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How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

theguardian.com

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Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#321

Post by digi_owl »

CM30 wrote: post #280
staunch wrote: post #3

> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…

> The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can distract them from the fact that they're all being economically exploited and subjected to wage slavery. Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about for a while too. It's very convenient that the whole 'Occupy' thing got followed up by a huge push for social justice beliefs and comments about deplorables. Like someo…

Never mind having a candidate run on gender issues while being backed by the monied interest that ran the world economy aground...

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#322

Post by Redoubts »

slavik81 wrote: post #200
rm999 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for OP, but a big one is how to deal with the check at a restaurant. For people who are lower/lower middle class (or at the least not financially secure), you pass around a receipt and take turns deciding who owes what. In the middle/upper middle class, there is an unspoken rule the check gets split, and anything else is awkward. In the upper class, oftentimes one person will pay for the check and it's…

> you pass around a receipt and take turns deciding who owes what A lot of things in this thread seem completely foreign to me. Every restaurant I've been to in the past few years has just asked how we want to split the bill. They seem to keep all orders separate in the system and just merge them if you want shared bills.

I have only seen Denny's do this.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#323

Post by dionidium »

Retric wrote: post #181
dionidium wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The struggle is huge, and I keep having to look inside myself to figure out what "my people" is supposed to mean." For me, the weirdest part is the way in which the upper-middle class people I now associate and work with talk about "my people" (i.e. the working-class folks I grew up with). They mythologize them as the noble, hard-working, salt of the earth, when in reality, they clearly don't like most of their ha…

I work with plenty of people that may put in a "hard" 2-3 hours of actual work a day. Comparing effort and every poor person I grew up with actually worked really hard. If anything it's coded language for 'working hard is a great way to end up poor'. PS: Consider all the "hardworking" people here on HN. Yes, long hours may be expected, but effort has little direct benefit.

No doubt. They are hard workers, hustlers (in the best sense of the word), scammers, grifters, and some of the laziest folks I've ever met -- and everything in between.

They're just people. When the upper-classes talk about the poor as all good or all bad it's always in the context of selling you their politics.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#324

Post by ggg9990 »

jstarfish wrote: post #310
saget wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Martin Shkreli, Harvey Weinstein, Wall Street protests, and probably others that I forget were aided by the Internet. Hopefully it will become a bigger trend in the future.

That's my point though-- throw the occasional unsympathetic high-profile lamb under the bus so the bourgies act like they police their own. These individuals are distractions, nothing more. Shkreli literally launched a sortie against the plebes by means of his obscene price gouging (which isn't even what put him in jail-- if not for his crimes against the elite, he'd be a free man!), and prolific sex offenders like W…

Shkreli’s crime was raising the price tenfold at once, and boasting about it, instead of the good old boy’s method of 20% per year and keeping quiet.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#325

Post by DrScump »

zeveb wrote: post #229
dragonwriter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent is important, but if there is intent to inflict pain, either as a means or an ends, it is abuse. Now, it's true that there are further meaningful intent-based distinctions you can make within the broad category of abuse, but that's somewhat beside the point.

> if there is intent to inflict pain, either as a means or an ends, it is abuse. That doesn't sound correct to me. If a little get (well below the age of reason) reaches for the pretty red glowing burner atop the stove, you slap away his hand because the small pain of getting his hand slapped will serve to make a second attempt less likely, and the small pain is far less severe and more transient than the great and l…

There was a genuine tragedy[0] just over a month ago in NYC from such an unchecked child who "had a history of playing with the burners and turning them on." The family of the firestarter all escaped but placed others at heightened risk of death by leaving their doors open as they fled.

[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/12/29/new-york-city-mayor-1...

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#326

Post by Consultant32452 »

sedachv wrote: post #318
Consultant32452 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're undervaluing the impact of the internet on small business. Sure, a few guys at the tippy top of Uber-eats are the only ones getting fabulously wealthy, but I've discovered several wonderful mom and pop restaurants through that service. Sure, only a hand full of people at Google are getting fabulously wealthy, but most of the video content I consume these days are regular-ish people on Youtube who now m…

The Internet does enable easier local business discovery. Where are all the new small businesses though? The latest Census data is from 2015 and shows the number of new small businesses created is at a level not seen since the mid-1970s: http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-nea... Whatever combination of factors is at work suppressing small business creation since the 2008 recession is not being o…

The economy tanked and just as it was starting to recover the government made it illegal to take on risk by having no or crappy insurance. Meanwhile healthcare prices skyrocketed. Simultaneously we doubled down on our immigration policy towards providing citizenship for unskilled, impoverished immigrants rather than the kind of means based immigration policy popular in most of Europe. That means we missed out on a lot of talented, educated immigrants who might have either started companies or been willing to work for startups. We cracked down on internships. And we allowed patent trolls to run amok. Let's also not forget the credible threats of doubling minimum wage.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#327

Post by tmnvix »

tetromino_ wrote: post #311
hkmurakami wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean sure, for some of us beach vacations are free bc we live in LA or Florida, but for most of the country it'll cost in the thousands. Ditto skiing with lift passes, travel, and lodging. Having a local hill is the exception rather than the rule tbh.

The US has skiable mountain ranges near a majority of the main coastal population centers. Hills around the Great Lakes might not be high, but make up for it with the volume of snow. A back of an envelope estimate shows half of the US population having a ski hill within driving distance.

Even in New Zealand skiing is a slightly exclusive pursuit. I don't think I ever had a Maori classmate that mentioned a skiing holiday.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#328

Post by greenleafjacob »

ericd wrote: post #305
afterburner wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to become wealthy is to spend less than you make. This is hilariously wrong.

Feel free to elaborate on why it's wrong. I don't mean spending less than you make at all times, and I don't mean "make" as in "earn at a wage-earning job", there are many more ways to make money than that. In the long term, your wealth is the money you've made (including capital gains), minus what you've spent. You might say that's completely obvious, but it helps some people to be reminded of it.

It's not wrong, but think of it this way: if you short a stock, your downside exposure is unlimited because the price can go arbitrarily high, but your upside is finite because the stock can only go to zero. In the same way, you can only decrease your spending so much, even to zero, but you can increase your income by an unlimited amount.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#329

Post by Noumenon72 »

hsitz wrote: post #29
staunch wrote: post #3

> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…

This reminds me of an entry from The Book of Life, on "Countries for Losers, and Countries for Winners": http://www.thebookoflife.org/countries-for-losers-countries-... I live in the U.S., but I think I'd prefer to live in one of the countries for losers.

1 in 785,166 chance of starting a billion dollar company is pretty amazing if true.

Re: How does ‘class-passing’ actually work?

#330

Post by ericd »

greenleafjacob wrote: post #328
ericd wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to elaborate on why it's wrong. I don't mean spending less than you make at all times, and I don't mean "make" as in "earn at a wage-earning job", there are many more ways to make money than that. In the long term, your wealth is the money you've made (including capital gains), minus what you've spent. You might say that's completely obvious, but it helps some people to be reminded of it.

It's not wrong, but think of it this way: if you short a stock, your downside exposure is unlimited because the price can go arbitrarily high, but your upside is finite because the stock can only go to zero. In the same way, you can only decrease your spending so much, even to zero, but you can increase your income by an unlimited amount.

Yep, you're right. For many people, though, increasing their income substantially is harder than decreasing their spending substantially, and also, many people are in the habit of increasing their spending when their earnings increase by, say, switching from Ikea to higher end furniture, or trading in that used Honda for a new Mercedes. For many people, it's so bad that they end up not saving any more, while putting themselves in a more precarious position if their income ever dried up.
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