European Umbrellas and American Rowboats

I had coffee the other evening with a German lawyer. “You know,” he said, “in Germany, we don’t even have a lot of the [menial] jobs that you have here in the states. Like those people who fill your grocery bags at the supermarket - in Germany, the stores can’t afford them. A lot of the jobs in the US seem to exist just so people can work. In Europe, we take care of everyone, so no one has to have a job like that …”

It was a very European thing to say.

Umbrella

During the European Middle Ages, the elites - the monarchy, the nobility, the church - had a duty to care for the lower classes. Ideally, the nobility had a (’God-given’) responsibility to care for the poor, while the poor had a(n equally ‘God-given’) responsibility to reciprocate - to pay taxes, to fight in wars, to support the system. These aristocracies gradually evolved into what we see today; nations requiring all children to attend state-run schools, nations in which adults pay more than 50% of their income in taxes to a state which funds their education, transportation, healthcare, retirement, and everything else.

The European states are all grown up today, but at heart, they still recall those early aristocracies. Europeans are, on average, more likely than U.S. citizens to feel the government has a responsibility to care for them — and that they in turn have a responsibility to support the government. In other words, the social net in Europe functions like an umbrella, a government hand sheltering willing dependents. In one form or another, this approach has been a sociopolitical reality in Europe for the better part of the last 2000 years. Often, it works stunningly well. For example, check this commentary on the Danish Economy, from Foreign Affairs (March/April 2008):

On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders … On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP on public outlays and has the world’s second-highest tax rate, after Sweden; strong trade unions; and one of the world’s most equal income distributions. For the half of the GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment conpensation that typically covers around 95 precent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world’s most creative system of worker retraining.

So the Danish economy is some kind of Clintonian wet dream; a place where widespread government control produces a fair social scene, and - at the same time - a globally competitive economic entity. Could we reproduce this in the US? Not according to me - or to the author, Kuttner, who continues,

… with appropriate caveats, Danish ideas can indeed be instructive for other nations grappling with the enduring dilemma of how to reconcile market dynamism with social and personal security… Yet Denmark’s social compact is the result of a century of political conflict and accommodation that produced a consensual style of problem solving that is uniquely Danish. it cannot be understood merely as a technical policy fix to be swallowed whole in a different cultural or political context. Those who would learn from Denmark must first appreciate that social models have to grow in their own political soil.

The Copenhagen Consensus: Reading Adam Smith in Denmark
Robert Kuttner, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008 (pp.78-9)

Kuttner concludes that, while instructive, the Danish system and solutions can’t be swallowed piecemeal by other countries. I would add, especially in the U.S., which never fit under the umbrella model to begin with.

Rowboat

Across the Atlantic, we in the United States look at the (Western/Christian) culture we share with Europe, and want to emulate the social systems we see working so well. Socialized healthcare, tight gun control, state-supported (and limited) higher education all seem simple at first glance, and add immeasurably to the quality of life modern Europeans enjoy. We’re then disappointed when transplanted reforms don’t flower here.

Even before 1776, we were a group of pioneers, people who wouldn’t or couldn’t fit under the Old World’s Umbrella - we were landowners who wanted more than Britain or Spain or France could provide. We were jailbirds who’d decided servitude here was better than eventual freedom, there. We were pioneers who wanted more for our children - in short, the U.S. was built on the backs of misfits, rebels, individualists, and immigrants. Our culture and government have always reflected this.

Practical Implications

I”m not sure how this plays out in the Real World today; for example, I don’t know how universal healthcare for the U.S. should look different than universal healthcare in Europe. Perhaps we should drop the issue down to the state level - an individualized, grassroots approach might have the kind of effects we want. Perhaps we should open more free clinics at the lower level. Perhaps everyone should get four free visits a year. Perhaps we should pass out healthcare vouchers and let individuals choose. Perhaps we should do something else entirely.

