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

A couple of thousand dealership (income-)millionaires, I'd guess - Ford has 3000 dealers, Chevy presumably similar, on down the list. But then you start to add in the people who own a dozen 7-11 franchises and Arby's franchises and et al..

i think there are more "auto groups" that are partnerships not just a guy

anyway the answer is this guy (rip)
http://static-20.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/63fb718c-d855-412c-a0dd-0eb52dfd6bc6-fuccillo.jpg?1437501962256

fuck did that not post? THIS guy
http://static-20.sinclairstoryline.com/resources/media/63fb718c-d855-412c-a0dd-0eb52dfd6bc6-fuccillo.jpg

welp

iirc google USA headcount is 30k. i would guess there are 1000 people at google earning over 1m. maybe the same again at facebook, apple, and microsoft, amazon. 500 each at netflix, twitter, airbnb, snap, etc. 70% in california, 10% in seattle, 20% in nyc.

pretty soon you're talking about real money.

i guess my point is that 1) granted, this guy is an idiot for not knowing that small business owners are very rich 2) i'm not sure if people realize (are sufficiently angry about?) how much big tech people with ~10 years of experience earn from their regular income (i.e. not once in a lifetime startup IPO stuff, just their W2 income).

I know this but I also lived in the Bay Area from 2008-2017

https://smile.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Americas/dp/1589795474 is in many ways a vile text, full of frugality gospel, but it's also a book the baby nate silver upthread should read.

this was the article (sorry, it's the atlantic) bandied about in the wake of yesterday's quiddities/agonies (i have not read it yet, but then i also did not publish a half-assed op-ed in the nyt about its subject)

American Gentry

The jet-setting cosmopolitans of popular imagination exist, but they are far outnumbered by a less exalted and less discussed elite group, one that sits at the pinnacle of America’s local hierarchies.

Patrick wyman?!

Another work in this genre (on my reading list but can’t vouch for it) https://newrepublic.com/article/163818/99-percent-upholds-inequality-book-review

I guess I didn't know car dealerships had like hundreds of employees! what do they all do? Or when they talk about someone who owns an auto dealership do they mean somebody who owns something with multiple locations all over town?

You also forget the absolute morons like my parents who only take their car to the dealer mechanics for repairs because…oh wait, there’s no actual reason for it, they’re just idiots.

The benefit to going to the dealership is also record-keeping for your warranty. I have saved receipts from oil changes/work on vehicles exactly zero times in my life, if you always go back to the Toyota dealership it's in their system.

The mark-up on routine maintenance is astronomical. I’ve had two dealerships give me different estimates for some routine work, and then taken it to a mechanic who did it for 1/3rd of the price…no problems.

As far as my experience and the experience of every single person I’ve ever met goes, this is pretty universal.

Milo has a point re warranties and such, and I think that the sitch might be different if you’ve had a lobg term relationship with your car dealer, but generally, getting a car serviced at a dealer is an enormous scam afaic.

That said, my point was sort of indirect— namely, that dealerships have tons of employees, from sales to mechanics to secretaries to cleaners to environmental consultants etc. Big businesses!

They may be wealthy and proportionally overrepresented in government but they don't *feel* that way so it's a wash https://t.co/VlbjACiguI

— Will 🦥 Menaker (@willmenaker) May 17, 2022

losing my fucking mind at this lmao https://t.co/w5hjsNbimI pic.twitter.com/YKPtf08IJZ

— David Mack (@davidmackau) August 21, 2022

only with close friends — and the national media!!!!! pic.twitter.com/1r8CozGgCK

— David Mack (@davidmackau) August 21, 2022

Not sure where put this, but a true social media self-immolation by NYT film critic Lena Wilson:

Lena Wilson explains why she reposted Amandla Stenberg’s DM about her #BodiesBodiesBodies review, which Wilson dubbed a “95-minute advertisement for cleavage”:

“I don’t want this person who has more social power than me to think that it’s fucking okay to do something like this.” pic.twitter.com/S0BadaoRWV

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 19, 2022

I only made it ten seconds into the video where she extols her genius as a cultural critic and that's why she has a Times job rather than nepotism.

Lena Wilson explains why she reposted Amandla Stenberg’s DM about her #BodiesBodiesBodies review, which Wilson dubbed a “95-minute advertisement for cleavage”

Trying to understand the syntax of this sentence is giving me a headache.

it just puts "body" by meghan thee stallion in my head, a much more interesting thought tbh

bodyodyodyodyodyodyodyody

I assume it means that someone named Amandla Steinberg made a film (?) called "Bodies Bodies Bodies" (and not called "#bodiesbodiesbodies"), and that Lena Wilson, a film critic, reviewed it and in her review referred to the film as a "95-minute advertisement for cleavage," and that Amandla Steinberg then DM'd Lena Wilson about it, and something in that DM upset Lena Wilson, who then posted the DM. And the quote is Lena Wilson saying it's not ok for Amandla Steinberg to write a DM like that, as opposed to being Amandla Steinberg saying it's not ok for Lena Wilson to post her DM? Although I have no idea what would give one vs the other of them "more social power."

sorry to keep talking about lena wilson but someone share this passage from the about section of her website where she literally talks about "her martyr-like dedication to socially conscious cinema" like babe you talk about disney channel original movies for a living pic.twitter.com/CwvJKYBhJA

— official trustbusters stan account (@trillmoregirls) August 21, 2022

brb just finishing the syllabus for the tig notaro class i’m teaching this fall at brown

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.