories. I'm sure it's not a binary, but from personal experience where I grew up, the poor people in my family and around me were poor mostly because they were lazy, wanted expensive possessions, and refused to work the long-game to getting out of poverty.
I'd love to see real data that points to this being the exception.
No. What I'm saying is people's decisions being one of the biggest determining factors of their fates is the null hypothesis. If you want to prove the alternative hypothesis-- that it's not generally poor people's decisions' fault they're poor, you're going to have to bring data to back-up your alternative hypothesis.
I'd love to believe that alternative hypothesis, but that would be naive and irresponsible without data.
I'll start with an angle that the decisions of one's guardians have a large impact on their ability to escape poverty. The sad thing about this view is that if you hop back a generation, it kind of loops into itself. Hop back some more generations and some of these descendants are chained up on a boat from Africa...
"Among African-Americans who have grown up during the era of mass incarceration, one in four has had a parent locked up at some point during childhood." [1]
"America’s prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. As an outcast group, the men and women in our penal insti- tutions have little access to the social mobility available to the mainstream." [2]
"By and large, this research supports the conclusion that family income has selective but, in some instances, quite substantial effects on child and adolescent well-being. Family income appears to be more strongly related to children’s ability and achievement than to their emotional outcomes. Children who live in extreme poverty or who live below the poverty line for multiple years appear, all other things being equal, to suffer the worst outcomes." [3]
How exactly do people make their way out of poverty? Unless they win the lotto, employment is how it's done. Do rates of employment fluctuate along with rates of laziness and poor planning? Or does the Keynesian theory in which decreased demand for goods and services make more sense? Does the Monetarist approach that unemployment is caused by high inflation and decreased investment sound more likely? Either way, it would appear that for many, finding full time employment with which to escape poverty isn't always manageable.
A lot of it comes down to business cycles and the mobility of one's skills as the economy evolves. Think of the regional structure of the economy. Sometimes an industry experiences a heavy downturn in an area in which it is highly saturated. Believe it or not, the personal losses that accompany it are not due to people getting lazier.
Do you know how big of a problem poverty is? Did you know that in the last 20 years we in Canada finally dipped our poverty rate among single parent families below the 50% mark? That is a lot of kids growing up in a situation in which no matter how hard they work, there is a lot to overcome compared to the middle class. Can you see how some of the situational issues might prevent them from escaping poverty no matter how hard they try? What about other at-risk groups like people with work-related disability, recent immigrants and aboriginals? Do you think these people are just not trying hard enough?
Your stance that poverty is the failure of the individual is a dangerous stereotype. It's a type of blame-oriented belief with a dark history. It actually dates back to religious attitudes in the 16th century, when the paupers in the workhouse were dismissed as sinners. Social Darwinism eventually took it's place, applying biological theories to social life and stating that the poor are simply biologically and/or socially inferior. That's your angle, correct? The great depression was nothing more than a mass bout of laziness?
People are let go from jobs for reasons outside their control and many are unable to recover. People deal with issues outside of their control that are powerful enough to prevent them from escaping poverty. People below the poverty line tend to find themselves spending all their money and time attending to basic needs and are incapable of budgeting the time and money for learning new skills. Kids raised in poor families are not given a decent start in life.
You say you would love to see the data but I wonder if you would love to see it enough to search it out yourself? Have you already reviewed these points and decided they are false? I’m just spitballin’ here a bit, there is plenty more proof that poverty creates poverty and that social darwinist theories applied to labour markets is absurd and dehumanizing.
Believing that it's poor people's fault that they're poor - speaking of things no one ever backs up with data - is uniquely naive (and an extremely simplistic attempt at an explanation).
Also, note that having the quality of being "feel-good" does not invalidate an argument.
When discussing this subject, I find that people mostly tend to really be arguing from how they make sense of the world (anecdotes, philosophy, political ideology, etc.) rather than saying anything useful about the world itself.
For some reason, it also seems that this sort of thinking is especially prevalent (or at least visible) in the U.S., even though it compares poorly to other developed countries.
