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

for PKD fans and any climate adaptation reporters:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/climate/cooling-clothes-climate-change.html

Hmm, not sure “country fans don’t care that an artist used the n-word” is the heartwarming underdog story this article thinks it is. https://t.co/w5madJPKkq

— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) September 13, 2022

interesting analysis of the housing market:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/upshot/starter-home-prices.html

Two responses might be to build smaller (with the implicit acceptance of cultural centralization and the distinction between urban, suburban, and exurban life) or to try to decentralize and enliven local communities (that is, favor greater distribution of coverage, the long tail in culture, etc.). I wonder which would result in less environmental damage and greater happiness overall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/realestate/accord-ny-ulster-county.html

*vomits*

I am honestly not mad at all and I'm living pretty close to there myself. There's so much under-used rural and formerly agricultural land that no one is going to do anything else with. Tons of basically abandoned industrial buildings from when knife-making & mills pulled out of this whole area. Population density is very low and electorally it makes sense for people with further left values to percolate into the area and flip it.

I'm happy for anywhere that fosters a healthy, accepting LGBTQ community in this sometimes-cesspool of hatred. There are Lee Zeldin signs EVERYWHERE right now and that's appalling. A random neighbor I talked to on the street last week ended up shouting epithets about women and non-white people in broad daylight. People have had 40 years to make their communities better and this is what they've spent their time doing.

I worry far more about majority-minority places like Newburgh that are in the process of being gentrified out of their minds and pushing everyone into rural poverty where there are no support systems or transit.

I'm open to new information and I'm not unaware that transitioning to a service economy isn't good for everyone and the class analysis of the situation is not uncomplicated, but afaict there's not much else going on around here except Q-Anon-adjacent seething, gun ownership promotion, and growing numbers of Latinx and non-white people moving into areas without adequate community institutions.

If you're mad, please do something about it like donating to the Newburgh LGBTQ Center or Mutual Aid Beacon (full disclosure I work/volunteer there) or Fareground (food justice) or housing justice efforts in Ulster County at https://ucchj.squarespace.com/ and https://housingjusticeforall.org/

Keep Ulster Weird imo

https://elections.ulstercountyny.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/HudsonRowen.jpg

https://elections.ulstercountyny.gov/i-voted-sticker-contest/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/nyregion/tal-oren-alexander-official.html

“How Two Luxury Real Estate Agents Spend Their Sundays
Tal and Oren Alexander start with a morning workout, then frequent exclusive clubs, show million-dollar-plus listings and watch football.”

assholes: they're just like us

In 2019, they sold a 24,000-square-foot penthouse at 220 Central Park South for $238 million to the billionaire Ken Griffin.

I'm surprised he's that successful!

https://e.snmc.io/i/600/w/9cd638346804e48aa73a6ec095b4a18a/4675434/ken-griffin-ken-griffin-at-the-organ-the-cuckoo-waltz-Cover-Art.jpg

His dreams got better.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhiQLw2WYAAFip5?format=jpg&name=small

This latest bullshit about gen z “discovering” cameras has to be a new low

really embarrassing how easily the koch heiress Hannibal Lectered this journalist https://t.co/7zg2541AST pic.twitter.com/7Gm7A2FHX9

— protagonist of this site (@siteprotagonist) February 24, 2023

A very good scathing piece in the NYT about the Tory party and UK politics in general. What makes this doubly depressing is the NYT’s devotion to their own ruling class and also that a piece like this will never get published in a mainstream UK publication.

On the House of Lords:

Still unelected, the chamber now enables a kind of legitimatized corruption: A prime minister can give any ally — a fellow politician, a family member, a journalist, a press baron, a party donor — a job for life as a legislator, regardless of suitability, with full state approval. According to a recent analysis, one in 10 Tory peers has given more than 100,000 pounds, around $125,000, to the party. In any other context, we would know what to call such a practice.

In film and literature, most of the country’s favorite characters and story lines contain at least a seed of the Tory nation — the Old Etonian James Bond, who breaks the rules with a gentleman’s charm; the humble wizardry of Harry Potter, who risks it all to save his enchantingly regimented boarding school from evil outside forces; and the magic of Mary Poppins, the English nanny who wants only to keep the house in order.

Often Labour politicians seem keener on receiving the blessings of the current system — a peerage, a knighthood, a royal invitation — than on changing it. The current Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, decidedly follows this path. Idealism and hope are scorned in favor of pragmatism and common sense, two terms that, in Britain, almost always seem to mean cleaving to the right.

If there is hope, it’s that buried within Britain, suppressed by a political system constructed in the Conservatives’ favor, other visions of society exist. This is precisely what the Conservatives are committed to stifling.

Neither Britain nor the more Tory-voting England is fundamentally Conservative.

Not read the piece yet, will try and do so later.

I would agree that the country is Conservative, but there is a fragility there too. 2017 is where I saw it the most. But in general the thing there has been crushed and we are in a bad place with the riots I see in France a distant hope.

ahh i just posted about this in the ukpol thread soz

Isn't it a standard leftist canard that voters are progressives in their hearts but are somehow hoodwinked by powerful structural forces into voting more conservatively?

xp I don’t read your non-TC posts, sorry king

Isn't it a standard leftist canard that voters are progressives in their hearts but are somehow hoodwinked by powerful structural forces into voting more conservatively?

