I think you have some points here, but these days, it doesn't seem to be people who go to college who have money. Well, unless you're born into money, but populists don't seem to have anything against the Trumps, Waltons, and DeVos. It's the self-made millionaires like Bill Gates they hate. It's been a point made many times, but somehow …
I think you have some points here, but these days, it doesn't seem to be people who go to college who have money. Well, unless you're born into money, but populists don't seem to have anything against the Trumps, Waltons, and DeVos. It's the self-made millionaires like Bill Gates they hate. It's been a point made many times, but somehow college education+debt+minimum wage job = elite, but family money, inherited business, and lots of expensive toys = regular, real American.
Trumps, Walton’s, Devos are using maga voters to increase their own wealth. They do not for one second believe they are anything like their maga voters.
Trumps, Waltons, DeVos' get a pass because they are conservative elites, but they are also *counter-liberal* elites. You get to be an oligarch so long as you shit on the people who are one rung above the working class, because that's the class of people the non-college working class sees when they look immediately up on the economic ladder. The working class doesn't see billionaires when they look one rung up at who is shitting on them, they see post-college couples with higher household net incomes than they have. Matthew Stewart probably explains this hatred dynamic of the post-college scribe class (the top 9.9% who are below the top 0.1%) better than me. This NYT article from a year ago covers his thesis, but the book is 100% worth the read/listen:
Basically, the post-college scribe class self-segregated via class, culture, and geography--leaving many non-college people in the dust (not just economically, but culturally and politically too). Not only did they do this, but they poisoned the "meritocracy" with the wealth they have, which made it harder for the children of the working class to get where the children of the post-college scribe class were going to be. College tuition rates went up because the post-college scribe class could afford them while the working class could not--inducing higher levels of debt for the working class via the inflation of tuition that wealthier families were causing, which made the "meritocracy" of who gets into college onto the better jobs really more about what kind of parents you had, how much money they made, what neighborhood you grew up in, and what that school system--including private ones--looked like. That's the dynamic that drives who gets into college, gets to marry a higher-income partner via social capital networks established in college, and who gets to get a better-paying job that usually comes out of getting the right kind of degree while holding the least amount of college debt (a function of parental wealth). And the post-college scribe class still wonders aloud how it came to be that the working class grew to despise them. Trump and his family get a pass on elitism because they're the oligarchs who are beating the shit out of the post-college scribe class rather than blessing them up.
I've read Matthew Stewart before, in the Atlantic. He made some excellent points. But I took it as
him talking about surgeons and stockbrokers, not the average college educated person. About 24% of Americans have at least a bachelors degree - we are not the 9.9%. Then again, I remember when I was laid off from a legal editing job that moved to India for a huge drop in quality that didn't affect sales in the slightest bit (yay colluding monopolies). I asked about working at the local community college, and I was told by the NY Department of Labor, "Don't bother, state colleges don't hire people with degrees from state colleges." Everyone has to look down on someone, I guess.
Nice, I first read him in The Atlantic before reading his book after as well. But even a household making net $150-200k can afford a lot more savings and better living than a net $75k household or even a net $100k household. Nurses marrying nurses (both post-bachelors) make a lot more than a cabinet repairman married to a barista (both non-college) for example.
That different tiers of income exist isn't really the problem so much as that the upper and even middle incomes tend to self-sort, accelerate wealth inequality generation-to-generation as a byproduct, and then spoil the meritocracy via making it more about wealth than actual merit. Equality of opportunity goes out the window and then you layer a self-reinforcing state of classism on top of that. That's kind of where we are as a "country" right now (I always say this "country" is really just an economic competition among individuals who like to still pretend they're a country).
There's some truth in it, but most couples I know in my neighborhood / income bracket, the woman has a college degree (nursing or teaching, usually) and the man doesn't because he can become an electrician or plumber and make a decent living without accumulating education debt.