Especially today, as we draw nearer to the 2008 elections, we must remember that the United States has a very different political birthplace than Europe, despite our many cultural similarities. We’ve always functioned under a rowboat model; in its cleanest incarnation, government on this side of the Atlantic is nothing more than transportation for the ideas and ingenuity of the people driving it - a government Of the People, by the People, and for the People, if you will.

All I know for sure is that copied solutions won’t work for the U.S., whether they’re copied from England, or Denmark, or even a near neighbor like Canada. We need solutions tailored to our culture, that takes us into account; our strengths, our weaknesses. We need solutions that take into account the millions of immigrants - legal and illegal alike - that add immeasurably to the energy and drive of this country. We need a system that takes into account our penchant for violence, our fetish for rebellion, our predilection for rugged individualists, our admiration for stupid, honorable choices, our mercantilism, our repressed hypersexuality, our need to be heard, our constant soul-searching and redefinition - as individuals, as a culture, as a country.

We need, in short, a system that is built for us, from scratch - not one adapted from somewhere else. In the United States, we’ve spent centuries learning how to row our own boat, how to stay above the flood; in the end, deserting the rowboat for an umbrella may be harder to do than to say - especially when dry land is getting so hard to find.

Looking out for #1

I went out with my first boyfriend because he told me he loved me.  My second made me feel desirable, no matter what.  I went out with my third because I thought he was the most mysterious and beautiful creature I’d ever seen.  Each fulfilled a need for me - psychological, physical, emotional - something.  But none of these relationships lasted; while I’m still friends with my exes, when push came to shove, something broke - and these were boyfriends, serious interests.  We tried. Frankly, even if I’d had my mind on the long term when we began, I might still have gone out with these guys - and we would all still be on separate paths today.  

Many companies - and many countries - choose their relationships the same way.  They’re thinking about what the partner can do for them today, what revenue can be brought in, whether or not these desert fighters can keep the rebels down… They’re not thinking about the long term - and even if they are, long-term predictions fail more often than they succeed.  Prediction isn’t good enough, and current needs always change.  

So if we can’t think about now, and we can’t bet on the future,

how do we choose and cultivate good relationships - at any level? 

There’s the positive advice: 

“Only go out with people you’re attracted to”
“If he treats his mother well, he’ll treat you even better”
“If he can dance, he’ll be better in bed…”

And the negative advice: 

“Never be friends with someone you can’t respect.”  
“Never go out with someone you aren’t friends with first” 
“Don’t get serious with someone who falls in love too fast” 
“Never get involved in a land war in Asia”

… and most important, “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!!!!”  … 

 

… But seriously, forks … these are all just soundbytes - you can’t base any relationship on fortune-cookie advice. Here’s my current take on relationships:  

For a good relationship with staying power, look for someone who pushes you to become the person (or organization) you want to be - someone with a complementary personality (culture), and someone with complementary goals.  

 

It’s easy to pick a partner based on the moment, or based on what you think you can do for them, or what they can do for you.  However, in the long term,

 

you have to look out for #1.

You have to look for someone who pushes you to work harder, to have more fun, to think more deeply, to make more sales, to produce more revenue, to further peace and prosperity and equality and free trade - because the better you are, the better you’ll help them to be.  Because, in looking out for yourself, you’re looking out for everyone else, too.  Because in the end, the only thing you can really count on is the personality - or the culture, if you will - of the other.  

 

So how do you look for a partner who’ll help you be more who that you want to be?  

1. Know yourself -
   if you don’t know who you are, now, in the short term, you don’t have a solid base for long-term growth.  Know your basic principles.  Know your boundaries.  Know the lines you won’t cross - no matter what happens. Introspect. Think. Define yourself.   
    
2. Pick a direction - 
   Goals change over time, of course - but if you have a good idea what you want to do, you’re halfway there already - and you’ll be creating targeted relationships with people and organizations that (hopefully) won’t interfere with, or disapprove of, your actions in pursuit of that goal. 
    
