It is in a 'there-but-for' sense for sure. Not that I was ever going to try and be an economics reporter for the NY Times, but as time has passed I'm beginning to think the soundest piece of advice I've ever received in regard to writing was something J. D. Considine told me years ago -- 1993 or so -- in response to a random e-mail or two I sent him. He pretty much said, "Freelancing and journalism is very hard work and you should only pursue it on a full-time basis if you are willing to stick to that level." I'm honestly glad I heeded that and I think what you see in both pieces, regardless of whatever else feeds into their respective situations, reflects that.
At the same time, I'm trying to put my finger on what still jars about McArdle's response and it seems to be this sense of keeping up with the Joneses as paramount driving factor/potential excuse. At what point is leisure travelling to Europe, for instance, a 'minimum necessity' -- and I speak as one who's been there a number of times now. Still, I realize it's a sliding scale, says the person who has participated in a CSA thing with a local farmer for some years now.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 15 May 2009 16:37 (fifteen years ago) link
Literal translation: quiddity = whatness
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 15 May 2009 16:43 (fifteen years ago) link
Ned, I read her response as being more about the foolhardiness of ever thinking ANY of those things are necessities. She seems to be (gently) chiding that whole tendency?
― But not someone who should be dead anyway (Laurel), Friday, 15 May 2009 16:50 (fifteen years ago) link
Yah... she's just sayin' that you hang with people for whom this is true, you wake up with fleas
― butt-rock miyagi (rogermexico.), Friday, 15 May 2009 17:17 (fifteen years ago) link
I think maybe something to add to McArdle's response is that we have this general cultural tendency to view attention as somehow related to money, a connection that really falls apart when it comes to writers of all sorts -- it's very easy to withhold sympathy from people writing about their woes in public, as if they're coming from a position of privilege or just courting attention, but in plenty of cases they don't have much concrete privilege and writing about their experiences is just, you know, work.
he never really was that rich, especially by the standards of the new york times - but he sure lives and writes like he is. which is of course where the trouble started. getting a monthly keelhaul from the ex didn't help, either - i wonder if he writes about that in his book? - but i think this man's most basic problem was imagining that a take-home of $2500 monthly was enough to buy a half-mil pile.
Yeah, exactly -- although if I had to summarize a problem here it would basically be that a middle-aged family-man homeowner with a decent salary expected to continue living like a middle-aged family-man homeowner with a decent salary, even after a divorce that meant the bulk of his income was going to support a family home occupied by other people. This is an unrealistic and dumb expectation to seriously act on -- you'd think that $4k would be a good monthly reminder that situations done changed -- but I can totally have sympathy for the situation itself; that would suck. It would be painful to have to support the family home you used to live in and have to support yourself and your new family on a fraction of what you're earning.
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 17:47 (fifteen years ago) link
The other thing is that -- while he can't and doesn't come out and say this directly -- his one list of charges makes me suspect a bunch of money was getting borrowed to maintain a certain lifestyle for the kids
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 18:00 (fifteen years ago) link
I thought he said that very directly just by listing all those expenses! (I note though that he does seem to say even more directly that his wife did that too.)
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 15 May 2009 18:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Haha yeah, I guess the unsayable "direct" thing I had in mind was like "these KIDS were bankrupting us (that's right, Alex, I'm talking about you)"
I was going to jump past boggling at the beach house rental and wonder about the $700 at J. Crew, but I guess if you needed, like, one good suit and some decent sweaters for Christmas presents ... the world really does hold you to your socio-economic status, doesn't it -- even beyond nobody wanting to be the guy who gets divorced and suddenly has to start showing up to work in cheap suits, it'd be tough to be the guy making $100k who's like "I got you a candy bar for Christmas!"
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 18:22 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah the erm narrative here is anyways at least partly "but banking professionals who should be my Friends and Advisors assured us it would be alright!"?
However fishy such blanket blame is in general, I'm not sure it's entirely misplaced re how things rolled out this cycle. At one point around 2006, I momentarily had a crazy amount of money in my account due to family property reorg stuff, and was by phone promptly invited to an "advisement meeting" with a dude at my bank, who tried to convince me he had the correct %ages I should place my assets in (all mediated by said bank, obv). (I still was in net debt though!) I was all very cynical and noncommittal, which is not due to my deep insight or anything, just because my current boss worked in a bank in the early 00s and has spilled much shit on how those outfits operate(d?). (My fave morsel: the guys who construct the deals don't actually inform the salespeople abt all potential downsides and builtin fees, as this may hurt their sales!)
