I'll change it to a pop-up so it's legible. Also I feel like there may be copyright violations in this post.
The pop-up has no scrollbars and is thus unreadable in some browsers. You could just link to the jpeg.
The ones for wealth are mostly stupid. They're indicative of being wealthy, not knowing how to be wealthy.
Now I really want to know what the hidden rules of the Junior League are. Like "you don't talk about the Junior League?"
3: Well, the hidden hidden rule is being able to assess the hidden rules, you Brahmin.
How many boxes do you have to check to pass the test? Based on this quiz, I'm not sure I'm able to survive in any of the three classes.
If you can't read the pop-up, it's the second link here.
re: 3
Yeah.
Anyway, I could easily do all of the poor ones [that apply in the UK] and all of the middle class ones [that apply in the UK]. I'm not sure if I buy some of the divisions though. I'd bet a fuckload of poor people can do the 'read a menu in more than one language thing', as a fuckload of poor people speak several languages. I don't think knowing how to use tools and do household repairs is a hallmark of being middle-class.
6: If you don't know which hidden rules you can ignore, you don't know the single most important hidden rule, prole.
The wealthy list confirms my long held belief that the critical secret to being wealthy is having a lot of money.
I don't actually think this quiz is insightful at all. Maybe some of her other stuff is.
I do like the implication that I would be unable to survive being wealthy. What kind of necklace ought I clutch??
11: Agreed. The core idea makes sense, though.
ttaM, if it's specified that the working class is middle-class, does the tools thing make more sense? Would you usually distinguish those?
From the typography alone, the quiz probably dates back to the assumption that anyone with a moderately steady job is middle-class.
None of those things seem terribly defeating to me -- there are a bunch of them that I'd have to kind of figure out, but nothing that looks as if it would be a real problem. "Use a knife as scissors" is puzzling me -- I generally can't find the scissors because the princess has been using them for something, so I'm always hacking things open with steak knives, but I don't know that I'd call it a skill, really. I also sharpen pencils with knives, because I can't ever find pencil sharpeners.
14: Yeah, I think UK 'middle class' is richer than US 'middle class'. US 'middle class' goes down to include anyone who's securely employed.
re: 14
Would I distinguish working and middle class? Shit, yes. Qua Brit I can probably keep subdividing for a few more iterations after that.
I don't mean to poop all over this as an idea for a post; there are lots of interesting questions in these realms (I'm thinking of TN-C's post about whether or not to beat the crap out of some dumbass at the DNC, and also of the movie Trading Places) but that list seems sort of silly and skewed in such a way that people taking it will be like "damn, I'm mentally making myself poor because I mostly know how to do poor and middle-class things! I should really practice flying on a private jet while hiring decorators to get my kids into private school! Then I'll read The Secret, then I'll be rich!"
I mean, there are even interesting things to be said about fitting in with really wealthy people when you're not wealthy -- what items of clothing pretty much have to be expensive, and which can you skimp on? What signifiers can you drop that will make it okay that you don't have much income? Faking an accent: good idea, bad idea, or neither?
19 cf. Six Degrees of Separation and that "Clark Rockefeller" dude.
I don't think knowing how to use tools and do household repairs is a hallmark of being middle-class.
I do, or perhaps having tools (or knowing how to borrow them) and using them. The difference between losing your dishwasher, repairing your dishwasher yourself, bringing someone in, or buying a new one are critical class differences. Each is probably a jump of a hundred dollars, and I think many people experience this kind of distinction at least once a month.
If poor people really do have a super power for sniffing out the problems in a used car, I'm going to find me some poor friends.
I need to know if I need a whole new set of shocks and struts or if the potholes have actually gotten that much worse.
Would I distinguish working and middle class? Shit, yes.
But the working class person might well be better off financially than the middle class person, and therefore not have to deal with most of the shit under "Poor" in the quiz. Basically, if this thing makes sense, I suspect it only makes sense in America, so I'm not going to pay attention.
Some of the rich-people things are just, like, having a lot of money, but having close relationships with your preferred service employees, knowing how to hire them, etc., makes a lot more sense to me than most of the middle-class ones. I can do almost all the poverty-level ones, though I haven't actually had to buy a gun. (Why is the assumption that poor people want guns? Just because you're poor doesn't mean you're in a gang feud.) It's the middle-class ones that sound impossibly complicated to me.
re: 24
True. The plumber coming to fix my boiler on Tuesday certainly earns more than I do. So, yeah. I suspect when I think 'poor' or 'working class' I'm really thinking of my own area/background, which was more 'unemployed working class.'
