They don’t think of themselves as rich, as they’re not quite the One Percenters, the mega-wealthy who own private planes and 300-foot-long yachts. But they don’t miss any meals.
My interviewees never talked about themselves as “rich” or “upper class,” often preferring terms like “comfortable” or “fortunate.” Some even identified as “middle class” or “in the middle,” typically comparing themselves with the super-wealthy, who are especially prominent in New York City, rather than to those with less.
When I used the word “affluent” in an email to a stay-at-home mom with a $2.5 million household income, a house in the Hamptons and a child in private school, she almost canceled the interview, she told me later. Real affluence, she said, belonged to her friends who traveled on a private plane.
These are the deeply-progressive, socially-conscious, Democratic-voting working class. And their empathy cannot be understated.
Over lunch in a downtown restaurant, Beatrice, a New Yorker in her late 30s, told me about two decisions she and her husband were considering. They were thinking about where to buy a second home and whether their young children should go to private school. Then she made a confession: She took the price tags off her clothes so that her nanny would not see them. “I take the label off our six-dollar bread,” she said.
She did this, she explained, because she was uncomfortable with the inequality between herself and her nanny, a Latina immigrant. She had a household income of $250,000 and inherited wealth of several million dollars. Relative to the nanny, she told me, “The choices that I have are obscene. Six-dollar bread is obscene.”
But $6 bread is delicious, and what point is there to working hard if not to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor? Meet social justice in action, taking the price tags off couture clothing so that the maid doesn’t feel badly that a blouse cost more than her monthly earnings.
[T]he people I spoke with expressed a deep ambivalence about identifying as affluent. Rather than brag about their money or show it off, they kept quiet about their advantages. They described themselves as “normal” people who worked hard and spent prudently, distancing themselves from common stereotypes of the wealthy as ostentatious, selfish, snobby and entitled. Ultimately, their accounts illuminate a moral stigma of privilege.
They feel just horrible about their “privilege,” guilty for their comfort. But they still buy $6 bread, because it’s so yummy. At least they take the price tag off, as any socially-conscious empathetic person would do.
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Dear Papa,
I’m gobsmacked that someone would say one thing and do another. It’s almost as if they care about themselves more than anything. Shocking.
You’re right to point out the hypocrisy. It makes me as sick as a guy with a nut allergy eating $6 artisan bread. The Dems are so out of touch they are still wondering how hdawg could have lost. The working class has no party.
Best,
PK
I hear Hillary is writing a new book about why her last book didn’t make the best seller list. She got a seven-figure advance.
Now that was a witty rejoinder.
I have my moments.
Now THAT’s sick.
Brutal and great. Thanks for the laugh.
Just beeecause the housemaid speaks Spanish does not mean she’s stewpid. She knows quality couture comes at a cost. Judging the right size is another matter! She may know how to “sew” as well, a homemaking art many Amerikan women have lost in their headlong charge toward equality in the workplace and “meaningful” professional careers. Perhaps The Law. Perhaps Prosecution. Perhaps even a judgeship? If the Wise Latina amongst the Supremes can do, well anyone can.
Hey, who leaves the pricetags on clothing anyhow? That is ridiculous unless you want the whole world to know? Hey, that gives me an idea: Leave the pricetags on as a “fashion statement”. The more pricetags, the merrier. (The latest Paris runway idea, you herd it hear first.)
As for the six dollar multi-grain artisanal bread, we get ours at the local food bank for free. It’s just a day old! Good bread is like good wine; it improves with age. Or did we get it backwards? (It’s what you put on the bread that makes it so yummy. We prefer plain ol butter.) Thanx for bringing CAPTCHA back. We were missing it there: 17+10 = 27.
Finally, wealthy folks are no different than we are. They put their trousers and pants on the same way we do. They tie their shoe laces the same. Riches do not bring happiness. It’s in The Bible. Happiness is walking out of the courtroom Scot-free. If you’re wealthy, you can buy your way out quicker; that’s all. If you have to rely on public pretenders, it’s “pot luck”, and you may be in deep doodoo.
I consider “Scot-free” hate speech.
Agreed. And yet I point out that, in many centuries, the English have been unable to achieve such a state.
I hope she lets the maid eat cake.
Whatever’s left over after the dinner guests leave, sure.
SHG,
I read, very carefully, the article to which you linked. The following struck me as vitally important but unduly unfulfilling.