3. Know the territory, know the personality/culture of those you interact with -
    Whether you’re looking for a trading partner or a serious relationship, get more information.  Put your friends in different contexts, to see how they react to new things.  Gather information on your trading partners’ interior affairs.  Find out how your business partners treat the people who work in their factories. Know the system, and how you can use it to further your own interests.
   Information is your friend.  
    
4. Know what you’re looking for.  Be realistic.  Keep your standards high  -
   We can’t all date supermodels, sometimes there is no good negotiations partner, and sometimes the only thing to do is to sell your company to Microsoft while the timing is right.  Things aren’t always perfect, but if we keep our standards high, it’s hard to go completely wrong.  
    
5. Be Decisive.  Be patient.  Don’t be afraid to say no -
   Good isn’t better isn’t best.  It’s fanatically difficult to pass up a good sale, or a good date, or a good trading partner, in search of the best one - but if we’re decisive about discarding what we don’t need, we’ll have more time and energy left for the things - and people - we do.  
    
6. Be flexible. Take risks. 
   For success, we must act.  Just keep moving.  

 

Knowledge is the new Information

Talk to anyone who invests in the stock market. He (or she) will tell you: success takes a lot more than just knowing the facts. These days, all the information you’re likely to use on a daily - or even monthly - basis is at your fingertips, just a search or a click away. Want to know the price of gold, who won the World Series in 1918, stock trends for Apple versus IBM, the price of mangoes in Guatemala - it’s all right there, and if you can’t find it, the odds are really good you can connect with someone who can.

Getting the facts just isn’t the issue any more.

The issue is knowledge.

Knowledge is cognition, thought, connection. It involves seeing the connections between previously (apparently) disparate, unrelated pieces of information. Success, in turn - whether social or in the business realm - is about leveraging those connections in a profitable way. In other words,

The facts: Music can be digitized. We can make very small hard drives. We can store music on them. We can use hard drives to play music on headphones.

Knowledge: those pieces fit together to make a portable music player.

Success: Steve Jobs says “hey, I bet we can sell these things”…

Netflix’s founders knew the facts - Blockbuster was charging too much for rentals, people are working longer hours, the internet was widespread enough to support the movie habits of a generation used to ipods and online networking - but putting them together - seeing the direction and the trends - that’s knowledge. They leveraged it. As of now, Netflix is trading at 30.18…

If you plan to invest in Real Estate, knowing what the prices have been, and what they are today isn’t enough. You have to take a step back and see the trends. You have to look at social pressures, jobs, the price of oil (affecting transportation costs), location, weather - on and on -

you can’t get effective leverage on a situation, however isolated it seems, until you understand the big picture.

Knowledge is the new Information

Which brings me back to the title of this post. Facts used to be harder to collect, and often the collection of facts forced one to examine and understand their connections. This is no longer the case.

When I was young, my local library had a card catalog. At thirteen I did a research project on the Great Depression. While I was reading, I had to take notes on related topics - dates, people, events - so that I could do other, more effective, searches in the card catalog. In other words, to save myself time and effort - and to research effectively - I had to understand what I was reading, while I was reading it.

In highschoool, I did another project, on the massacres in Tiannamen Square. My highschool had just begun using an internet-based card catalog. New to the internet, I “researched” by searching for keywords. I ended with stacks of unrelated material, and no idea what I should read first. I almost didn’t finish the project.

Last year, I did research on the Cold War and Terrorism. This time, I found most of my information online, in online databases and journals. I didn’t just find it, I read it online. I did read some books in hard copy, but often scanned my reading so I would have it later, no matter where I was. I didn’t complete the project (passed it along to the next research assistant), but wound up amassing thousands of pages, hundreds of articles, multiple bibliographies - and I’m still not sure that the multiplicity of information actually added to my understanding. All the information simply meant I had access to a much larger picture. More information, more timelines, more bibliographies, more, more more. However,

Reading, thinking, and writing helped me - just like in 7th grade.

