America’s Entitled (And Doomed) Upper Middle Class

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

The upper middle class is well and truly doomed by self-delusion and the pathology of entitlement.

Two recent articles describe America’s entitled (and doomed) upper middle class: the top 5% of households with incomes above $206,500 annually and individuals with incomes of $160,000 or higher annually. (source: Historical Income Tables: Households Census.gov)

The first describes how businesses are responding to the new Gilded Age in which spending by the top 5% has pulled away from the stagnating bottom 95%:

In an Age of Privilege, Not Everyone Is in the Same Boat Companies are becoming adept at identifying wealthy customers and marketing to them, creating a money-based caste system.

 

With disparities in wealth greater than at any time since the Gilded Age, the gap is widening between the highly affluent — who find themselves behind the velvet ropes of today’s economy — and everyone else.

The Haven’s 95 staterooms were located so high up in the forward part of the ship that even guests in comparatively expensive staterooms might remain unaware of its existence. Depending on the season, a room in the Haven might cost a couple $10,000 for a weeklong cruise vs. $3,000 for an ordinary stateroom elsewhere on the ship.

Since the late 1990s, however, “there has been a huge evolution, maybe a revolution in attitudes,” Mr. Goldstein said. In addition to larger rooms or softer sheets, big spenders want to be coddled nowadays. “They are looking for constant validation that they are a higher-value customer,” he said. For example, room service requests from Royal Suite occupants are automatically routed to a number different from the one used by regular passengers, who get slower, less personalized service.

With a week in a top Royal Suite costing upward of $30,000, compared with $4,000 for an ordinary cabin, the focus is on “very affluent travelers, and we have no trouble filling these rooms,” Mr. Bayley said.

The second article is by an upper middle class writer who bemoans his declining income and status:

The Secret Shame of Middle-Class Americans: Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency. I’m one of them.

We are naturally sympathetic to anyone describing themselves as middle-class who is in such dire financial straits that they don’t even have $500 as an emergency fund.

But as we read further, we find the author is hardly a typical middle-class worker-bee: he was a substitute host on a national television program for a few years, received substantial advances for books he wrote (substantial enough for him to complain about the taxes due), got a Hollywood movie deal for another book he wrote, etc.

He was making enough money to suggest his film-producer spouse (yet another not-a-middle-class job) quit working, and to buy a house in the tony Hamptons which he poo-poos as nothing special. (A home in a pricey premier suburb is nothing special? In what circles is it nothing special?)

The solution to his poverty is obvious to the rest of us: sell his Hamptons home and moving to less tony digs. He could buy a house in a Midwest college town for a fraction of the Hamptons house and live happily ever after off the cashed-out equity.

The writer was never middle-class–he was upper middle-class, with upper middle-class income, assets and aspirations.

Then come his complaints: he made too much money for his kids to get financial aid to Stanford (fire up the sad violins of sympathy), so his parents had to pony up the $150,000 for each kid to attend an Ivy league university–oh, and then go on to earn Masters degrees or higher.

His wife, out of the work force for the years he was raking in big bucks, couldn’t find a job as a film producer (how awful!)–and then she vanishes from the narrative: did she lower herself to take a “normal” job, or is she still a Hamptons Housewife? Are we not being told because it doesn’t fit the “poor me” narrative?

His 401K retirement was sacrificed to pay for one of his daughter’s wedding–and how much did that extravganza cost? Was that a wise decision?

The writer confesses he’s made poor financial decisions, but he lays the blame on economic ignorance rather than the real cause: his overwhelming sense of entitlement.

This is not simply hubris; it is a pathology that characterizes America’s upper middle-class, and those who aspire to membership in that class.

This article expresses the core belief of America’s upper middle class: I deserve to make more money every year until I decide to retire. Then I deserve a well-funded retirement in an upper middle-class neighborhood with all the usual upper middle-class trimmings.

The list of entitlements is practically endless: my wife shouldn’t have to work, even though writers’ incomes are notoriously uneven; my daughters deserve to attend Ivy league colleges without taking on $100,000+ in student loan debt; they deserve lavish weddings that they don’t have to pay for; I deserve a recent-vintage auto, numerous nights out to movies and dinner, annual vacations (we can assume overseas vacations, of course; how gauche to travel only in the U.S.), and so on–an endless profusion of entitlements that are completely unmoored from the realities of their chosen careers in writing (insecure) and film production (insecure).

Memo to the author: did you somehow not notice that the money to pay writers is drying up? Did you not notice that book advances are vanishing like rain in Death Valley? How clueless does a writer have to be not to be aware of the structural changes in his industry?

The writer sets out to illuminate the precariousness of middle-class life, using himself as an example: a high-end New York writer/author and his equally high-end New York film producer spouse, who made tons more money than the $50,000-per-year middle class household and managed to buy a home in one of the most desirable suburbs in America.

