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

and yeah, living wherever you want, instead of just going where the jobs are, is a luxury, in the economy that we're a part of.

i wouldn't conflate "educated" and "ruling class."

Yeah, that's the thing -- there are lots of job sectors and skill sets where if you weren't making X pay in a more expensive urban area, you'd either be jobless entirely someplace cheaper, or making a salary that was adjusted to the lower cost of living elsewhere, or probably doing a different sort of job entirely. (If a dude makes $100k covering a DC beat for the Times, what's the advice here -- "why don't you just live someplace less expensive and commute in from West Virginia?" Or is it "why don't you make less than half that covering something for a West Virginia paper?")

When people point out the higher cost of living in these urban centers, all they're saying is that the salary figure can't be directly compared to the same figure some other places. It takes slightly more to afford the same standard of living you could get a bit more cheaply elsewhere. This isn't a big deal, just sort of something to keep in mind about the numbers.

I'm just trying to follow the title of this thread and the article that it links to.

living wherever you want, instead of just going where the jobs are, is a luxury

This DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS WHAT YOU JUST SAID, because if you are a journalist who covers national-level economics, DC is where the jobs are, and someplace less expensive is "wherever you want" -- like I said, there are lots of industries and skill sets where you're more tied to expensive urban areas. That's not something that needs to be pitied, or anything, it's just where people are, but when they're making $Xk/year it's handy to remember such things.

I don't know what the advice is, nabisco: it's a really tough question! But I think we should avoid a sense of entitlement to do the kind of work we want to do. If we can, it's wonderful.

and yeah, living wherever you want, instead of just going where the jobs are, is a luxury, in the economy that we're a part of.

where are the jobs, anyway? call centers in india? sweatshops in cambodia?

that was an xpost but I think it applies to your newest post too. It's great to be able to be a journalist who covers national-level economics. It sucks that those markets command more than journalism jobs pay.

get bent, do you think you have a right to a job wherever you want, doing whatever you want? You're making it sound like this is a no-brainer.

no, i'm just saying "going where the jobs are" isn't that easy when there are no jobs! also i don't think it's wrong to want to work at something you're actually trained/skilled/educated in.

btw I'm trying hard not to sound like a cock, if we were talking I think my tone would be cool but in type there isn't the right nuance.

Basically I look at it like this. There are 3 competing factors here:

Job X that I want to do
Standard of living Y that I want to have
Location Z that I want to live in

What to do when these clash? At best we make a tradeoff and give one up. At worst we give up all three.

like nabisco said, some people's area of expertise is national politics, and their brains and souls would atrophy pretty quickly if they had to work in a small town and cover the cats-stuck-in-trees beat.

It's totally not wrong to want to work at something you were trained for! Right now I'm really lucky that I get to do that. My tradeoff is that I live someplace that I wasn't trained for and that is totally undesirable to most educated people. I'm fortunate that I could make the tradeoff of giving up a good location in order to do the work I want to do. I know people who give up doing what they want, though, to live where they want. I don't think there's an easy solution to this clash.

Euler, I know very few people over the age of 25 (and pretty much none over the age of 30) who feel in any way entitled to do whatever job they want: most everybody winds up in a particular field with a particular skill set and a sad awareness that there is no easy option of switching horses and starting again at entry level in a completely different field

There may be some urbanites who would benefit from going off and becoming simple cabinet makers in rural Pennsylvania or whatever, but someone who has successfully worked his way up to a well-paid staff position at the nation's most prestigious newspaper is probably not one of them

xpost - I'm not even talking about brain atrophy, necessarily, but if your choice is between, say, a prestigious job for $100k in a high-cost area and a "lesser" one for $50k in a low-cost area, it's not necessarily a difficult choice. This doesn't mean we have to pity the $100k person, it just means we should remember that he/she is not just flat-out earning "twice as much" as the $50k person, due to cost-of-living issues!

I mean, it's not so complicated: there are towns where my current wages could easily afford me a house and a nice car; the issue is that in those towns I could not command my current wages; in fact, my current wages are in part based on the elevated cost of living here!

nabisco, I'd just say that living in a desirable area (that's why it's high cost) is a good in itself, and should be thought of as extra pay. So $100k in a great city has extra value than $100k in a shitty city.

this thread just took a turn for the retarded.

why do you say that, Jim?

So $100k in a great city has extra value than $100k in a shitty city.

no i see euler's point... but i guess what kind of annoyed me isn't what he's saying in particular but the general moralizing / schadenfreude that seems to be a common response to this kind of article...

Jim, I'm just trying to make the point that comparing a NYC salary to, say, a central Pennsylvania salary, isn't just a matter of comparing dollars and what you can buy with those dollars.

yeah s1ocki I feel you, I'm trying to hard to talk about this without being too moralizing or schadenfreudey, and obv. failing.

Ha, perhaps, Euler, if you're inclined toward that kind of area/lifestyle, then sure! But I'm not sure how huge of a difference this makes in the notion that we should probably factor cost-of-living issues into our mental pictures of how different salaries compare.

i see euler's point too, but the house, dog, porch, yard and possibly family I will never have all beg to differ.