“When I asked one very wealthy stay-at-home mother what her family’s assets were, she was taken aback. ‘No one’s ever asked me that, honestly, she said. ‘No one asks that question. It’s up there with, like, ‘Do you masturbate?’’”
The writer, a sociology professor writing for the august New York Times, did not press the speaker for an answer to the latter question. That disturbs me.
Enquiring minds want to know.
All the best.
RGK
I doubt the question is unasked because it’s impolite, but because everyone already knows the answer.
So what’s the non-tag solution here to avoid the embarrassment of being a rich person surrounded by poor people? Buying cheaper bread? Give the money away? Or simply stop being ashamed of wealth and learn to enjoy flaunting one’s conspicuous consumption?
Most rich people, I imagine, solve this problem by simply ceasing to associate with poor people.
Interesting that think this is a problem in need of a solution. But your imagination shows your lack of understanding of the comfortable: they can’t cease to associate with poor people. The grass won’t cut itself.
I guess it’s a problem that doesn’t need a solution? When I see you call something social justice, you often seem to mean that it’s an idea propagated solely by idiots who should stop doing whatever it is they are doing, or engaging in some sort of incestuous competition to see who is the most woke.
Hiding the price tags on expensive bread may be petty, but I don’t see how it’s integrated with the social justice movement. In a lot of cultures, frugality is considered a virtue and luxury is considered a vice. Attempting to avoid the shame you might feel when the extraordinary extent of your profligacy is exposed might be petty and stupid, like a child trying to hide a broken vase, but I doubt the root cause of it is people’s attempts to advertise how empathetic they are.
You remind me of a cynic by Oscar Wilde’s definition, Joseph. You have all the words, yet understand nothing.
$6 bread? Peasants. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried the $12 Bialys at Gjusta in Venice Beach.
Yeah, bialys in Venice Beach. Good one.
Bless them, they really try. Though much like Pizza dough and other East Coast culinary simulacrum, something’s just not right. A respected chef around here, who happens to be my brother, tells me it’s the air and the water PH.
Same with Florida, which makes God’s Waiting Room that much easier to leave.
I kind of thought the whole purpose of working your ass off so one could afford couture apparel and 6 dollar bread was to be able to show off to your friends and neighbors.
But if you pretend that you don’t care, it makes the envy that much more delicious.
Some years ago, I coined the term “independently comfortable.” The idea was that I’ve done fairly well for myself since I began practicing law in the Stone Age, but definitely I’m not independently wealthy.
It never really caught on. But now seems like a good time to trot it out, take it for another spin.
You have lived a fascinating life. I so enjoy your stories.
Goddamn, you’re so mean to Jim’s old, old, withered, decrepit ass sometimes, y’know.
I believe Jim is entitled to at least three “olds,” one “withered” and two decrepits.” Give him his due, kid.
Those damn kidz just got no respect.
She’s uncomfortable with the income disparity between her…and her employee?
So she hides the tags?
Nobody seems to want to ask the obvious question about this scenario. Namely, does she really do her own grocery shopping?
Snap. You’ve broken the code, pee pee.
Damn, the fake mustache didn’t work. This thing is going to follow me like a registry.
Oh, you mean that YouTube code yesterday? I blame WordPress. And no, doing her own grocery shopping wasn’t meant as a euphemism for her not being Queen of the Castle.
Well played!
And here I thought it was a response to Judge Kopf’s question…
When I was just starting out as a lawyer, one of the firm’s wealthiest real estate clients was a guy you could often find grading his development sites on his own tractor, in a crumpled shirt and pair of overalls. Many of the other wealthy folks I have known over the years make no outward show of it, and a lot of people who actually have clear title to nothing will put on an ostentatious show. I think most really well to do people see such displays as making themselves targets for criminals, and avoid it for that reason. I doubt a great many are worried about what the nanny thinks.
My experience is that it’s an old v. new money thing. When I moved to my current doublewide, one of the neighbors, a gentleman of old money married to the scion of one of the wealthiest robber baron families, invited me to play golf at his club. He picked me up in a 10 year old Buick.
I expressed some surprise about his choice of rides, as he was reputed to have a lead foot, so I asked why that he was driving an old, rather pedestrian marque. His response is something I’ve never forgotten. He turned toward me, smiled from ear to ear, and replied, “because I can.”
“a lot of people who actually have clear title to nothing will put on an ostentatious show.”
I believe in Texas, that’s called “all hat and no cattle”.
Kurt
Or, with greater irony, “All tent and no show” (the irony being that the tent is the show).