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

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

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.

When faced with a tension between competing values, they do what any smart privileged person bursting with cultural capital would do. They find a way to have both. They reconcile opposites.

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.

This class is responsible for more yards of built-in bookshelf space than any group in history.

Though they admire art and intellect, they find themselves living amidst commerce, or at least in that weird hybrid zone where creativity and commerce intersect.

So the people who thrive in this period are the ones who can turn ideas and emotions into products.

You can sense the ethos with special force in the new establishment institutions that would have been alien to the old elite: NPR, DreamWorks, Microsoft, AOL, Starbucks, Yahoo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Borders.

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