When I clicked on the first link, I thought heebie had messed-up and put in a link to a realtor. The logo and the vivid blazer confused me, which probably is a good way to illustrate my middle class background.
22: That one seems archaic to me. My FIL has been various levels of working-class/broke all his life, and worked as a mechanic as a young man and fixed his own cars for most of the rest of his life. Cars after the mid-nineties, though, he can't do much with. Still way ahead of someone like me, but no longer with the mystic power of driving a car for fifteen minutes with his head pressed up against the door-frame to feel the vibrations and diagnosing the quality/reliability of the car -- a used car now, he doesn't know much more about than anyone else.
The kinds of things that go wrong with cars now, I think you need to be a mechanic with the computerized diagnostic tools they have.
Why is the assumption that poor people want guns?
Police don't provide the poor any real protection? If someone says they are going to kill you, what do you do? The poor have much more trouble negotiating the legal system, for a restraining order for instance. UMC get into such situations much less often.
I kind of resent the "decorate the house for each holiday" one.
28: Yes, that is true. But, I bet your FIL could still tell me if my suspension is bad. That isn't a particularly computer-assisted task. I'd ask my own FIL, except then I'd get "Why don't you know something so simple?" plus "Why are you driving a 15 year old car?" plus "Don't you ever wash the car?"
28:I think to really get it, you have to assume that 50 or one hundred dollars is significant, make or break, permanent decline.
So that paying for an oil change or the installation of a tire really hurts.
Police don't provide the poor any real protection? If someone says they are going to kill you, what do you do?
We don't provide "real protection" in that sense to anyone. It's not like we park a patrol car outside your house if you're UMC and someone's out to get you.
I thought the thing to do with shocks was to try to bounce the bumper up and down, and if it oscillates at all rather than returning to its neutral position, you need new shocks. But I really don't know jack.
If (when) this thread reaches comment 400 or so, I'm sure to point this out, so I might as well get it out of the way now: it's really hard to talk about this kind of thing because America uses 300 million different words or phrases to mean people in the class of "wealthy but not filthy stinking Tony Stark-level rich". Most people who make $300,000 per year probably think of themselves as middle class if they have some kind of debt they're paying off and personally know at least one person who makes even more. Never mind that that's above the top percentile of income, or six times the national median household income, or 43 times the world median - hard-working people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps deserve tax incentives on their houses regardless of income, and you can't call them rich because that implies they could be taxed more, which is un-American.
33:Well, I said the MC or UMC are less likely to get into that kind of trouble.
I am not poor enough anymore to really understand why I needed a gun. Part of it is that the poor commit crimes, or engage a criminal world, in order to survive and maintain. Part of being middle-class is being able to afford some kinds of morality.
Part of being middle-class is being able to afford some kinds of morality.
And that is some absurd bullshit.
25:The middle, median, is 50k. At 75 I am UMC, tho falling. I have little concept of what it is like above 75k.
Also, certain kinds of urban lifestyles, where you don't need to worry about your washing machine, are alien to me.
I do like the implication that I would be unable to survive being wealthy. What kind of necklace ought I clutch??
Isn't the question here could I pass as wealthy? Wealth makes survival a certainty. Sudden wealth wouldn't kill me (and knowing how to navigate the complications of wealth that might get me killed aren't discussed here), but I couldn't credibly present myself as "old money."
I'm also reminded of Fussell's "class x" while looking at the lists. I don't have all of the skills on any of the lists, but I have three or four of the skills from each of the lists.
I think the cliche is that, to a Brit, "middle class" means "everyone who is not either poor or incredibly rich", while to an American "middle class" means "everyone not rich or homeless".
and you can't call them rich because that implies they could be taxed more, which is un-American.
I keep on picking at this one, because I'm in this category. And I'm all for raising my own taxes, and for making it clear that I don't have any real money worries. But there's still something fundamentally wrong about sorting me (in the low six figures household income, in real money trouble in a couple of months if we're both out of work) into the same box as someone who could comfortably live off the investment income from their capital. Wanting to draw that distinction isn't just whining that I'm not really rich, it's pointing to a difference that's important in a lot of contexts.
37:Says the middle class guy?
