Interesting piece about how though the income inequality in America is at its worst, the levels of overall happiness have increased because of consumer lifestyle choice and tribalism.
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Consumer Identity and Ineqaulity
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Consumer Identity and Ineqaulity
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
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I think the article misses two crucial points. One is that with the advent of cheap products (H&M sweaters for #10, IKEA tables for $50, TVs for $300, leasing a car for $200 a month), most Americans live well enough. Even our poor live WAY better than most of the world's poor. There is no such thing as a poor person with a car in most of the world.
Second, is the relentless, naive American optimism. Third is the puritan ethic of "only if I work hard, I can achieve anything" on which the country was built. Put 2 and 3 on top of 1 and you have a pretty content population.
Fourth (perhaps most controversially), due to puritanism, this country was built on turning away from aesthetics. The puritans had the Word, they scorned all the adornment that to them was a sign of the vulgarity of the Catholic church. Along with that they jettisoned any idea of aesthetics as part of life. Hence, terrible taste of the majority of the population. And if you are not cursed with good taste, you don't need resource to satisfy it.
On top of that, the American anti-intellectualism. Class inequality, income redistribution, economic forces are pretty sophisticated concepts - you need to be fairly well educated to grasp those. Most revolutions were started by the bourgeoisie and led by intellectuals.
Most of article about the condition of the American poor and inequality in America come from middle-brow sources such as the New York Times. Do you think the peasants read the New York Times?Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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this particular peasant struggles to read the NYT a lot of the time. most of their articles and op-ed pieces feel needlessly long-winded and rambling, brevity is not a virtue of their writers it seems. it might be an American thing to say very little with a lot though.
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No, that's a French thing!Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde
StyleZeitgeist Magazine
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It's a brave new world of consumption, isn't it? Everyone taking pride in their respective social classes and tribes and contentedly consuming a somatic diet of social media and pop culture. People are apparently more than eager to be defined as things like "blue collar" or "academic" or "INFP." But where are the orgies?
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