I don't think this guy deserves much point-and-laugh, btw, though it is obv somewhat funny he writes on economics.
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 15 May 2009 18:55 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't know that that's a big surface narrative, given the "I wasn't duped" and the bit about how a banking professional's refinancing maneuvers actually worked to carve down some debt
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:00 (fifteen years ago) link
it's about even someone who should have known better made some really dumb mistakes, which is always a story worth telling imo
― s1ocki, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:11 (fifteen years ago) link
A weird thing about "quiddity" is that the first definition, "essence", seems to be the opposite of the second definition, "a trifling point". So it can either refer to the essence of something or a minor, trifling detail? Confusing. I have a feeling that it's a word that's rarely used correctly.
― o. nate, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:13 (fifteen years ago) link
my point is that there are hundreds of thousands of people with stories just like this who don't write for the new york times and have six-figure salaries who are perhaps just a leeetle more representative of the mortgage fallout going on right now - my pointing and laughing is at the editors, not this poor schmuck
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:17 (fifteen years ago) link
well, they wanted a personal, first-perosn story, so going with a new york times writer... kinda makes sense, no?
― s1ocki, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:19 (fifteen years ago) link
he will die at some point
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 15 May 2009 19:22 (fifteen years ago) link
can't write about that tho
That's a fair point, Tracer, but the fact that the Times can be willfully class-blind is hardly news to anyone who's ever read the Style section, for instance.
― o. nate, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:22 (fifteen years ago) link
what is sadder loss or death
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 15 May 2009 19:23 (fifteen years ago) link
conceptually, I mean
loss is a kind of death, when u think about it??
― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Friday, 15 May 2009 19:24 (fifteen years ago) link
imagine in that picture that the dog is dead but the money is lost
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 15 May 2009 19:25 (fifteen years ago) link
you can use death as a pillow but you can you the money you lost to get a bunch of people to type in the middle of the day
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, 15 May 2009 19:26 (fifteen years ago) link
imagine yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
― Mr. Que, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:26 (fifteen years ago) link
uh oh i'm losing a life
― velko, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:27 (fifteen years ago) link
actually, i am pointing and laughing at this guy too. sorry edmund.
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:33 (fifteen years ago) link
It's funny that this guy gets himself into such deep shit but when the financial crisis comes it's actually a relief to him. For one thing, he can console himself with the spectacle of so many other supposed financial experts who screwed up at least as badly as he did. And more significantly, the banks are too swamped with delinquent borrowers to follow up on his case - so he has basically been living in the house rent-free for the past 8 months.
― o. nate, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:33 (fifteen years ago) link
ya it's pretty crazy that that's how the story ends, i was expecting some sort of bankruptcy followed by a pledge of renewal or something remotely redemptive like that but it shocked me that it ended with him in this bizarre institutional limbo.
― s1ocki, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:37 (fifteen years ago) link
that there are hundreds of thousands of people with stories just like this who don't write for the new york times and have six-figure salaries who are perhaps just a leeetle more representative of the mortgage fallout going on right now
This is definitely true, but there is part of me that thinks ... well, even leaving aside the Times's readership -- or the fact that one of the notable things about the current situation is that its impacts are being felt higher up the economic ladder -- there's also the way it's all called into question the sustainability of a whole mainstream/normal middle-class existence that is built on suddenly shaky things like debt and home values. That is probably worth thinking about, and possibly edifying for middle-class people who are recognizing a shakiness to their economic lives that they hadn't previously had as big of a worry about.
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:38 (fifteen years ago) link
Is 66% of your income anywhere near normal for alimony/child-support? I don't know anyone paying alimony (lol broek friends), but child support doesn't net them (everyone I know is on the receiving end) much.
― My vagina has a dress code. (milo z), Friday, 15 May 2009 19:39 (fifteen years ago) link
should have used that credit line on a better divorce lawyer, amirite
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:41 (fifteen years ago) link
A fair enough point. The mania obv went beyond the professionals.