My next door neighbor has a back-of-the-truck AC. I have four window units. The difference between 4 x 200 and 3000 was impossible for us (and him)
I'm also reminded of Fussell's "class x" while looking at the lists. I don't have all of the skills on any of the lists, but I have three or four of the skills from each of the lists.
I'm a multiclass character, too. Thank goodness I'm human so I can level as high as I like.
re: 42
You know what? I'm really not the guy to play poverty stories with, or class Top Trumps. Really. You're so far out of your fucking depth you have no fucking idea.
I guess it was a foregone conclusion that mcmanus would successfully troll this thread, but it's a little bit too bad: the topic does seem interesting.
44:We will let gswift mediate?
I personally think crime and "morality" is a strong bourgeois marker. The poor and rich don't worry about it so much.
Also you guys are annoying, because the criteria that you're using to criticize the quiz is "Could an exceedingly smart person have the wherewithal to figure these things out without worrying too much?" You're atypical, you doofuses.
46: That's true. Four poor people killed me today.
I guess it was a foregone conclusion that the usual suspects would take the thread down via personal attacks, instead of staying substantive.
Which are trolling?
You're atypical, you doofuses.
I like my commenters like my antipsychotic medications, atypical.
I grew up poor by American standards, and do you know what I discovered when I visited a Third World country? The poor there win the poverty sweepstakes, the selfish motherfuckers.
Four poor people killed me today.
Pfft. Piker. Why, back when I was poor, we'd kill a guy eight, nine times before lunch. He was usually really nice about it, too. 'Cause he was Upper Class, and knew how to cultivate a trusting and confidential relationship with his service providers.
re: 46
Fuck off. You vile ignorant know-nothing cunt. Seriously, your schtick is just obnoxious posturing, don't expect people to take you seriously. Scorn and insults is all it deserves.
I'm a multiclass character, too. Thank goodness I'm human so I can level as high as I like.
Can you use a glaive-guisarme? That's a strong middle-class marker.
Was it McGrattan, no I think drauqsed, who mentioned the piles of appliances in the pub.
Anyway, the original question was about tools, and how, say at a 30k income, a life is maintained, moving up or moving down. At that level, tools and skills are wealth.
Movie I watched last night, a driver's license and sewing machine were class and hope markers.
re: 55
And unreversing my name is just another sign of you being a cunt.
49: Honestly, bob, I don't care who's right and who's wrong, or who's well or badly behaved. Threads where you're commenting heavily get dull and uninformative, so I wish you'd stop. And the people who squabble with you aren't dull and uninformative when they're interacting with anyone else. But I'm not expecting that my saying this will have any effect on you.
53:The suthenticity around here, it burns.
Especially after that 500 comment fucking "Dear Abby" group grope.
I grew up poor by American standards, and do you know what I discovered when I visited a Third World country? The poor there win the poverty sweepstakes, the selfish motherfuckers.
Reminds me of the time a colleague went on holiday to (a posh tourist hotel) in Cuba. And came back saying how some guy on the staff there only earned $20 a week, shock, horror! I recounted this to a friend from India who fell about laughing, "$20 a week? Fucking bourgeois!"
Movie I watched last night, a driver's license and sewing machine were class and hope markers
And then there are those people who can't even afford a DVD player and a copy of Fiddler on the Roof.
And the people who squabble with you aren't dull and uninformative when they're interacting with anyone else.
Really.
re: 58
The irony of someone making comments about other people's authenticity a mere 3 comments after talking about a fucking FILM you watched?
Anyway, I have nothing much more to add. I'll just keep insulting you and the thread will get boring. I think people can just take the rest as read without me having to repeatedly type the words.
The implication of the "survive in wealth" checklist seems to be that if you can't check a good number of those off then you got your money by winning the lottery or inheriting it from Monty Brewster or a combination of both workaholism and great luck. Such a person can look forward to at best being a social pariah, and a number of worse fates including getting swindled by Mr. Drysdale and getting hooked on several different expensive drugs and dying in car accidents.
41
I keep on picking at this one, because I'm in this category. And I'm all for raising my own taxes, and for making it clear that I don't have any real money worries. But there's still something fundamentally wrong about sorting me (in the low six figures household income, in real money trouble in a couple of months if we're both out of work) into the same box as someone who could comfortably live off the investment income from their capital.
Sure, so are my parents, and if my girlfriend passes the Bar this summer then in a year's time the two of us would probably have a low-six-figure household income too. (If we're still together then, if she immediately goes for a higher-paying job, if...) (And "low six figure" might actually be middle class for a household; it's only twice the national median, and of course there are regional variations, and so on.)
