Over the last four decades, the financial circumstances into which children have been born have increasingly determined where they have ended up as adults. But an expansive new study, based on billions of social media connections, has uncovered a powerful exception to that pattern that helps explain why certain places offer a path out of poverty.
For poor children, living in an area where people have more friendships that cut across class lines significantly increases how much they earn in adulthood, the new research found.
Finally admitting that it's not the grades you make, it's the hands you shake
Lewis Lapham made a great film called “The American Ruling Class,” the opening scene of which depicts just this.
Definitely!
As an academic/journalist from a rich family he is a great class traitor. Seems he made this film to really show how economic inequality is the issue, and how pervasive and detrimental American Exceptionalism is.
That clip made me wanna watch it again. Unique in its presentation. Great cameos by Vonnegut, Barbara Erenreich, etc.
The liberal utopia is one where brutal social hierarchy exists, but one's position on that hierarchy is determined by educational attainment rather than genetics and family name
It's funny when the thing that is not even achievable is also not good.
the rich are rich because the poor are poor and vice versa some people living their lives in luxury and indulgance necesitates others going without
Collecting $10M to write a report entitled "Its nice to have rich friends".
There's a big market for extremely obvious studies : "High cost of housing drives up homeless rates, UCLA study indicates"
sociology is just doing the math that proves liberals are wrong, over and over and over
I have a friend who works in public health and she complains that all of her papers are essentially reruns of ones published twenty years ago with recommendations that have never been acted upon.
Bro, you should see sociology. We're just finding new ways to dress up Marx , Mauss and Weber and seeing if the people in power will like it this time.
And anthropology is just doing sociology with more interviews, and attempting to undo all the racism that it helped cause in the early 1900's.
Getting 10k from my rich friend to say I like my rich friends
Well then, perhaps we should start a list of names and addresses? Maybe go to door to door and make new friends?
Rich people have to sleep somewhere. Let's find them and very agressively be friends with them.
Let's pretend that the wealthy don't have visceral disdain for the the poor?
I have rich friends and I avoid hanging out with them because the activities they engage in cost too damn much for me. Even a simple night out casually drinking will annihilate my funds due to me trying to keep up; buying a round of (very expensive) drinks every so often so I don't feel like too much of a freeloader, etc. To them, it's a rounding error on their weekend expenditure. To me, it's my total monthly food bill.
Exactly. It’s all status, showing off, who can hang with the big boys bullshit.
Was at a sibling who works in banks’ bday party at a bar. The assembled friends were all ordering bourgeois crap that I’d never drink, like bottles of Prosecco. I had maybe a few beers. When it was over the check was outrageous and assumed to be split evenly because, that’s just the way it is with these smug, entitled douchebags. To me and my fellow musician friend it was outrageous. I paid for what I drank and didn’t feel bad at all about not dividing it evenly between us.
Similarly, if these fuckers with large incomes wanna invite me to their places and outings I’m not gonna feel bad if I don’t bring anything major or on their level to contribute. If they want to throw fancy soirées on their dime I’m more than happy to indulge and not feel at all bad about it. Many an artist or working class person have freely taken from these people with the notion that if they have then share it.
Read some blog post by a rich person being angry with people he invited. He did invite them for a 7 day stay at one of his properties for summer vacation (he was there too, and it was a party for him) and he wanted to split the other costs (so kerosine, food etc.) evenly between the people. He did nothing but get money from the parents (40 million) and does such kind of shit.
My solution to the buying drinks problem was to buy the first round then rely on everyone being too drunk to remember anything after that. No one ever knows that I freeload hundreds of pounds worth of drinks. 10/10 would recommend.
Actually one day i just up and mentioned i never buy a round and people still bought me more. I'm a demonic gremlin.
Except that socializing requires common interests/activities and both of them are determined in some cases by classes
It's almost like literally everything is designed by the former (Since, ya know, they're the ones with all the power) to always segregate the 2 cuz rich people don't want to sully their precious eyes with the sight of poors.
I wouldn't want to make friend with a bunch of rich kids, it sucks that they can buy all these nice things and participate in activities that my parents could never afford. Their safety nets sure comes in handy when they get in trouble.
You're poor because you have no rich friends. I'm poor because I've bled my rich friends dry. We are not the same.
I am sure some of this is true, because my time working for a really rich guy really demystified a lot of stuff and showed me I wasn't too unqualified to start a business, but all this shit only stands to benefit a small chunk of poor people and often turn them into class traitors. It favors a handful of rags to riches stories that uphold the awful system and/or creates the most soulless nouveau riche chuds.
because my time working for a really rich guy really demystified a lot of stuff and showed me I wasn’t too unqualified to start a business
I can relate, seeing how incompetent the rich guy I worked for was made me realize how easy it would be to start up my own shit