Talking of which: I don't know how recruiting works in this kind of business -- my biased, stereotypical prejudice says that you get the young people who are willing to work like 50 hrs weekly unpaid overtime etc from ambition alone, thus having no memory of even the Asia crisis, let alone the dotcom and the 80s yuppie downfall, thus by induction extrapolating bubble arising into Law of Nature or something. I dunno.
xpost nabisco correct on "normal middle-class" stuff after what I responded to btw. But they can't take away our Internet can they??? :p
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 15 May 2009 19:57 (fifteen years ago) link
A weird thing about "quiddity" is that the first definition, "essence", seems to be the opposite of the second definition, "a trifling point"
Haha good spot there, maybe this is a general defusing thing about words asserting importance -- see also moot (adjective):
1 a: open to question : DEBATABLE b: subjected to discussion : DISPUTED2: deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 15 May 2009 20:06 (fifteen years ago) link
i suspect the second "quiddity" meaning might be contaminated with a sense of "quibbling" via misuse?
or else the identifying an object's "what-ness" is, in itself, a trifling pursuit?
― roman knockwell (elmo argonaut), Friday, 15 May 2009 20:09 (fifteen years ago) link
je ne sais quid
― nabisco, Friday, 15 May 2009 20:20 (fifteen years ago) link
Herring looks mighty red to me. Sorry.
Yup, we know what stuff which is what it is is (OR DO WE?).
There is a neverending demand for words meaning "thing I can't get worked up about", and obv the learnèd world (it's academic! it's just semantic!) is a fair source for this. (I like the pluralization "quiddities" btw!)
― anatol_merklich, Friday, 15 May 2009 20:26 (fifteen years ago) link
my guess was it was some 'liquiddity' pun or something?
Thread author! please inform on your intended meaning of quiddity!
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 15 May 2009 21:41 (fifteen years ago) link
1: whatever makes something the type that it is : essence2 a: a trifling point
exactly the midpoint of these: trifling details that tell the tale; habits of the tribe
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 21:56 (fifteen years ago) link
there's also the way it's all called into question the sustainability of a whole mainstream/normal middle-class existence
dude this guy writes for the new york times and pulls down $100K - he is not "normal"!
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 21:58 (fifteen years ago) link
it wouldnt be controversial to call supporting a fam on 100k/yr in the nyc metro area "normal middle class"
― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Friday, 15 May 2009 22:00 (fifteen years ago) link
actually he made more like $120,000 and the new light of his life made $60,000. not to mention the stock options.
(the house is in maryland.)
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:03 (fifteen years ago) link
and the kids lived with the ex iirc
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:04 (fifteen years ago) link
he wanted to pretend the monthly ass-whuppin his wallet was getting from his ex just didn't exist i guess
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:05 (fifteen years ago) link
but i gotta say, it's a little hard for me to really put myself in his shoes
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:06 (fifteen years ago) link
maybe a trunk full of j. crew cardigans would put me in the right frame of mind
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:07 (fifteen years ago) link
i guess he should just lay down and die huh
― s1ocki, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:13 (fifteen years ago) link
DC metro area is sufficiently comparable to NYC metro area that max's point is pretty much the same. Silver Spring is in Montgomery County, which is $$$$ to live in.
― naturally unfunny, though mechanically sound (Pancakes Hackman), Friday, 15 May 2009 22:34 (fifteen years ago) link
so that makes him a normal middle class dude? ...
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:36 (fifteen years ago) link
his story is really about his failed marriage and his unwillingness to face his new situation - something you can fall into regardless of salary bracket - but he's trying like hell to make it sound like he's been forsaken by wild circumstance
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:39 (fifteen years ago) link
and the editor waves it into print as testimony from the front lines of financial desperation
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 15 May 2009 22:40 (fifteen years ago) link
For the demographics of the place, sure. Montgomery County is full of millionaires. It's like the sixth-richest county in America. $120,000 would be a pretty middling salary there.
xxp
― naturally unfunny, though mechanically sound (Pancakes Hackman), Friday, 15 May 2009 22:41 (fifteen years ago) link
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/31/nyregion/geraldo-rivera-fox-erie-canal.html
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 31 August 2023 15:52 (eight months ago) link
The 36-foot luxury motorboat, with its polished mahogany hull and American flag waving from the stern, set off from East Hampton on a recent Sunday morning, heading toward the tip of downtown Manhattan and passing beneath airplanes, bridges, thunderstorms and, eventually, a glorious blue sky. The trip would take the boat, named Belle, within view of the Statue of Liberty en route to the Hudson River and, finally, Lake Erie.But first, she needed to navigate a narrow stretch of water that has haunted sailors for centuries: Hell Gate, a tidal strait named by Dutch explorers in the 1600s, where the currents of the East River, Harlem River and the Long Island Sound converge.In just a few harrowing moments, Belle churned through the rough waters, and her crew exhaled.“That was definitely hair-raising,” said the captain, Geraldo Rivera, his own tresses (and mustache) looking wind-tousled.