But people who could comfortably live off investment income are rare, especially considering that the more you have, the more you spend. They distort the debate even more than they distort the economy directly. You, my parents, and the potential-me-in-a-year may not be rich, but you probably aren't middle class either. "Bourgeoisie"? "Affluent"? "Fnord"?
If I were poor, I couldn't be dull and uniformative because poor people have to be able to entertain with only their personalities and stories.
But people who could comfortably live off investment income are rare, especially considering that the more you have, the more you spend. They distort the debate even more than they distort the economy directly.
They're a very small number of people, percentage-wise, but they're a much bigger part of the economy, and an even much bigger part of the political power structure. You really don't want to dismiss them as not a significant part of the problem because they're not numerous.
may not be rich, but you probably aren't middle class either. "
UK usage, we're definitely middle-class. Here, I like upper middle class for 'no money worries so long as they continue to have a job' class.
Also, I'm wondering about the "keep your clothes from being stolen at the Laundromat" thing and how that got onthe list. That would seem to require sitting the Laundromat and waiting for your load to finish. At least that is what I did before the universe gave me a washer/dryer.
There's a bit of a missing step-up here isn't there? "Middle class", and you're taking out a loan to buy a car, which would frankly never occur to me to do because I'm quite rich. But in order to be "wealthy", oy! Only on the board of one charity? Fly first class, but on scheduled airlines? Back to the "middle class" with you, povvo.
In related news, there's nothing particularly "authentic" about being very poor. People who are regularly threatened with death and need to buy guns to protect themselves are living a very, very unusual life.
So two of the ways I've been keeping myself busy during unemployment are (a) providing childcare for an aerobics class offered through the local Spanish-language free university and (b) working with a free tax-preparation service. The first is interesting. I was told that there would be a lot of kids with limited English skills (since this is the 11:30 a.m. class, it's mostly 2-5 year olds). Turns out that the kids I've met so far actually have decent language skills in both English and Spanish, but for some reason having goofy-looking white people repeatedly mispronouncing Spanish phrases at them causes them to clam up. Whoulda thunk? With the tax prep, one of the interesting things is that the income limits are, to my mind, rather high. It's $30K if you're single with no dependents, $50K if you have dependents. So basically 90% of my peer group of middle-class raised, white, leftist/artist/bohemians would qualify for free tax help. 100% of the people I worked with at my old job would definitely qualify. The thing is, if you're middle class raised, but low income at the moment, usually you've either been raised knowing how to do your taxes, or your parents are still doing them for you well into your 20s. And yet. And yet, this is one of those social service programs where the poor are expected to have 3 or 4 hours in their day to sit around waiting for help. It's bizarre.
Anyhow, to the post, except for the car stuff, and a few of the kid things, I can do all of the lower class/middle class tasks easily. The upper-class ones are a little tougher, although I can often fake it in those situations, based on prior experience. I guess where I'd part company with the author in thinking that this is a revealing set of questions is the fact that it's hardly the little indignities of poverty that are the real kicker. It's waking up every day and knowing that you're going to have a bunch of those minor indignities forced upon you, AND that you're vastly more likely to have what would be a minor problem for a middle-class person balloon into a gigantic, life-wrecking problem, for want of a couple hundred bucks, or some good advice, or a sympathetic bureaucrat.
41 is describing the difference between being rich and being wealthy.
66:People who are regularly threatened with death and need to buy guns to protect themselves are living a very, very unusual life.
Or deal drugs, do burglaries, stick-up jobs. It's a tool.
Is a key middle-class assumption that the poor commit crimes because they are bad, stupid, lazy, or what?
Also the internet turned a lot of this stuff on its head. Without easy access to the internet, I'd be a lot more locked in the social codes I grew up with.
The majority of poor do not make a lifestyle of committing violent crime.
Is a key middle-class assumption that the poor commit crimes because they are bad, stupid, lazy, or what?
I just assumed that if you got below 900 on the SATs, the guidance councilor took you aside, told you how to steal shit, and gave you a little pep talk about morality being nothing but a tool of the bourgeois.
FWIW, I'm one of those partly-assimilated middle-class types, I suppose. I grew up coming from about as materially poor a background as is possible in the UK [assuming one is a citizen rather than an illegal immigrant], and from a family that has been similarly poor going back generations, so my basic mindset and cultural values are heavily defined by that.