The part that really resonates for me is that people like me send their kids to college, hoping they'll meet and marry other college-educated people rather than the local barfly / weed dealer. Oh, and the other part that resonates: there is real discrimination against the less intelligent. Some part of intelligence is genetic, so this is patently unfair. I don't know what to do about that, but excoriating people for voting based on the Wrestlemania-ification of politics doesn't seem to be an answer.
That is our situation-- sort of.. My husband has a college degree and he is also a journeyman electrician (IBEW). He did not have any college debt though. His father paid his tuition (state college). I met him at said college. I ended up dropping out but returned later and got my nursing degree. We only had one kid and he currently has his Master's degree and is applying for doctorate programs in his field (clinical psychology). As a young man he had a year of working blue collar construction and 4 years in the military so was able to make good decisions about his future after he was discharged. His fiance is also in his same field and finishing her Master's. She did grow up with a lot of poverty in a small deadend town so is very ambitious, hardworking and fiercely smart. My husband is not a big reader but my son and his fiance and I are. Our neighborhood is made up of homes that cost less than $150K, generally 1500-1700 sq. foot, 1970's stock suburban split/raised ranch or colonial style homes, good public school system. In fact, we don't have a private school in our district.
From the stats I've seen, women with degrees tend to marry men (or women) without degrees more than men with degrees do.
Check out the disparity between men with degrees doing the assortative mating versus women with degrees--particularly in the key 20's/30's marrying years. You'll notice trends that started showing up from the 1970's until now (college+ men do it wayyyy more than women):
From the article: "But what ultimately unites its members (the 9.9%) is less the size of their bank accounts than a mind-set, Stewart contends. At its core lies “the merit myth,” a shared belief that the affluent owe their success not to the color of their skin or the advantages they’ve inherited but to their talent and intelligence. Under the spell of this conviction, Stewart argues, the privileged engage in practices — segregating themselves in upscale neighborhoods, using their money and influence to get their children into elite colleges — that entrench inequality even as they remain blithely unaware of their role in perpetuating it."
I think you have some points here, but these days, it doesn't seem to be people who go to college who have money. Well, unless you're born into money, but populists don't seem to have anything against the Trumps, Waltons, and DeVos. It's the self-made millionaires like Bill Gates they hate. It's been a point made many times, but somehow college education+debt+minimum wage job = elite, but family money, inherited business, and lots of expensive toys = regular, real American.
Trumps, Walton’s, Devos are using maga voters to increase their own wealth. They do not for one second believe they are anything like their maga voters.
Trumps, Waltons, DeVos' get a pass because they are conservative elites, but they are also *counter-liberal* elites. You get to be an oligarch so long as you shit on the people who are one rung above the working class, because that's the class of people the non-college working class sees when they look immediately up on the economic ladder. The working class doesn't see billionaires when they look one rung up at who is shitting on them, they see post-college couples with higher household net incomes than they have. Matthew Stewart probably explains this hatred dynamic of the post-college scribe class (the top 9.9% who are below the top 0.1%) better than me. This NYT article from a year ago covers his thesis, but the book is 100% worth the read/listen:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/books/review/the-99-percent-matthew-stewart.html
Basically, the post-college scribe class self-segregated via class, culture, and geography--leaving many non-college people in the dust (not just economically, but culturally and politically too). Not only did they do this, but they poisoned the "meritocracy" with the wealth they have, which made it harder for the children of the working class to get where the children of the post-college scribe class were going to be. College tuition rates went up because the post-college scribe class could afford them while the working class could not--inducing higher levels of debt for the working class via the inflation of tuition that wealthier families were causing, which made the "meritocracy" of who gets into college onto the better jobs really more about what kind of parents you had, how much money they made, what neighborhood you grew up in, and what that school system--including private ones--looked like. That's the dynamic that drives who gets into college, gets to marry a higher-income partner via social capital networks established in college, and who gets to get a better-paying job that usually comes out of getting the right kind of degree while holding the least amount of college debt (a function of parental wealth). And the post-college scribe class still wonders aloud how it came to be that the working class grew to despise them. Trump and his family get a pass on elitism because they're the oligarchs who are beating the shit out of the post-college scribe class rather than blessing them up.