Believing it's most poor people's fault they're poor is the null hypothesis. We generally believe people's decisions matter. It's especially the null hypothesis for me, because this is what I grew up seeing with my own eyes, in my own family. It's even more so because the people I grew up with would have also said "it's not my fault I'm poor," even when I could clearly see them make bad decision after bad decision. Then there's the additional circumstantial evidence of seeing who invests in poor financial vehicles like lottery tickets and playing slot machines.
Yes, I'd love to know these are all exceptions to the rule-- it would make me feel much better about the politics I'd like to believe, but the other camp is going to have to provide the data to back up their alternative hypothesis.
That's arguable [0].
The null hypothesis might as well be defined as there being no causal relationship between people's actions and their economic status.
We do generally believe that people's decisions matter, but we also generally believe that context matters. People don't make decisions in vacuums, nor do all decisions matter.
What the null hypothesis is or isn't does not change in your case, nor does multiple anecdotes equal data.
While making irrational decisions with regard to one's economic situation and laying blame elsewhere is hypocritical, it is not behavior exclusive to poor people, and neither is "investing" in gambling. There is also the fact that poor people are not proven to consistently make these sorts of irrational choices.
Any camp making any sort of claim is going to have to provide data.
All the while, we have merrily ignored any other potential contributing factors, which will change depending on how we define poverty (absolute/relative, local/global, etc.) [0], including (off the top of my head):
- History (e.g. colonialism, exploitation);
- Government policy (discrimination, segregation, ethnic policies,
etc.) [1, 2];
- Social attitudes/culture (stigma, prejudice, etc.) [3]
- Nation status (underdeveloped nations ravaged by war, for instance);
- Social mobility (auto-bootstrap-pulling, singular data points aside) [4];
- Risk factors in early development (lack of nutrition, stimuli and resources) [5, 6];
- Dumb luck (born into wealth, stumbling over winning lottery ticket).
Really hard to read for me. I don't know the way the author expresses her ideas is hard to grasp.
The basic idea of course is right: You need to fake status if you don't have it, if you want some of the benefits.
But what is missing is some data. Because if we think that further, you can certainly overspend on that hope that one day someone let's you in on something because you have status. And probably many people do overspend on that (I'm thinking about the golden $10k Apple watch here as an example). There must be a way to evaluate how much is good and when it starts to hurt you. And I guess there should be a lot of science on that.
There is a comment below the original article which makes the point that even knowing the threshold is itself a form of privilege in the particular case of "dressing to impress".
Which comment do you mean? Ctrl-F for "threshold" and "dressing to impress" didn't yield anything. Skimming the first three comments didn't either.
Also what's the point? I don't really agree with "knowing <X> = privilege" but let's say it's true. Then what? Does that change what should be the best decision? Does it change how we react on incomplete information?
Knowing that there is a threshold at which returns start to diminish is a good point, because it tells you to look for clues of when to stop spending on status symbols. Having an expensive watch might help you, but the $60k watch might not improve your situations 10x of what a $6k watch would do.
Now if we add that the knowledge of the threshold is privilege, what does it change? Of course the person who has that knowledge makes better decisions. But knowing that it is a privilege to know that threshold doesn't give any more change to the decision making process. Or at least I don't see it.
This is just semi-anecdotal, but for watches I don't think there's really a lower threshold when it comes to price. My watch is the $90 (sadly out-of-production) Casio MDV-102 [1] which is a real cult classic. I have it on a black and grey Nato strap ($10) and it does get me compliments from watch connoiseurs from time to time. But I guess there's a definite knack to recognizing cult classics though.
People don't generally spend $60k on a watch to impress watch connoisseurs, but to impress people who know nothing about watches. The reason Rolex is so popular is not really because they are great watches (they are), but because everybody knows that Rolexes are expensive.
> I was thinking this, too, but then it occurred to me that being able to determine exactly where that line is (the line between looking comfortably professional and looking like a poor person trying to fake their status by flaunting an exorbitantly expensive bauble) is itself a matter of privilege. You might have to be “in the club” to be able to perceive the subtle messages various clothing/accessory choices, combined with the rest of your presentation, can send. Or at least you’d have to have studied “the club” from the outside with an unusually perceptive eye.