The writer is aware of the disconnect, and he attempts to mask this by downplaying his previous (high) income and the value of his Hamptons home. (I got the feeling he didn’t even want to disclose he owned a home in the Hamptons.)

Given prices in the area, the writer is sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity–and if he had drained the equity, we can be sure he would have disclosed this poor-me factoid.

Is this a household that is flat-broke, or a house-rich, cash-poor household that spent far beyond its means for years in the belief that the upper middle-class were magically entitled to a high income, regardless of economic realities?

As we look at the economic landscape, we find this class the fantastically entitled bourgeois dominating the technocrat / managerial / professional layers of our economy–the people who pen the editorials and edit the news reports, the people with tenure or high-paying government jobs–the people who claim the mantle of knowing what’s what.

The reality is this class of entitled bourgeois is utterly clueless about the financial realities that are about to hit the global economy like a tidal wave. The top 5% aren’t prepared to weather a mild storm, much less survive a tsunami. They are well and truly doomed by their self-delusion and their pathology of entitlement.

With this clueless class in positions of leadership, where does that leave the nation?

Meanwhile, the economic realities that the top 5% have evaded (thanks to the “recovery” that benefits the few at the expense of the many) have pushed U.S. Suicide Rate to a 30-Year High.

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Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Just wait til Obamacare goes full blown single-payer and they dictate what doctors and healthcare workers will make going forward. The top 5% will feel what it is like to be standing naked out in the middle of the freeway like everyone else. Like I have said before doctors will be driving used Honda Civics and living in median price ranged housing. So much for most of the top 5%.

kokoda
kokoda

Doesn’t concern me – don’t fit into that group.
And, I’m not entitled to anything.

Axel
Axel

I’m a doctor and I am happy to drive my six year old Jeep Wrangler (two door)–a vehicle that, while not fancy, looks better with age I think you don’t realize how many doctors are just working their asses off and aren’t particularly rich. Especially the ones who graduated recently with several hundred thousand dollar debts.

Axel
Axel

When entropy eventually wins (it always does) and the highly ordered overly complex, rigged society collapses, it will be not to the bottom, but to a lower level of equilibrium requiring less energy to maintain. All boats will sink, so really the top five percent will still be the top five percent, but everybody will just have a lower standard of living (if you want to call it that). I like to think that the “reset” (all TBPers think of it that way, I believe), will keep the same stratification, but with less distance between each level (“class”). It’s all relative. I personally think it’s a good thing.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Axel- Glad to hear you are already with the program. I have many docs as clients who still receive the upper 5% income for their services and have not met the brick wall that is government run healthcare.

They still live the life that $300,000 will buy and I don’t begrudge them that luxury as I know they work long hours. Just like the movie about the old south from 1939, that life will soon be “Gone With The Wind”.

rhs jr

Cry not for the 5% but for the working class that will be just above the welfare line who’s standard of living will be two or three notches below the Entitled Class. We will be picking their cotton.

Llpoh
Llpoh

I agree with much of his premise.

But the folks he talks about will continue to earn pretty well – doctors and lawyers and such. Those folks are high skill, and there will rewards there.

It is the true middle class that is going to get screwed.

bb

Don’t sit yourself up for a hard fall and you will probably come out the otherside ok.These PRIDEFUL little shits are called the editors of newspapers, TV personalities , tenure college professionals or high paying government jobs and such.In other words the pathological liars of society who live to mislead or deceive the public.I have no sympathy for them.. Fuck them and their white liberal gated communities.

As I have fought off the demonic hordes from hell this month I have found great satisfaction in listening to Waylon Jennings , Johnny Cash and George Jones.Now that’s some good music and it’s on YouTube.

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

Looking at the soviet model which is their goal, doctors make less than hookers. If we look at the EU, doctors do slightly better than the average schmuck in society.

Bankers continue to do well globally but most of them are in the .001% and light their cigars with chump change like $300,000 dollars.

nkit
nkit

bb..congrats on beating back the demons from hell, and yes, that is excellent music..Thought about you and little bb when I saw this article…Now that’s taking a cat for a ride…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/26/this-woman-and-her-cat-are-having-the-best-time-sailing-around-t/

DRUD
DRUD

Two of the most destructive (and in our culture, pervasive) concepts in human nature are Blame and Deserve. They are also powerful, just look at how often politicians use these concepts to achieve their ends. Blame, however, is useless. It is ALWAYS about the past. No problem in history has ever been solved by establishing blame. But people will always clamor for it.

Deserve, on the other hand, is the most solipsistic word in the English language. Everyone deserves nothing but good things for themselves and certainly no one ever deserves bad things to happen. If you want to really begin to despise the word “deserve” just not how often Obama uses it.

