quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

my "NY Today" email opens:

Good morning on this meh Friday.

"Meh Friday" is traditionally observed in the Hamptons. Tinged with melancholy, it is the 2nd-to-last Friday before Labor Day, and therefore the final weekend before you have to start thinking about packing things up for the summer.

Mom and Dad's $400k plus a program meant for people who can't afford homes in NY = success
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/realestate/an-unexpected-route-to-williamsburg.html?_r=0

v good tipsy

“Throwing my money away in rent was making me nauseous.”

i have heard this tone deaf mess in conversations w other 20 somethings and in every case it was in a convo about acquisition of real estate via mom & dad, either outright or via "help with a downpayment" a la this profile. not sure if it's meant to be a justification/guilt-driven rationalization for accepting a gift of this size or what.

also, i mean, come on...

She decided to find out what $400,000 would buy elsewhere in Brooklyn. “I am a person who can make a lot out of nothing,”

makin' love makin' love
(out of nothing at all)

bwahahaha xp

feel like you may not be joking tipsy

400k in nyc might feel like nothing if you grew up scion of the owner of an 8 mil brownstone
but in that hypothetical, said scion is of course fooling themselves.

mixed feelings here
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/realestate/when-the-dog-decides-where-you-live.html

the human protags of this article are literally named the Funds.

candid photo of mr fund:
http://i.imgur.com/kB4QVmj.gif

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/movies/nitehawk-to-open-a-second-cinema-in-brooklyn.html
I am the prime demo for this place and even so:

“We had to decide, do we build condos or do we save Brooklyn?” said Mr. Hidary, who is from Midwood. “So we saved Brooklyn.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/upshot/i-paid-2500-for-a-hamilton-ticket-im-happy-about-it.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-3&action=click&contentCollection=Your%20Money®ion=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

lol at the punchline. "N. GREGORY MANKIW is a professor of economics at Harvard."

"That is indeed lamentable."

In 2009, while the economy was suffering through the Great Recession, Mr. Leno, a car enthusiast, generously performed two free “Comedy Stimulus” shows for unemployed workers near Detroit.

Yet zero is not, as economists put it, the equilibrium price to see a live performance by Jay Leno. Some of the unemployed who received free tickets tried to turn around and sell them on eBay for about $800. When Mr. Leno learned about this, he objected, and eBay agreed to take down offers to resell the tickets.

well this doesn't seem like Leno at all

paying $800 to see Jay Leno makes me think some people are from the alternate universe where that seems like a good idea

there are many punchlines in that article

His entire career is based on saying "The price is the right price because it's the price someone paid which is good" over and over again.

"It sucks that you can't afford these tickets. Yet there is another way to view the situation, which is that I can afford them!"

He has previously written a paper called "Defending the One Percent" and was an adviser to Romney and to Dubya.

yeah he's a big name in apologetics for the wealthy

That article points out the astonishing fact that when there's a limited supply of something that lots of people find desirable, then the wealthiest people hog it all for themselves. Which is an extremely fair system, because some people having lots of money when other people have very little money is just the way it is, so like it or lump it.

his big solution is for them to just raise the base prices of tickets. but that would mean the secondhand tickets he bought would be way more expensive as well.

his theory that demand would decrease bc it's expensive is undercut by the fact that he is personally demonstrating people will pay extra for these luxury items and in fact take pleasure in out-wealthing other richies.

luv the contrast to this editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/opinion/struggling-to-serve-at-the-nations-richest-university.html

when i did econ 101 we were taught from this mankiw book. it was very well written and easy to understand. one of the only university textbooks i had that i felt did a good job of explaining the basic concepts of a field of study to the novice. the thing was though, iirc, it had various little bits about how corporate taxes, rent controls, minimum wages, etc. are bad. it was the only general introductory textbook i had in school that had an explicit political agenda, and we studied it as if it were just "the truth" and not just one take.

All Karen Hendrickson wanted was the latest pocketbook from Gucci, the Sylvie, with a glittering gold chain down the front.

But she had to explain herself over and over to police officers who stopped and questioned her, and searched her shopping bags as she sought to cross Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She was trying to reach the Gucci flagship store on the corner of 56th Street, but her shopping trip had an unusual impediment: Gucci is inside Trump Tower. Fifty-eight stories above is the penthouse of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who was engaged in the rocky business of selecting his administration.

Well, if this doesn't turn them against him, I don't know what will.

via deadspin: this is from a toronto star article but w/e i didn't know where else to put it.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/ujonl99cvplfh7gneaso.png

septum piercing really makes that for me

Is he going to raise that kale in place of a son?

that is his large green son

His son's name is Kyle.

I had a vasectomy, but it was for sensible and practical reasons. I 'celebrated' by wearing an ice bag on my scrotum for hours afterward.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/04/business/media/jolly-green-giant-comeback.html

“We’re going to make him more relevant, more socially active with the consumer, and bring him into today’s world” = two tickets to a better reality than this one, please.

Jolly Green died on his way back to his home planet, etc

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/your-money/talking-to-children-about-inheritance.html

it's like they know about this thread

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/realestate/where-to-live-when-the-l-train-shuts-down.html

Mr. Gannon’s new one-bedroom on Orchard will be more expensive, at $3,200 a month, than the $2,200 he paid in Williamsburg. But “the fact that there is a lot going on” in his new neighborhood, he said, “compares favorably.”

$1000 worth of free goings-on hopeefully

Mr. Gannon's time is money.

Spayd out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-times-public-editor_us_592ec472e4b0e95ac1956706?4r9

our long national nightmare is over

lol wait they're eliminating the role entirely?!

not content to wreck accountability during her tenure, she now wrecks it indefinitely into the future

"We're replacing the public editor with more comments sections" is the worst idea for accountability that I've ever heard pic.twitter.com/aS4AcW2W6J

— Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) May 31, 2017

otoh it does sound like the thesis of a Liz Spayd column

Can we just have a "rolling NYT into the shitbin" to combine this and the "death of newspapers" thread and the Brooks and Douthat and Friedman and every other thread where this rag gets linked in a "does it get worse? Yes it does!" context

no. this thread must remain pure(-ish)