And the implications are ….

So, once upon a time, knowing the facts implied knowledge of the situation - it implied an understanding of connections. Now, knowing the facts simply implies you’re good at using Google.

Furthermore, the average US citizen today has access to an exponentially larger number of facts (and/or rumors) than s/he did ten or twenty or sixty years ago. It takes time to wade through that many facts. It can be difficult to focus (raise your hand if you’ve ever gotten lost on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Amazon.com, the NYT, Wired, Wikipedia, Google maps, the IHT, the BBC, Flickr, Twitter, The Onion… I can go on and on). Our hyperlinked world is increasingly searchable. (Check out the Liquid Information project, read articles about it here and here)…

So what. Big deal. There’s more information, there’s more people looking at information, disinformation is harder and harder to pull off … can’t be a bad thing. … right?

We’re back at knowledge versus facts again. Knowledge - new knowledge, and useful or correct knowledge, is about making connections previously unseen, then leveraging them. This means you have to know what - out of all the chaos of mostly-true facts - is important. You have to know how to choose the most important data points.

The issue isn’t about which facts to keep, any more - it’s how to know which ones to ignore.

We have to train our brains to act like our eyes. Our eyes detect motion much better than stillness, largely because trees don’t jump out at us, while tigers (and the occasional snake or angry neighbor) do - and did. Knowing what was important, fast, was a survival trait.

I suspect it will soon be the same with data, if it isn’t already.

Having information just isn’t enough any more. It just means you can do a keyword search. It just means you can spell close enough to correctly to get google to spellcheck for you. It means you can use Wikipedia.

Having facts just doesn’t imply knowledge any more. It doesn’t imply understanding. It doesn’t imply you know which data points to ignore.

Ultimately, that’s the bottom line. Knowing what to ignore is as important now as knowing facts.

Information just doesn’t cut it.

Perfection Ain’t all it’s Cracked Up to be

Contrary to popular opinion and all available evidence, I’ve actually not been writing fewer posts; I’ve just been publishing fewer posts. I’ve been writing them just the same, and then saving them as Drafts, convinced that sometime, I’ll find the time to edit, fix the grammar, change the wording, look up the origins of that quote… But then today I signed onto my housemate’s site, and he - massively busy - has actually written a blog a week for the past few weeks.

So the surf is up, the band’s on the stage, the competition is on! I’m going back to the drawing board, and - perfect or not, good grammar or bad - I’ll be posting here once more. Nice to see you again. Hope your summer’s going as well as mine :)

Change is slow

(Written May 6, 2008)

The end of the Cold War. Germans dancing on the Berlin wall. The United States breathes a sigh of relief; The great Communist empire has fallen, now we’ve only Cuba left to deal with. How hard can it be, after all, to starve a small island nation into submission? The hippie movement - already creaking under the strain of children, jobs, real life - finally bends its knee to the inevitable; flashy technology is more addictive than hard drugs. Baby needs shoes. Bill Gates gives this talk to the Computer Science Club at the University of Waterloo - discussing, among other things, floppy drives, and the upcoming move from 8 to 16-bit computers.

And Russia? Russia flings away its satellite states, willingly lets go her hold on the Middle East - especially Afghanistan, Russia’s Vietnam during the warmer days of the Cold War. Russia turns inward for almost 20 years, accepting a lack of dominance, a lesser place in world affairs, letting a hand - or two - go by in the great-stakes game that is International Affairs.