> tressiemc22
> November 13, 2013
> Yes, Becca. If everyone knows where the line is the status symbol loses most of its utility.
A high school friend of mine wound up working as an "ATM Clark" - essentially the guy in charge of filling ATMs. The salary varies wildly based on how much overtime is done, his take-home salary was usually $2500/month (which lies in the richer portion of the middle class in South Africa). His colleague did no overtime and took home $500/month.
This guy who only earned $500 spent $400 on a loan and insurance for a Golf GTi (one of the status symbol cars in South Africa). My friend who earned 5 times as much drove around in a derelict '92 VW Fox.
So I've seen it first-hand, "stupid poor people spending stupid amounts of money on stupid things." In the same way me and my friend spent stupid amounts of money on our own type of stupid things. We bought smartphones (back in 2005, this was the WinMo days) so that we could tinker with them. Instead of getting a prestige symbols we got toys that we could play with.
Whether or not something is stupid depends on who you ask. If you ask a poor person whether someone buying a nice car is stupid they will probably say "no." If you ask them whether buying a smartphone (pre-iPhone, remember) is a stupid idea they would definitely say "yes." I would guess it speaks about the underlying psychology of wealth: those with no monetary wealth seek approval from others (prestige symbols: cars, handbags, etc.) and those with much seek approval from themselves (toys: fast internet, flashy computers, etc.).
This is also seen in many Eastern Europe places with flashy cars near crumbling post-WW2 soviet apartment buildings where obviously their (leased) car costs twice or more than any home there. Just because they show off their car for style or status.
Unfortunately today, integrating in society means being liked and for that, you must blend in and look similar to other people. People feel much stronger when they can see they are part of the larger group, and like to confirm their norms as correct and will always unconsciously exclude minorities or people who are off. Animals do exactly the same thing: groups of dogs will never tolerate cats and vice versa. One cat can tolerate a dog, but never in groups.
That's why law was invented, to put some order into the zoo and transform it into civilization. The real political issue is to make people have faith in society and leave their culture at home.
The hardest difficulty for minorities is to not feel rejected, and to have faith in the law and the democratic system. There has been real historical progress towards legal statuses, but it's true that you can't really prevent people from behaving like social animals and make sure they behave like citizens first, social animal second.
The real intellectual fight, is to systemically crush the idea that some cultures and ways of life are to be thanked for because they brought our society's greatness. I guess the US is a large country with very diverse cultures, and it can be very hard for the federal government to make the union hold into something thriving and prosperous.
The saddest thing is when you hear people defending the founding fathers like they are the sole ideal of america: white catholic conquerors founded america and thus america should be at its image.
Characterizing the United States as a catholic country is a pretty big misrepresentation. Until the waves of immigration from Ireland and Italy in the mid 19th century, most Americans were protestant of one variety or the other. Part of the reason that Irish immigrants were initially considered "non-white" was because they were Catholics.
I think that's his point, before the founding fathers there was another version of (white-european) America, discovered by "catholic conquerors" so people choose which story to tell themselves.
"Catholic" means "Christian" (well, "church universal", really), although it's often used as a shorthand for "Roman Catholic", being a subset of Catholicism.
Sometimes the distinction is made by a lower case leading "c" for the church universal, and an upper case leading "C" for shorthand of "Roman Catholic".
I am not talking about the cutesy ankle tattoos, I am taking tattoos that require long sleeves to cover up or worse cannot be hidden. Unless your trying for a job where creativity is king I cannot find many instances where they are acceptable.
There certainly are many approaches to getting ahead if just enough. I suppose some rely on 'status symbols', while others talk their way up the ladder. I don't think this justifies some people's ridiculous purchases of status symbols while they still live in poverty however, especially those who don't use them to gain a leg up in their situation. I feel like that was not considered in the writing of this article, I could be wrong though, or have overlooked it.