ILuvCO2
ILuvCO2

solipsistic – had to look that one up…

Bea Lever
Bea Lever

DRUD- I think it is germane to discuss Blame and Deserve. Blame goes to those who are pushing this country to the hard left . Deserve, describes those who cheer it on believing they will get a free ride and will end up a more pathetic slave on the planet.

Sad, describes all of us here who know (Westcoaster excluded) the leftist trap we are sliding into.

bb

Thanks Nkit , it was hard but I’m finally coming out of it.I never listened to country music that much but now I really do enjoy it.

Little bb likes to travel but I’ve never had him on a boat.He would probably do ok after he got use to all the water

Anonymous
Anonymous
Rise Up

comment image?w=640%5B/img%5D”>The Fall of the Republic – Why the U.S. will not likely survive the next century

America is in the advanced stages of a moral and cultural rot. The country is $19 trillion dollars in debt and is ruthlessly spending and printing its own way to financial oblivion. It is suffering from hegemony and military overreach with its 662 military bases, scattered across some 38 different countries. If the U.S. is not inciting revolution and anarchy across the globe in the name of democracy, it is deployed directly in conflicts or has military advisers on the ground to puppeteer the conflict towards its own favorable ends. 43% of all U.S. citizens are obese. Its borders are unsecured – with a 40% increase seen in illegal immigration since 2014 along. While the debates continue on exactly what to do about the immigration problem or should fences be built along the US-Mexican border, ISIS continues to exploit the situation to potentially transport foreign Islamic terrorists unto American soil. According to Covenant Eyes, an internet search group, 1 out of 5 mobile searches on the internet involves pornography. Illegal drugs continue to be both manufactured and transported into the U.S. with no apparent way of halting or stopping the flow. In the US alone, more than 15 million people abuse prescription drugs, more than the combined number of people who reportedly abuse cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants and heroin. If the war against drugs can’t be won, what luck will we ever have winning the war on terror? Does anyone remember who won Lyndon B. Johnson’s famed war on poverty? Regardless, let’s throw some more taxpayers’ money at an issues that money along can’t fix.

comment image?w=640

Violence, prescription drug abuse, the sedentary lifestyle, and suicide have all become epidemic in American society. U.S. politicians are mired in scandals and corruption. American rock stars are increasing turning to and dying from drugs and lying about it. And then there are the popular culture failings and the endless film and television remakes and rehashes that ultimately spring from a diminishing sense of originality and creativity. The democratic process is in serious trouble, as seen from all the partisan in-fighting in the latest presidential political race. The list of U.S. enemies with weapons of mass destruction is growing. Fighting one or two of these potential adversaries may prove challenging, but an Eastern Alliance of our worst enemies would be disastrous, and would likely spell the end of democracy as we know it. According to Pew Forum, the number of people who claim to be religious in America is declining as the country becomes more and more secular. “Research Center finds that the percentage of adults (ages 18 and older) who describe themselves as Christians has dropped by nearly eight percentage points in just seven years, from 78.4% in an equally massive Pew Research survey in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014. Over the same period, the percentage of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – has jumped more than six points, from 16.1% to 22.8%.” The U.S. is beginning to look more and more like ancient Rome before it collapsed.
America has fallen from its iconic splendor of the 1920s, 1930s, and the 1940s when most of the civilized world either emulated or envied popular American culture. Maybe suburbia, conformity, McCarthyism, the liquidation of our precious metal reserves, and the rise of corporate power and military industrialism in the 1950s were the real death knell of America. Sadly, America’s greatest heroes are now mythological comic book characters who, like the real ones they should be imitating, don’t really exist. The country is becoming more vulnerable to the threats of natural disasters, as coastal regions and metropolitan cities across the U.S become increasingly more densely populated. America’s aging infrastructure is falling apart. Its electric grid system is old, outdated, and is extremely vulnerable to cyber and terrorist attacks. Owning a home and paying for college tuition is still out of reach for most Americans, who have seen their Middle-class status shrink while inflation rises. So why is there so much federal spending and cumulative federal debt and so little results in this country to account for the spent revenue? Even more importantly, why is it that most Americans don’t even seem to care?

As greater draconian measures to control crime, like tighter gun control laws, more surveillance, and stricter controls on cash continue to be debated in the halls of government that would gravely restrict American civil liberties and freedoms in the so-called name of “protecting the public from a full-spectrum of public threats,” we have to ask ourselves the same question that Max Rockatansky asked on Fury Road – ‘Who’s more crazy, us or them?” The average American appears to be more concerned about the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures and updating their Facebook status than they are about the wayward drift of this country. What we’re seeing in American society is not just the decline of a nation that has lost its general sense of direction and moral purpose – we’re seeing the strangulation of hope and the death of perhaps the last Great Western Republic in recorded history. –Alvin Conway

The Fall of the Republic – Why the U.S. will not likely survive the next century

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