Fast-forward to the mid 2000’s - Russia, resurgent. In a February 28, 2008 article titled “Smoke and Mirrors,” The Economist styles Russia’s economy ‘booming,’ citing a 7% growth rate, and stating,

…Even Mr Putin’s critics are impressed by Russia’s transformation in the past few years. A country that almost went bust ten years ago now boasts a $1.3 trillion economy, foreign-currency reserves of nearly $480 billion and a $144 billion stabilisation fund for surplus oil and gas revenue. Annual growth of real incomes has been in double digits. GDP per head has risen from less than $2,000 in 1998 to $9,000 today at current rates of exchange…

Russia even ranks fourth in the world in the creation of new millionaires, and while it certainly has its share of problems - falling fertility counts, infrastructure issues, and high inflation rates among them - it’s safe to say Russia is making a strong reappearance on the world stage.

In 15 years, in other words, Russia’s transformed itself from an international pariah into an up-and-coming powerhouse. The transformation has not been easy, and could not have been made without a deliberate stepping-down, an acknowledgment that even Russia - with her power, might, and vast natural resources - couldn’t continue as she was. A Cold War analyst- Soviet Side - was quoted saying Russian politicians realized they could build bombs or they could build Russia - but that they couldn’t do both at once.

And so Russia turned inward. Millions of people suffered. Political upheaval. Social upheaval. Unrest, riots, deaths. And today, she’s stronger than before.

I think we’re rapidly approaching a similar decision point in the United States. Do we build guns, or capital? Do we build other nations, or our own?

We’re a state - not a nation. (state implies political borders; nation, emotional ones). As citizens, we’re fundamentally divided on far too many issues. The top 10% lives very well, but things are getting harder for the bottom 40. The American Dream is poised to turn into a nightmare, along with the crash of Social Security, an eventual revaluation of the Chinese Yuan, and a rise in socialized medicine. School systems are faulty at best, a breeding ground for disillusionment, at worst. None of this is to say we’re out - just that we’re down; we can’t continue to ignore problems at home, and expect those issues to be solved, as they have in the past, by our position at the receiving end of the so-called ‘brain drain’ - it’s no longer working in our favor. Indian engineers are choosing to stay in India, as conditions rise for them there.

And so: We get to choose our own fate. Here’s a thought: What if we lean heavily on China, India, Brazil, France, England, etc, to form a serious coalition on banning - and preventing the gain of - nuclear weaponry? What if we accept that we’ve made nothing but poor choices in the Middle East, and throw as much money as possible, now, at the fuel problem, pull out of the Middle East as soon as it’s economically - not image-wise - feasable. What if we turn inwards for a while, and build our infrastructure, our economy, our sense of national identity? What if - for the first time since the early 1940’s - we focus on #1? If the only thing we insist on, on the world stage, is nuclear weapons?

So we lose standing in the world economy. So we lose trade networks. So we lose influence - but much of that we’ve lost, already. We can get it all back, but not if the center is weak.

Learning to say I Love You

Language changes us.

Falar (Portuguese) doesn’t mean Hablar (Spanish) doesn’t mean Parler (French) doesn’t mean Spracher (German) doesn’t mean To Speak in English. They’re approximates, sure, but they’re not the same. Translation doesn’t do the sense of the words any justice. In English, we place the action of pleasure on the one receiving, saying I like it (when you do that). In Spanish, the responsibility lies with the thing (or person) creating the pleasure. We translate, literally, You please me (when you do that). In English, we say I love you. In Spanish, it’s backwards; Te amo. You I love.

Language itself rearranges our thinking, and therefore, the way we perceive the world - in turn, changing the way we act. Language - personified, anthropomorphized (if you will; language as an actor) - has more effect on us than just creating accents and causing trouble when giving speeches to the UN.

I heard Fidel Castro speak in Cuba, four years ago. I remember that via translation, he was boring. His ideas didn’t seem to hang together, I couldn’t follow the meaning of what he was saying. But in Spanish, he was mesmerizing; his ideas, the way he rolled his r’s. The language itself was both medium and mural, canvas, creation and creator. Did he talk about his relationship with the US? No. Did he talk about space aliens? Yes. (No, I’m not making this up). Did I agree with everything he had to say? … I was too immature to understand the context. All I can say is that never before had I seen the impact language - not just words - can have.

