Sublime
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The more money you make, the less likely you are to place ‘being a parent’ at the center of your identity. Part of this probably has to do with the fact that middle and upper-income people are more likely to understand their identity as their job, but even that doesn’t fully explain this stat. Instead, I’d argue that bourgeois parents
... See moreAnne Helen Petersen • The Anxious Style of American Parenting
He did not require the bucking up in "A Rift Between Friends in the War of Ideas," which was supposedly a letter from a conservative to close friends who were socialists without knowing it. Because he did not need to, Stewart had not read what the pamphlet had to say about the recipients of social security and other forms of welfare, whic
... See moreKurt Vonnegut • God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A Novel
What finer characteristics could a system like capitalism seek in a worker?
Micki McGee • Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life
murky fortress that separates him from the rest of the world. When you have so many other people doing things for you professionally and personally, you stop taking responsibility for any of it.
Sarah Wynn-Williams • Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
The ubiquitous accusation of racism and sexism is covering up for the very obvious favoritism educated white people show for others based on their demographic categories. For the most politically inclined Democrats (also the whitest and richest) to question whether the person of color is actually the most qualified is tantamount to sin. I have play
... See moreMiddleclass parents kept their kids in school instead of sending them off to the factory, and were discovering that the demographic between child and adult was a previously undreamed-of species.
Charles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
The narrative of Free America shaped the parameters of acceptable thinking for Smart America. Free trade, deregulation, economic concentration, and balanced budgets became the policy of the Democratic Party. Culturally it was cosmopolitan, embracing multiculturalism at home and welcoming an increasingly globalized world. Its donor class on Wall Str
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
The quintessential “self-made man” (and it is almost always a man) is self-sufficient, confident, stoic, righteously industrious, performatively heterosexual, and powerful. His success is signified through acquisition—home ownership, marriage, and children—and display of taste and things—craft beer and Courvoisier, Teslas and big trucks, bespoke su
... See moreMia Birdsong • How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community
Upper-middle class professionals center their tastes around discovery of interesting and superior goods.