Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

In a world dominated by the merchant classes, these artists no longer had aristocratic sponsors to flatter, which was emancipating, but they had to fend for themselves in the marketplace, which brought its own traumas. To succeed, artists and writers had to appeal to an impersonalized audience, and many of these creative types came to resent their

The idea was to create an elevated environment where people could cultivate delicate sensibilities and higher interests.

Today in the Bobo establishment the best kind of money is incidental money. It’s the kind of money you just happen to earn while you are pursuing your creative vision.

This is the age of discretionary income. People are supposed to forgo earnings opportunities in order to lead richer lives.

Shopping may not be the most intellectual exercise on earth, but it is one of the more culturally revealing. Indeed, one of the upshots of the new era is that Karl Marx may have had it exactly backward. He argued that classes are defined by their means of production. But it could be true that, in the information age at least, classes define themsel

The educated elite is anxious because its members are torn between their drive to succeed and their fear of turning into sellouts.

Thus, to be treated well in this world, not only do you have to show some income results; you have to perform a series of feints to show how little your worldly success means to you.

That means the most prestigious professions involve artistic self-expression as well as big bucks.

Those who want to win educated-class approval must confront the anxieties of abundance: how to show—not least to themselves—that even while climbing toward the top of the ladder they have not become all the things they still profess to hold in contempt. How to navigate the shoals between their affluence and their self-respect. How to reconcile thei