I was going to write a diatribe about how my sister-in-law manages to get a three bedroom semi in Berkshire in the UK, has a nice 60" television and an iphone 6 and hasn't worked a day since 1998 nor has her numerous partners, her physically disabled 15 year old son (who incidentally managed to scale a 7 foot tall wall because he couldn't be bothered to walk around the house to go and buy cigarettes), sitting there with her friends last week all they discussed was how to screw more things out of the state whilst bathing in a cloud of smoke in the garden and simultaneously annoying their neighbours with loud garage music..
...but I'm sure the logic of this article explains that...
Actually they're not stupid. They're ruthless in some areas and its hard for me to sit there a a relative and not explode violently at them.
This post is somewhat an experiment however as reddit's UK population seems to think that this class of person doesn't exist and would happily downvote people off the internet for even suggesting it, labelling you as a tory supporter and general inhuman.
Anyway, your sister-in-law (who's such a bad person, you let your brother marry her -- maybe your bro is not a saint either, is he? But women make for better targets) is actually quite savvy. Thing is, really, that western society is built by people of privilege tricking us schmucks into breaking our backs for them. She's saying no to all that hypocrisy from first principles. I honestly envy her courage.
> This post is somewhat an experiment however as reddit's UK population seems to think that this class of person doesn't exist and would happily downvote people off the internet for even suggesting it, labelling you as a tory supporter and general inhuman.
You know what, fuck 'em. You're not alone, and the vast majority of people are not vocal. The vocal people are always a small minority on either side of the spectrum. Fuck 'em.
No-one else knows your sister-in-law. The only info we've been given by you is that she's not worked since she had a disabled son 15 years ago. And that they both smoke cigarettes (a heavily marketed, addictive drug that many people of all classes/temperaments still use today).
They both may well be genuinely more evil than Hitler, but you've hardly presented an airtight case on this and in fact are likely to have inspired sympathy for the targets of your rage. Maybe that's why random strangers on the internet label you as a "tory supporter and general inhuman".
What so wrong about that? She doesn't want to work. Her choice. Get over your puritanical veneration for work. She is wise to have found a way to not work and spend her time in leisure.
You are obliged to give taxes for welfare so that the poor have incentive to sign into the social contract and don't confiscate your private property. Consider it payment for your lifestyle. What incentive would this person not to kill you and take your wealth were she not getting welfare?
It is exactly taxes of others. There is no taxation on welfare technically speaking as you didn't create any value to have tax removed from.
One of the things that is explicitly allocated from my taxation is policing. In some states/counties in some countries, that doesn't necessarily prevent those who are receiving welfare from taking your property either: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots
Taxes are not only on creation of value, they are also largely derived from ownership of productive assets. That is the one I dispute, for I don't believe that a person naturally ought to accept ownership of all means of productive by those who came before and acquired these assets through whatever means.
Dishonest as she has built her life on a web of lies at the extreme cost of others. Everything she owns is on credit and has no intention of paying for it for example. If she's short of cash, her solution is to find someone to fuck and get another kid to pay the bills.
She has three children. The oldest is disabled but not and has two criminal records already. The middle one has been kicked out of two schools. And she has a social worker for the third one.
Making a career out of dishonesty isn't acceptable morally. Neither is leaving this legacy.
For ref, I'm not for work entirely and as someone who automates people out of it, I understand that there isn't likely to be enough work to go around one day.
Also I have three children and actually look after them.
No, that is presupposing that the way the system works is honest and just. I don't agree with that at all.
The earth is bountiful enough for a person to live off it without working (hunter-gatherer). Is it her fault that she was born at a time when all land and productive capacity has been appropriated by those who came before? Is it somehow noble for her to sell her body into labor to work in a society that can feed all without making her into a wage slave?
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence becomes an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus
The earth is bountiful enough for a person to live off it without working (hunter-gatherer). Is it her fault that she was born at a time when all land and productive capacity has been appropriated by those who came before?
If that's the issue, there is a simple solution. We can provide hunter/gatherer levels of subsistence for anyone who wants it in some roped off, undeveloped land. Anyone who wants latrines, heating, clean water, textiles or metal still needs a job in the modern world.