So does Jihad in English mean what it does in Arabic? When we say martyr here (etymology: Romans burning Christians to death in the early 100’s, Catholic martyrs dying for their faith, Crusade martyrs…) does that have anything to do with the word martyr as conceived in the Middle East? Does it mean anything at all in China? When I say wife in Spanish, I can use mujer (which English translates as “woman”) or esposa. English literally translates this to spouse - and, since it’s in the feminine form, wife. … but esposas (the plural) means ‘handcuffs’. Coincidence? And Esposar? — To be handcuffed, shackled.

In English we say “I love you” and “I love french fries” and “I love Friends.” Love means different things, in different contexts, and how do you know what weight it carries, and when? In Spanish, we say Te quiero (I love you/I desire you, from querer, “to want”) and Te amo, from amar (to love) and Te adoro (You I adore), and each word has its own history, its own weight.

Read my first long paragraph again; At the very end, I typed “In Spanish, it’s backwards.” - But is I love you backwards in Spanish, or in English?

Te quiero, mundo …

“Letters”

she sits on the floor, going through a cardboard box
reading me love letters I have written her while her four year old daughter lies on the floor
wrapped in a pink blanket and three-quarters asleep

We have gotten together after a split

I sit in her house on a Sunday night
The cars go up and down the hill outside

when we sleep together tonight
we will hear the crickets

Where are the fools who don’t live as well as I?

I love her walls
I love her children
I love her dog

We will listen to the crickets
my arm curled around her hip
my fingers against her belly

One night like this beats life,
the overflow takes care of death

I like my love letters
they are true

Ah, she has such a beautiful ass!
Ah, she has such a beautiul soul!

- Charles Bukowski

Added to the ‘Sources’ Page

I added a link to my ‘Sources‘ page; see “Business” from here on out for links regarding business, etc.

All Quiet in my Head Tonight

Listening to: Armin Van Buuren, Kenny Burell.

In highschool I took French and Spanish at the same time. At the beginning, this was largely motivated - as I remember - by my mother and my sister throwing a (very) few French words around; I wasn’t going to get left out later on. So in 10th grade, I took French I and Spanish II, and just moved on from there.

It was difficult at first; I remember one quiz in particular - trying desperately to remember a French word and coming up with nothing but Spanish and English. Difficult, but certainly, not impossible.

It was, in many ways, my first experience with the labyrinthine complexities of the brain. Every now and then, I’d come to a plateau all at once - in French and Spanish, suddenly, I’d have a week where I couldn’t seem to remember anything, couldn’t seem to learn anything else. My language abilities would level off. Sometimes, the issue would even spread over into my English classes, or still further, into Calc or Physics, whatever it was. It’d last a week, even two - and then suddenly, my abilities would leap forward, all at once, and I’d be on the fast track again. It was as though my brain had reached some capacity, and stopped learning new things, in order to sort through the things it already had.

I feel as though that’s happening for me now, today. Just as in highschool, I feel as though I’ve reached a plateau. I can apply what I know, at work, but it’s hard to get ahold of new concepts. (Bugfinding, yes. Java learning… not so much). My dreams - again, just as in highschool - are intense, and very very strange.

… Incidentally, do any of you dream of metallic, ruined cities filled with holographic relics - or of zen gardens that go on forever - or enormous, purple, bloodwarm lakes, white cities rising on the horizon…? I do, and almost every night…

So, what’s the point of all this? I dunno. It’s not political, nor terifically scientific - but I feel I’ve reached a plateau. All’s quiet in my head tonight. I’m just reading, chilling, waiting for the path up to open for me again …

Of Ranks, Forks, and Britney Spears

“…Maybe they’d be O.K. if somewhere along the way they’d had true friends, defined as a group of people who share a mutual inability to take each other seriously…”

An article in the NYT titled “The Rank-Link Imbalance” really caught my eye. In short, it says that the training required to produce Leaders, in business or politics (and in geeks these days as well, I’d argue) produces intelligent, driven, get-ahead people who don’t know how to be human.