I've read Matthew Stewart before, in the Atlantic. He made some excellent points. But I took it as
him talking about surgeons and stockbrokers, not the average college educated person. About 24% of Americans have at least a bachelors degree - we are not the 9.9%. Then again, I remember when I was laid off from a legal editing job that moved to India for a huge drop in quality that didn't affect sales in the slightest bit (yay colluding monopolies). I asked about working at the local community college, and I was told by the NY Department of Labor, "Don't bother, state colleges don't hire people with degrees from state colleges." Everyone has to look down on someone, I guess.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
Nice, I first read him in The Atlantic before reading his book after as well. But even a household making net $150-200k can afford a lot more savings and better living than a net $75k household or even a net $100k household. Nurses marrying nurses (both post-bachelors) make a lot more than a cabinet repairman married to a barista (both non-college) for example.
That different tiers of income exist isn't really the problem so much as that the upper and even middle incomes tend to self-sort, accelerate wealth inequality generation-to-generation as a byproduct, and then spoil the meritocracy via making it more about wealth than actual merit. Equality of opportunity goes out the window and then you layer a self-reinforcing state of classism on top of that. That's kind of where we are as a "country" right now (I always say this "country" is really just an economic competition among individuals who like to still pretend they're a country).
There's some truth in it, but most couples I know in my neighborhood / income bracket, the woman has a college degree (nursing or teaching, usually) and the man doesn't because he can become an electrician or plumber and make a decent living without accumulating education debt.
The part that really resonates for me is that people like me send their kids to college, hoping they'll meet and marry other college-educated people rather than the local barfly / weed dealer. Oh, and the other part that resonates: there is real discrimination against the less intelligent. Some part of intelligence is genetic, so this is patently unfair. I don't know what to do about that, but excoriating people for voting based on the Wrestlemania-ification of politics doesn't seem to be an answer.
That is our situation-- sort of.. My husband has a college degree and he is also a journeyman electrician (IBEW). He did not have any college debt though. His father paid his tuition (state college). I met him at said college. I ended up dropping out but returned later and got my nursing degree. We only had one kid and he currently has his Master's degree and is applying for doctorate programs in his field (clinical psychology). As a young man he had a year of working blue collar construction and 4 years in the military so was able to make good decisions about his future after he was discharged. His fiance is also in his same field and finishing her Master's. She did grow up with a lot of poverty in a small deadend town so is very ambitious, hardworking and fiercely smart. My husband is not a big reader but my son and his fiance and I are. Our neighborhood is made up of homes that cost less than $150K, generally 1500-1700 sq. foot, 1970's stock suburban split/raised ranch or colonial style homes, good public school system. In fact, we don't have a private school in our district.
From the stats I've seen, women with degrees tend to marry men (or women) without degrees more than men with degrees do.
Check out the disparity between men with degrees doing the assortative mating versus women with degrees--particularly in the key 20's/30's marrying years. You'll notice trends that started showing up from the 1970's until now (college+ men do it wayyyy more than women):
https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-gender-gap-in-marriages-between-college-educated-partners
There's also this data (in the PDF) from the National Bureau of Economic Research. See the graphs at the end:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w19829
Ooh, that first link is very interesting! I'll have to look at the graphs in the second link. Thanks for sharing.
From the article: "But what ultimately unites its members (the 9.9%) is less the size of their bank accounts than a mind-set, Stewart contends. At its core lies “the merit myth,” a shared belief that the affluent owe their success not to the color of their skin or the advantages they’ve inherited but to their talent and intelligence. Under the spell of this conviction, Stewart argues, the privileged engage in practices — segregating themselves in upscale neighborhoods, using their money and influence to get their children into elite colleges — that entrench inequality even as they remain blithely unaware of their role in perpetuating it."