I suspect that most people on ILX would not choose to live in rural America if they could avoid it.

and yet there are loads of ILXors who live in less-expensive environs

sigh

I mean I guess your point is that rural America isn't the only locale less expensive than a top ten US city. Ok, cool. My point, and if this is moralizing then so be it, is that if you have to live in an expensive place to do the work you want to do, then it's improper to maintain that you're "only" middle class when making say 100k there. You're getting value for doing that work and living in that desirable locale. I can see that you'd want that value to be $$$ also.

no, my point was despite your assertion that ILXors would prefer to live in super-expensive urban areas, plenty of them nonetheless live, work, or study elsewhere, which would suggest that they're doing exactly what you suggest -- and what most adults wind up doing at some point -- about living where the opportunities or jobs or possibilities are

I think you think you're being argued with about something you're not being argued with

The bit I'm probably kind of arguing with you about right now is this idea that many people make aggressively entitled decisions about feeling like they deserve to live in expensive areas; maybe a few people go after a certain lifestyle that way in their early 20s (and why shouldn't they?), but I think most adults know what their options are and make serious decisions about them, and if they have tastes or roots that hold them to urban areas that are hard to afford, they know their situation and own those decisions accordingly (and I don't begrudge them some griping about the yard or garage they'll never have, or how a certain salary just doesn't go that far, any more than I begrudge Midwestern small-towners a gripe or two about wishing stuff was open later at night or that they could get some better Indian food or that the community theater isn't the best entertainment on earth)

if you have to live in an expensive place to do the work you want to do, then it's improper to maintain that you're "only" middle class when making say 100k there. You're getting value for doing that work and living in that desirable locale. I can see that you'd want that value to be $$$ also.

Yeah, but if you're living as close to the bone as Our Hero who kicked this thread off, you don't get to enjoy the amenities that you're insinuating are part-and-parcel of the lifestyle there. Sure, in the Silver Spring area you can get into DC and use the free Smithsonian museums and national monuments, but otherwise you're not doing a lot of going out to eat or seeing shows, you know? Even less so in New York!

The that, somehow, the "value" of the city you live in is part of what makes you middle class or not is really o_O.

I mean, my wife and I moved out of the DC metro area back to Cleveland in 2007 exactly because of cost-of-living issues, but we don't find ourselves THAT much better off, because while I was able to keep my salary with an interoffice transfer, she took about a 25% pay cut.

what was the other thread where you guys fought about exact definitions of middle class based on cost of living a few months ago?

(not suggesting you guys should take it to that thread btw)

I suspect part of the nugget of the issue is actually just how and what people want to consider "middle class." And I think the way some of us are using it is probably to denote that ... well, for a LOT of this country, actually, a family bringing in $100-150 will be doing better and have nicer things and be significantly more comfortable than statistical norms, their style of living will likely be fundamentally similar to families bringing in less. Some places that would definitely stretch the boundaries of "upper-middle," but in lots of places it wouldn't actually cross whatever boundary it is that would make that family's life and finances particularly distinct from more solidly middle-class incomes.

Ha, 'middle class' in my mind means the thing beyond living paycheck to paycheck, the point you can finally get a little lifestyle inflation going.

I read some study that said almost everyone but the v richest & poorest thought of themselves as middle class.

In the U.S.

edmund is ruling class: he writes for the new york times and lived like a pasha for decades

Abbott, I'd agree with that reading of middle class. The trouble is with what counts as a "style of living" as nabisco put it, and how we determine when a style of living is "fundamentally similar to [the style of living of] families bringing in less". I'm reading "style of living" not just as "how many square feet is your residence" or "how much does your car cost" but also as "what foods do you typically eat and how good are they" and "what entertainment options are there where you live". In Chicago or NYC you can get fab Indian food, say, for about what it would cost elsewhere in the country, but it'll be significantly better than the same, on average, in say Dayton OH or Topeka KS, if it's available at all in the latter places.

Then I guess a def of middle-class that I am getting from the talk in this thread: 'middle-class' means you can uproot yourself & move somewhere else & find a new job & maintain what (in a cost/benefit analysis) is a similar standard of living?

OBV everyone has different personal values/desires for life. ie I want a modestly sized house bcz I hate cleaning, and I don't really foresee myself making so much bank I can have a big-ass pad AND pay people to clean it.

Modest = like an office and a big kitchen in addition to bedroom.

Okay now I'm just blabbing, sorry y'all.

From Haggling over Hipsters to Meditating on the Middle Class: A Message Board Grows Up

edmund is ruling class: he writes for the new york times and lived like a pasha for decades

look obv it isnt cool of him to have stolen your reservation for that place outside carcassonne for the only two weeks in august 07 u could get away and i dont want to defend this goober but u r being retarded about this dude - "ruling class" um he lives off his wages and his main asset is (was) his house thats middle class

i had high hopes for pics of cute dudes in $800 pink pants and trend articles abt dog yoga itt thnx 4 ruining it every1

carcassonned

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/movies/19hollywood.html?hpw

Locals joke that the only slimming down this town knows is liposuction, but the higher-end shopping districts quickly disprove that theory. Robertson Boulevard, home to the celebrated Ivy restaurant, has 12 storefronts empty or emptying on just a five-block stretch. On Montana Avenue in Santa Monica, about 30 boutiques are either closed, about to close or vacant, according to the merchants’ association.

those stores were terrible anyway; no one wants to spend $100 on a flimsy t-shirt with some bedazzling.

i'm fascinated by "boutiques" -- i think most of them are run by bored rich housewives who don't know what the hell they're doing.

those stores were terrible anyway; no one wants to spend $100 on a flimsy t-shirt with some bedazzling.*

*in 2009

my point is salary (which, pre-divorce, was hefty nonetheless) is not the full definition of class: this guy is part of the country's elite intelligentsia

I'm not sure where you get your ideas about me Lamp or why you think they're relevant but I would appreciate it if you crawled out from my jock