To paraphrase, they remember first names without effort, but can’t create/keep friendships. They know how to create a political alliance, but when it comes to, say, hitting on a woman with grace and style, they fail.

I’ve been the victim of this particular brand of nonsense far too many times, whether it’s the guy who’s pretty cool in the boardroom, but can’t hold a normal conversation, or the clumsy buffoon who assures you he’s a god in bed, and then is so insensitive a kisser, you wonder if all his other girlfriends lied to him, too…

Mostly, in my experience, these are men who don’t just miss the subtext, the hidden currents in a conversation or situation - they don’t even know the subcurrents exist. They want to talk, but they haven’t taken time away from their job to do other things, and therefore, everything’s about work; they know a lot, but not about too terribly many things. They lack social sensitivity. As the author (David Brooks) says,

…they have all of the social skills required to improve their social rank, but none of the social skills that lead to genuine bonding. They are good at vertical relationships with mentors and bosses, but bad at horizontal relationships with friends and lovers…

I haven’t gone out with any women, but I’d bet there are any number of modern women with the same issues.

This strikes a chord with me; I’ve been thinking a great deal recently about rank recently, about social or vocational climbing versus friendships, and the tradeoffs involved. I made a discovery/assumption sometime early in highschool; wealth means nothing without class, and class means a great deal more than wealth. In other words, it’s better to live frugally, but in good taste, than to win the lottery and blow everything on bigger and better Hawaiian shirts, Hollywood mansions, and giant suburbivans.

Race and class have a complex relationship in the US; the vast majority of the population shops at Walmart, works blue-collar jobs, and worries about health insurance, car payments, and a crashing economy. Then as we approach the top 1% of the 1%, wealth rises in a sharp and ever-steepening curve, until you reach the Bill Gates and Brangelina crowd, many of whom have been known to spend the equivalent of a college education on a red carpet gown. But let’s face it; after a certain point, money becomes immaterial. Certainly, millionaires and billionaires live differently, but - I’d argue - not as differently as people who make 30K vs. those who make 300K. As that curve rises, lifestyles are increasingly similar. They compress.

But humans are a tribal, stratified species. We need class and social status to tell us how to relate to one another, to tell us almost everything - from the kinds of jokes we tell to the eye contact we’ll make, the clothes we wear, the way in which we take care of our bodies. We differentiate amongst ourselves, not based on money per se, but on the status symbols money can buy. And when those symbols aren’t enough to produce strata, we call into play another set of criteria; class. Class, more or less, is inherited status. For example: having the right forks implies you have the resources to purchase them. Knowing how to use them implies stability in that inheritance (you’ve had them long enough to learn how). Knowing when to use them, on the other hand, implies a history of stability, implies one generates social standards, rather than simply acknowledging/adhering to them.