That article isn't saying people are progressive in their hearts, it's saying that the way voting is structured in the UK makes it impossible to know one way or the other

This is abysmal. https://t.co/CNnoJN7Db6

— Isaac Chotiner (@IChotiner) May 7, 2023

Thought you would be posting this

My coronation highlight? This clusterfuck of a paragraph from the New York Times on how Anglophile Americans have been marking the occasion. pic.twitter.com/sHbl6YentA

— Jon Lipsey (@JonLipseyMedia) May 6, 2023

Spent plenty of time mocking the colorful pomp and circumstance, then went to a bit of a Kentucky Derby party and realized the apple really doesn't fall that far from the tree. I met an old lady who woke up early for a coronation party, then changed outfits for the Derby party.

loool since when is Buck's Fizz non-alcoholic? Have they ever MET a Britisher?
And ah yes, the traditional breakfast pie. Coco Pops with a crispy mashed potato topping iirc.

not the nyt, but in the wall street journal* today there is a story of techies whose paychecks & stock compensation don't go as far as they used to. one guy got genuinely screwed over by facebook. but one woman amassed a $500K "brokerage account" balance by the age of 27 and decided to take a year off. now she has a new job at a higher salary, but no stock. so...she's cutting costs by washing her dog herself instead of going to a groomer.

* i get a free subscription through work.

People with household incomes over $200K a year who are like "who can afford a carton of eggs anymore, am I right???" are the stock in trade of this thread, I can't even be bothered to find a link, I feel like it's basically a weekly column at this point

eh $200K a year isn't really the stock in trade ... it depends where you live, and if you have more than one child, you could be middle class and wishing you could afford to buy a house or wishing you could afford to pay off student loan debt ... classic quid/ag is more like john's example

I don't want to have a big fight about this but fundamentally yes I think people who make $200K and live in New York and aren't saving anything and wish they had more money are more part of the ruling class than not. And, whatever you think about their membership in the ruling class, they make up a much larger share of the New York Times's readership and implied "we" than do the people buying $5m condos.

I have never made more than 50 grand in a year in my entire life. Anyone making 200k a year is absolutely a member of the ruling class afaic.

otm

I have never made more than 50 grand in a year in my entire life. Anyone making 200k a year is absolutely a member of the ruling class afaic.

Ditto! Maybe I'm warped by having lived paycheck-to-paycheck until I was in my early 30s, but making 100k would make me feel like I was set for life (even here in not-so-cheap Chicago).

When I do my taxes at the end of the year I'm sometimes shocked by how much money has flowed in...and right back out again. (Usually somewhere between 60-75k, never more than that.)

I've never gotten more than 20K a year in my entire life. I don't have any withholding, so I only do my taxes so I can get a chunk of EITC money.

i'll probably crack 50k this year because of djing. i bought myself nice sunglasses to celebrate 😎 maybe i should have read an ny times article about it first tho

https://www.curbed.com/article/cost-of-living-nyc-calculator.html

The thing about the article caek linked is -- they asked people to describe their dream life! Of course it's expensive! I think the many "ugh spoiled millennials" responses to the article are totally misguided; they weren't asking people "what's your realistic plan given the income you're likely to have?"

But there are also a lot of "ugh look how you can't live in New York unless you have $150K a year to spend" takes and those responses are bad for the same reason! "You can't buy a house in brownstone Brooklyn and have a car and send three kids to private school and take two family vacations a year by plane unless you have $150K a year to spend" is probably true, but ... most New Yorkers live perfectly good lives without doing that? And most of the people in this article know they're not actually doing that?

True. The other response I’ve seen is “surely a family doesn’t spend $400 a week” on groceries, which I’ve got bad news for the aspiring parents.

I have to admit I don't quite see how you spend $400 a week at Trader Joe's (I do weekly TJ's shop for $250 tops with two adults two adolescent kids) but if I were to rigorously add up the dollar cost of all the food from all sources I cook for my family in a week it probably does come close to that figure

same. we don't spend it all at TJs, but we spend nearly that much total. i track it. the average for the past 18 months is $1490/month.

$400/week sounds low for people living in $5m homes with 3 kids!

the average for the past 18 months is $1490/month.

On groceries?? Is this including, like, ordering delivery all the time or something?

just groceries from the supermarket. we only go to trader joes and whole foods, and we're in LA, so it's expensive.

but my point is the grocery numbers in this article, for people who are way richer than us and have more kids than us, seem reasonable to low.

Oh you should check out Grocery Outlet. When they have what you need it's <3 <3 <3

I have to admit I don't quite see how you spend $400 a week at Trader Joe's (I do weekly TJ's shop for $250 tops with two adults two adolescent kids) but if I were to rigorously add up the dollar cost of all the food from all sources I cook for my family in a week it probably does come close to that figure

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 24 May 2023 20:03 (three hours ago) link

I calculated our total weekly spend to average out to about $400/wk for a family of four (kids both old enough to eat full meals and a good amount of snacks), including non-food groceries (paper products, cleaning products, various costco non-food items). We do buy some organic items and could certainly spend less if necessary. Eating more at home since COVID definitely adds to the budget, but also cuts the eating out budget.

Back in NJ my wife and I were spending close to $1200 a month, between the grocery store and Target. Cleaning products are expensive, and we needed a lot — more than we do in Montana — because, no joke, our hateful downstairs neighbors would cook greasy food all night just to spite us.

I still say $400 of Trader Joe's groceries is a lot to buy in a week. Maybe they're eating a lot of the prepackaged meals?

Both quid-ag and really depressing, made me cry story— tony artsy private school tells queer student with learning disabilities that he can’t return in the fall, and the worst happens . I was upset but doin fine and then the picture just fucked me up.

yeah wow, that story is brutal :(