But first, she needed to navigate a narrow stretch of water that has haunted sailors for centuries: Hell Gate, a tidal strait named by Dutch explorers in the 1600s, where the currents of the East River, Harlem River and the Long Island Sound converge.
In just a few harrowing moments, Belle churned through the rough waters, and her crew exhaled.“That was definitely hair-raising,” said the captain, Geraldo Rivera, his own tresses (and mustache) looking wind-tousled.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 31 August 2023 15:54 (eight months ago) link
not the nyt but we still get the new yorker delivered and i have a weird post-pandemic aversion to it but whenever i pick it up - and yes i realize its the new yorker and its mascot wears a big top hat and a monocle - but i feel like they have just gone full speed ahead into some rarified peak capitalism world of ugh. these profiles that are just wide-eyed recitations of some rich guy's WILD exploits and all these weird justifications for excessive wealth. so, unfortunately, i can't unsee it and every page of the thing just seems like a capitalist apologia. maybe i'm just sensitive. taken for granted privilege is alive and well there. the times is so frequently ugh that i could probably post links here daily. there is a frantic nero-fiddling quality to conspicuous consumption now. this could be it. spend it while ya got it. or start a kicky little non-profit on the side. or buy a yacht. whatevs.
― scott seward, Thursday, 31 August 2023 16:42 (eight months ago) link
The rich have always been the legendary heroes of NY (in their own minds).
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 31 August 2023 17:06 (eight months ago) link
Did not even know this was a thing. You too can clone your dog for the simple cost of 50K!
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Saturday, 2 September 2023 09:41 (eight months ago) link
Who gets the cloned dog in the divorce?
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Saturday, 2 September 2023 09:42 (eight months ago) link
Some winners in this article:
They Fled City Jobs. Now, It’s Time for Farm Prom. A group of young urbanites gave up desk jobs to become farmers. They have earned the harvest party.
There was an oyster farmer with his date, a sometime organic-farm-stand cashier in a vintage fur, and a sungold-tomato grower in a plastic prom-king crown. At D.J. decks set atop a bale of hay was a flower farmer in a silver gown, bopping her head, which was topped with the Carhartt beanie she wears to work the fields.
But these farmers were not tilling the fields of America’s heartland.
Outside the barn doors were beach houses and wineries and the seaside resorts of Eastern Long Island. Few of the farmers stomping work boots on the dance floor came from agrarian roots. Most were corporate or academic refugees, who in recent years said they found new meaning in growing things.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/nyregion/farmer-prom-long-island.html
― o. nate, Friday, 27 October 2023 13:36 (six months ago) link
hrrruuuughggggghhhhhhnnnnnngggghhhh
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 27 October 2023 13:42 (six months ago) link
Peter Treiber Jr., 35, an artist and vegetable grower on whose farm the dance took place
Google sez it's actually his father's farm, purchased after retiring from the family insurance brokerage.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 27 October 2023 13:48 (six months ago) link
insufferable savages
― calstars, Friday, 27 October 2023 13:54 (six months ago) link
F you and your beanie
― calstars, Friday, 27 October 2023 13:55 (six months ago) link
Ain’t gonna work on daddy’s farm no more
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 27 October 2023 16:09 (six months ago) link
reminds me of the new yorker article on the fabulous new trend of FORAGING. the irony of rich people digging for edible plants when most of the world has been doing it forever lost on the people involved. omg, can you believe it, there's actual FOOD in the woods. and then the flood of wild mushroom photos on social media was unleashed.
― scott seward, Friday, 27 October 2023 16:15 (six months ago) link
don't get me wrong, i hate them too, but i'm honestly glad for rich people that they're discovering "growing stuff". presumably they are actually doing some growing themselves. not going to click thru and read about it though lol.
― ꙮ (map), Friday, 27 October 2023 16:26 (six months ago) link
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/style/class-of-palm-beach-tiktok-instagram-wealth.html
What the ultra rich wear to the grocery store
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 22:43 (three months ago) link