This will cost essentially nothing and will allow people to live as hunter gatherers. Somehow I suspect this isn't quite what you had in mind.
Well, to be fair, no, we couldn't do this, at least not for any significant fraction of the population. The carrying capacity for a traditional HG society is a tiny fraction of an agricultural one (there should be more deer than humans, etc.)
Mind you, very few people would take you up on the offer, as you know, so we could probably manage this for anyone who wanted it...but doing so would take a lot of work without providing a lot of benefit for the whole population. So there's no good reason to. :)
I agree that no one actually wants this. It would take a moderate amount of work, but certainly far less work than the modern welfare state which I'm proposing using it as a substitute for.
My real point is that liltimmy's appeal to some hunter/gatherer era is silly.
Actually a better way to deal with the world is to chip in and honestly reap the benefits of hundreds of years of civilisation, industrialisation and the general improvement in quality of life.
I mean we can all have that attitude, live off the land and be rebellious but the price we pay for that is a collapse in all the benefits participating in society brings.
I doubt you've ever actually tried living like this. I spend a good amount of my spare time tending an allotment and a large garden (as a context switch) and it's hard work just to get some vegetables for leisurely eating, not just to feed yourself with all the other concerns of life as well. My potatoes got rot a couple of years ago; that would have been famine historically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
I'm not sure she could or would even consider digging trenches for your squashes and I'm not sure you would even though you're spurting idealism.
False dichotomy. One does not have to be a rabid individualist in one's quest for freedom from wage slavery. There are many political arrangements, such as anarcho-syndicalism, which reject the traditional hiearchies of power but nonetheless enable people to work together to create civilization.
What I am talking about is rejecting the modes of power prevalent, not civilization entirely.
> Making a career out of dishonesty isn't acceptable morally. Neither is leaving this legacy.
That's good to hear, so you dislike our current society, especially the modern work environment? Good for you, I hope more people wise up. I would love to hear your suggestions for an alternative work enivronment and a better society.
Things don't even necessarily have to be expensive though. Someone that knows how to dress will be able to judge you in 5 seconds and clock you for what you're worth. The chest is too big, shoulder divots, sleeves not showing enough collar, why in god's name is it a 3 button, did you really match your pocket square to your tie, etc.
Simple things will betray you, much like accent and non idiomatic English. You might not ever speak to this person, but they will have formed an opinion about you in 5 seconds and poof! an opportunity slips by.
I know this seems "unfair" or maybe people will even say "yeah well if someone is so superficial maybe it's a good thing" these are all just ways of trying to rationalize an irrational world. Rather learn to play the game.
This is painful to read because it is true. It is very hard to explain privilege. Almost all (good) privileged people have a very hard time of seeing it. But how to fix it? My Fair Lady style? Trickle down? Charity? So far the only thing that worked was Revolution.
A HN/tech-startup translate this kind of situation: would you reject someone - and maybe not bother looking as hard into their technical qualifications - if they showed up to the first interview in a "stuffy suit" that "obviously wouldn't be a good cultural fit"?
Obviously, I'm stereotyping a bit, but that's kind of the point! Sometimes there are barriers to overcome and middlemen that need to be appeased, and working to overcome these problems is a demonstration of good problem solving skills, even if it looks "stupid" to an outside observer.
This is a continuation of sumptuary laws (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law), which were laws regulating what you could wear depending on your social class. The supposed logic behind these laws was always to stop stupid poor people from buying expensive clothes they couldn't afford, but the real reason was always to preserve existing signals of wealth and class.
This piece hinges on the premise that "not filthy rich" is the same as "poor", and goes on a tirade from there. Is it really that controversial to state that you shouldn't buy what you can't afford?
But these people can't really afford these clothes.
Note that buying $2500 clothes does not necessarily mean that one has $2500 in the bank: they can be bought using credit or as part of a set of large expenditures thanks to a paycheck. The system of credit in the US does allow people to live above their means -- for a while.
