6 replies to this topic

[stocks]

This quiz is inspired by Charles Murray's new book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you? Answer these 20 questions to find out.


http://www.proprofs....-is-your-bubble

[Dex]

2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America

http://www.amazon.co...a/dp/0312583729

You might want to read this book next.

[Islander]

So I am isolated, coddled and attlepated; who cares? 0 of 20 is not helpful. I have my money and silver and that is what matters. Sorry I came to this board, I have seldom been so depressed. Bud is not good for anyone; hold a silver eagle until you feel better, 400 cans of Bud will buy a new silver coin. That will cheer you up, let the pickup driving beer drinking commoners think that one over. Abusing the sick is not metally healthy either. laying down now as I type this, Islander.

Edited by Islander, 26 January 2012 - 09:01 PM.

[stocks]

the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America.

The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

If you were an executive living in Belmont in 1960, income inequality would have separated you from the construction worker in Fishtown, but remarkably little cultural inequality. You lived a more expensive life, but not a much different life. Your kitchen was bigger, but you didn't use it to prepare yogurt and muesli for breakfast. Your television screen was bigger, but you and the construction worker watched a lot of the same shows (you didn't have much choice). Your house might have had a den that the construction worker's lacked, but it had no StairMaster or lap pool, nor any gadget to monitor your percentage of body fat. You both drank Bud, Miller, Schlitz or Pabst, and the phrase "boutique beer" never crossed your lips. You probably both smoked. If you didn't, you did not glare contemptuously at people who did.

When you went on vacation, you both probably took the family to the seashore or on a fishing trip, and neither involved hotels with five stars. If you had ever vacationed outside the U.S. (and you probably hadn't), it was a one-time trip to Europe, where you saw eight cities in 14 days—not one of the two or three trips abroad you now take every year for business, conferences or eco-vacations in the cloud forests of Costa Rica.


link

[OEXCHAOS]

the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America.

The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

If you were an executive living in Belmont in 1960, income inequality would have separated you from the construction worker in Fishtown, but remarkably little cultural inequality. You lived a more expensive life, but not a much different life. Your kitchen was bigger, but you didn't use it to prepare yogurt and muesli for breakfast. Your television screen was bigger, but you and the construction worker watched a lot of the same shows (you didn't have much choice). Your house might have had a den that the construction worker's lacked, but it had no StairMaster or lap pool, nor any gadget to monitor your percentage of body fat. You both drank Bud, Miller, Schlitz or Pabst, and the phrase "boutique beer" never crossed your lips. You probably both smoked. If you didn't, you did not glare contemptuously at people who did.

When you went on vacation, you both probably took the family to the seashore or on a fishing trip, and neither involved hotels with five stars. If you had ever vacationed outside the U.S. (and you probably hadn't), it was a one-time trip to Europe, where you saw eight cities in 14 days—not one of the two or three trips abroad you now take every year for business, conferences or eco-vacations in the cloud forests of Costa Rica.

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This is just silly. Today, the poor schmuck working in a union job is as likely as you are to drink a boutique beer as the high earning exec, and both are equally likely to brew their own. While 50 years ago, only the wealthy could afford to drink decent wine, even the very middle class can afford to drink passable wine every day and their only slightly less likely to. It's unwise to compare the monoculture of the 60's with today's heterogeneous consumer mix. I might also add that because the upper crust is far displaced from laborers isn't really a bad thing. There are a lot of folks just above who share much with the wealthy. If there's a growing divide, it's due primarily to barriers to hiring that bottom "class" and brining them into closer contact with the upper classes.

M

[Rogerdodger]

I'm seeing a lot of sites like this which in the end turn out to be nothing but sales pitches.
(Although I had to laugh at the question about being in a parade.)
After taking the "test" you see: "Buy a copy of "Coming Apart." Learn more about the new American divide. And uncover more content from Charles Murray and the American Enterprise Institute."

(I had to laugh at the question about being in a parade.)

Edited by Rogerdodger, 07 February 2012 - 12:20 AM.

[stocks]

(I had to laugh at the question about being in a parade.)

Yes, the test was lame.

The New Upper Class and the Real Reason We Dislike Them


The new upper class is different. It consists of the people who run the country. By “the people who run the country,” I mean two sets of people. The first is the small set of people — well under 100,000, by a rigorous definition — who are responsible for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the success (or failure) of the nation’s leading corporations and financial institutions and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. The second is the broader set, numbering a few million people, who hold comparable positions of influence in the nation’s major cities.

What makes the new upper class new is that its members not only have power and influence but also increasingly share a common culture that separates them from the rest of the country.

As adults, they have distinctive tastes and preferences and seek out enclaves of others who share them. Their culture incorporates little of the lifestyle or the popular culture of the rest of the nation; in fact, members of the new upper class increasingly look down on that mainstream lifestyle and culture. Meanwhile, their children are so sheltered from the rest of the nation that they barely know what life is like outside Georgetown, Scarsdale, Kenilworth or Atherton. If this divide continues to widen, it will completely destroy what has made America’s national civic culture exceptional: a fluid, mobile society where people from different backgrounds live side by side and come together for the common good.

Read more: http://ideas.time.co.../#ixzz1lnq9Jxly