To take a more prosaic example, look at a teenage pop star like Britney Spears. Even before her devolution, you’d never put her in the same category as Paris Hilton (before her devolution, if you will). Spears and Hilton have vastly different backgrounds. Hilton’s family has owned hotels for decades; they’ve been in that top 1% for a long time - long enough for Hilton’s grandfather to have married a model (more on this in a bit), and her father as well. Hilton’s style, her body, her accent - all are the result of her family’s long acquaintance with wealth and power. When Hilton started acting badly, her grandfather disowned her; as I understand it, he said he was ‘ashamed’ of her behavior, and, in fact, she won’t receive an inheritance from him. But, let’s face it; Paris was never caught shaving her head. Her family wouldn’t let her be exploited by pimps/money-hungry ‘boyfriends,’ etc. She’s not been photographed (as far as i know?) flashing the world, time after time after time. Her relationships are public, but she’s not creating headlines every day with a pitiable custody battle. Hasn’t gotten pregnant. Wouldn’t be caught dead wearing half the outfits Spears shows in, all the time. In other words - and laugh, if you will - Hilton has an understanding of which boundaries she can push, safely, while retaining her status - and while she sets those boundaries lower than her grandfather, she’s still unlikely to start doing heroin. I submit to you that, on the other hand, Spears gained a great deal of money and status, but continued relating to it in the same way she had before she became famous. Remove the money and status, and her story looks much the same as a story we see playing over and over again on Cops. The custody battles, the screaming fights, the pregnancies, the younger sister getting pregnant, haircuts, drugs, rehab, drugs again, drinking, outfits that looked good on a seventeen year old girl looking ridiculous on a 25 year mother of two… So Spears and Hilton have similar careers, but their perception of what’s acceptable, and the kinds of actions they’re willing or permitted to take are very different.

Why? It’s determined by inherited, high-level (unconscious, if you will) behavioral norms - class, not status or wealth or power.

So am I saying that in the US, social climbing is a fallacy, that people are stuck with the class they’re born into, no matter what? Clearly, that’s not even close to true. How do people climb, socially, in the US? I’ll run over this quickly, so as not to bore the reader:

• Generationally. Immigrants work hard, their kids go to college and become doctors and lawyers, their kids are in business, and the great-grandchildren are millionaires when they’re born. Wealth and class are earned simultaneously, over several generations, and often as a group; Irish immigrants are a good example (they were the lowest possible class in NYC in the 1800’s, now everyone’s ‘just a little Irish,’ or Italians - or Indians and the Japanese. I’d argue we’re seeing a huge number of Mexican families starting this journey today.
• Marriage/Parents: Donald Trump earns a great deal of money, and marries a model 24 years his junior. Their (beautiful) child is born into a world of 5-star hotels and nice forks. Voilà le instant class.
• Instant money, the easy way: Ya win the lottery. You inherit from a grandparent ya never saw. Ya get a career selling (images of) your body. (Brittney Spears)
• Instant money, the hard way: You create a really cool business (like ebay), or inherit AND you’ve got enough brains to see the big picture, to change the way you’re seeing the world. (Bill Gates). They geeky kid creating computers in his garage is wearing power suits and handing over millions to help others. It’s the big picture thing that saves you from spending everything on nice cars.
• Education: This is a weird one; you can use education in the US to step yourself into earning more money. This is the generational approach; your father was a lawyer, so you get an MBA … the money and status increase at the same time. OR you can make a class jump without making a money jump. You can become a professor. This is, in many ways, an easier approach to class/social climbing; you don’t have to learn all the intricacies of class display and power. Professors are “supposed” to be absent-minded, right? They wear ratty clothes. They don’t comb their hair. They serve an important function; they facilitate generational climbing, and in so doing they attain an association with the rules of a higher class - even while they continue to live (as many, even most, do) outside the strictures of the white-collar world.
  • to put it more simply, your English professor, in giving up his/her life to creating culture, and to helping others take that generational step up, rises in class as well - but still walks to work every day. S/he gains status, but not (usually) money. They’re more or less outside of the class struggle. Moreover, their children will have access to everything at the university from a young age, can see the ‘big picture,’ and are better placed to have money and status, at once.

So why is the NYT article so interesting? Because, back before most universities became glorified trade schools, class was largely based on social abilities. Class was classy. Board members quoted Shakespeare at each other. Now, the MBA is more and more popular. Geeks are billionaires. The internet makes it easier and easier to make ‘instant money’ - if you follow the rules, play the game the right way, you may find yourself at the top of the Rank - but without any idea of the Links (relationships, friendships, class rules, whatever) to keep yourself there, to play at that level.

Perhaps this is why so many Harvard and Princeton grads have tried to stick their tongues in my ear….