In communities where status symbols like this are really important, people often put themselves in significant financial jeopardy to buy such items, even when they cannot really afford them.
I've skimmed through it after the blatant straw man in the first paragraph, which prompted me to post. I might read it later if the resulting discussion on HN is interesting :-)
edit: downvote away, but I doubt I'm alone in feeling turned off by this kind of clickbaity behavior
The article had nothing to do with what you're claiming it "hinges" on. It was a meditation on status symbols, and an interesting one. Why not just read it and comment, or don't and don't?
[premise] society loves to hate on poor people and considers them stupid for buying luxury
[tweet that states nothing of the sort, not even remotely]
[thesis]
so, given that I've never heard of this trope myself (perhaps it's a bit of a US thing?) I felt turned off and commented on that, nothing less, nothing more.
I read this article years ago, and it's worth re-reading... ergo, not clickbait.
The author talks about how it __appears__ wasteful to buy expensive clothes when you're poor, but it's all about __signalling__ to others that you're someone that should not be ignored. It profoundly changed the way I thought about the "people buying expensive things they can't afford" idea when I read it.
At the risk of quoting too much, this is the part that really was memorable for me, and is worth reading more than once in the original article:
I remember my mother taking a next door neighbor down to the
social service agency. The elderly woman had been denied benefits ....
The woman had been denied in the genteel bureaucratic way — lots
of waiting, forms, and deadlines she could not quite navigate.
I watched my mother put on her best ... outfit.
It took half a day but ... my mother’s performance ... got done
what the elderly lady next door had not been able to get done
in over a year. I learned, watching my mother, that ...
we had to pay to signal to gatekeepers that we were worthy of engaging.
It meant dressing well and speaking well. It might not work.
It likely wouldn't work but on the off chance that it would, you had to try.
Sure, there are stupid people that buy things they don't need. However, sometimes the things we think of as "luxury" are necessary for Getting Things Done. Hell, this is the reason I have a suit in my closet that I've worn rarely (job interviews). Expensive accessories and a Nice Outfit can help people ensure that they aren't discriminated against for being "low-class".
I totally agree: if you can't afford it, don't buy it. But I also understand the argument in the article that unnecessary luxury items CAN be unlock certain doors in life. However, i have the feeling that most people do these irrational purchases only for the purpose of showing off.
Intelligence (being well-read, habitual 'mapper') should come before appearance. All these bearded hipsters, imitating the same personage from the "Into The Wild" movie or each other, are so ridiculous, especially in India or Nepal, where they seemed to believe that they belong to some alien super-intelligent race or something. But when you are trying to talk to them, they cannot express anything interesting, but a small set of current memes and cultural codes.
One such hipster once told me that he is from a different tribe of humanity, and commented two minutes later, that "the eachquake was nice, I learned a lot". And he isn't even acting - he is just that.
Status symbols must be not vearable. It must be healthy looks and open-mindedness - the effects of possession of at least some intelligence (evolution do favour looks of healthy youth, not purchased status items marketed as such. Not being able to grasp this simple fact means one isn't qualified even for a hipster).
BTW, real intelligence and real spirituality does not require any special attributes to make it self-evident. On the contrary, it is inversly correlated with appearance - the dreaded-and-tattooed hippues in rags marketed for tourists are the most primitive. Then come yogis, sages and babas. Breaded hipsters comes next.
As for status symbols to impress waiters and clerks, well, they could be much subtle and cheaper that a ₹1 lakh bag. Usually, the matching set of clothing which reflects your personal taste - texture and quality of a fabric, matching colors, simplicity of being good-enough is enough.
If you read the article, you'll see that the author actually agrees with you. They just picked a clickbait-y headline because that's What People Do These Days.
I'm reminded of the "chav" subculture in Britain and their love of Burberry. (Extreme example: http://i.imgur.com/8QxFSh5.jpg) I don't get the feeling that they're trying to open doors to the British upper-class, but rather using it as a status-symbol within their own community.
Personally I don't see anything wrong with that; everyone wants to look good for their peers. But I feel like the author is trying to make it more noble than it is.