Hacker News Reader

Comment by anguswithgusto | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr: rich people spend more on education and fancy lunches for their kids. Also, they pay attention to reading the right magazines, like The Economist and The New Yorker so everyone knows they went to fancy schools.

Choice quotes:

>"Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars..."

>"Knowing which New Yorker articles to reference or what small talk to engage in at the local farmers’ market enables and displays the acquisition of cultural capital, thereby providing entry into social networks that, in turn, help to pave the way to elite jobs, key social and professional contacts, and private schools."

This article is really stupid.

View on HN

How is it really stupid? I thought it was an interesting analysis of consumer behavior

"Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars..."

That's a pretty stupid assertion.

"Everyone" is a hyperbole but compared to 1899 it's relatively true, especially if the author means everyone in the middle class

Taken out of context, of course. But as a sibling mentioned, in the context of middle class being able to afford luxury goods without bankrupting themselves, that statement does make sense.

I think calling the article "really stupid" is excessive although I agree it hardly brings anything new to the table. That is fine, but the title had me expecting a little more. As it is I find it a poor re-hash of Pierre Bourdieu's work on cultural capital ("The Inheritors"). I recommend it, it's marvelously well-written in French. Unfortunately, I do not have an English translation to recommend.

Maybe I'm just uneducated on the spendings of the top 1% but to me it felt new. To each his own I guess

How the (English-speaking) rich signal their wealth: by referring to marvelous works in French that have no worthy English translations. :P

Haha, but I am french myself!

Oui, je le devinais haha :P

I don't see much analysis, just an assumption that educating yourself through college or reading magazines is an act of "signalling" your wealth. If you have the means to afford these things I think it's rather silly to assume you're doing so to demonstrate how much money you have...

There isn't much substance here.

I think there is sufficient analysis for a "news" article. Its not a scientific publication. And the crux seems to be this quote:

> The US Consumer Expenditure Survey data reveals that, since 2007, the country’s top 1% (people earning upwards of $300,000 per year) are spending significantly less on material goods, while middle-income groups (earning approximately $70,000 per year) are spending the same, and their trend is upward.

"The new, subtle ways" of signalling wealth in this article are neither new, subtle, nor interesting. You're telling me:

-Rich people bragging about going to/sending their kids to nice schools

-Eating fancy food

-Ostentatiously namedropping highbrow pop culture

are some sort of recent phenomena? Come on :)

Traditionally, there was "old money" and "new money" where entry into the old money class didn't rely solely on wealth but also on subtle social signifiers. What's new is the emergence of a class of "new old money" that adopts the same social signalling techniques of old money, even with new wealth.

No, that's not it. The main point of the article has been that the rich, instead of spending outrageous amounts of money on material things, are instead opting for non-material things to spend money on, and to signal their socio-economic status amongst peers. This has traditionally not been the case, where the rich spent a lot of money on fancy cars, houses and such to be as different as possible from other strata of society. Now such ostentatious displays of wealth are no longer sufficient to signal your high socio-economic standing and that is a rather huge change.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com