I'm the only person in my family ever to go to university, and none of my younger relatives have gone or are likely to go, so it's not a narrative of gradual social upward mobility. I'm just the odd one out. At the moment only one of my immediate family lives on 'welfare' but as recently as a couple of years ago, it was all of them except me.
While I'm 'educated', and have adopted some SWPL traits with the zeal of a convert, it's only been in the past 2 years that I've earned above median income. For the other 20 or so years I've been working, I've always been below median income, and I've worked in any number of menial low paid jobs. I was a cleaner, and a hospital domestic, and when I left school I was on a YTS, and so on. I still find much of what passes for a 'middle class' worldview [to the extent that there is one] fairly alien, and most of my close friends are like me: smart-arsed (ex)-working class blokes from the Celtic fringes.
73, meet 37.
Or deal drugs, do burglaries, stick-up jobs.
Also unusual.
73:No, but if you commit crime like drug dealing, or are in the middle of that world, being able to get a gun can become important. Drug dealing was always potentially violent.
The person who wrote the quiz knew what she was doing. Level three is absurd to level two...each level looks a little absurd to people in the others.
I thought the more important part wasn't getting the gun, but doing so with a police record. That is, do you know how to navigate the black market?
I do like "stick-up jobs", though. Gives the conversation the authentic Cagney touch.
I know tons of people with guns. I'm so down with la gente! Texans!
One of my neighbours growing up was a heroin dealer, and you know what, heroin dealers are cunts. There's absolutely no fucking outlaw honour in it, and most really really poor people don't do shit like that to get by.
My first impression is: wow this is stupid. Those poor people sure have big personalities! Also weird that only the middle and upper classes have kids. I'd need several more passes to catch what I find irritating but I'm reading on my phone, on a train (semi-yay.)
77:What, d2, they should get a job, beg, go on the dole?
Crime wasn't unusual in my world, it was ubiquitous. AC off the back of the truck is an easy target for the opportunistic.
79: Yes, I think that is the key to that one. Outside of a few cities, pretty much anybody without a record can get a gun with no trouble.
I was so going to mediate this thread until I realized my taser is powerless on the internet.
80:What do you call going up to someone and saying "Give me your money" As a New Yorker, I'll bet you have at least heard of the practice.
What, d2, they should get a job, beg, go on the dole?
Is this a trick question, or are you a bit simple today? All three options are indeed better than becoming a violent criminal who needs a gun in order to protect himself from other violent criminals. The problem with being a violent criminal is that it's actually a quite dangerous job. Which is why so few people choose to do it, and why it is so very, very unusual.
Please don't take my response to this question as indicating any sort of open-ended commitment to answering a string of this crap.
I think this is an interesting topic, and I remember it being a weird learning experience when I was "changing classes" (from "poor by choice" to "honorary UMC on account of education" both of which are a bit weird as classes). But I think we can and should do better than the list linked.
In particular, from the poor families that I know the suggestion that poor people are *good at being poor* seems a bit weird to me. That is, does being poor mean you might have to move in half a day? Sure. But does it mean you'll actually do a good job of that (that is without having to leave half your stuff on the sidewalk somewhere)? In my experience, not so much. Being poor is harder than being rich or MC, and since it's harder it's also harder to be good at.
Being able to tell your boss to take his job and stick it up is a marker of being wealthy.
You know what's really easy? Learning how to fly on a private jet. You just walk onto the private jet and they fly it for you. No problemo.
Is there anyone here who really knows how to repair their own dishwasher, and do it well? If so, would you like to come over?
What do you call going up to someone and saying "Give me your money"
Panhandling? Missionary Work? Sales? Dating?
I do like "stick-up jobs", though.
You'll need a gat if you want to become a moll.
Crime wasn't unusual in my world, it was ubiquitous.
Something that bob and dsquared have in common, or so it would seem from recent news.
91.2: Just make sure that the red wire isn't loose. Unless there is water dripping out the bottom, which has nothing at all to do with the red wire.
Crime wasn't unusual in my world, it was ubiquitous. AC off the back of the truck is an easy target for the opportunistic
whoa whoa whoa whoa, no backing down sonny jim, own your bullshit. We were talking about guns, specifically illegal guns, specifically illegal guns bought by people with police records as a protection against specific threats.
Now you're talking about "these guys I knew" who used to opportunistically swipe electric goods out of the backs of trucks? And perhaps more insultingly, you didn't think I'd notice the difference. You really are wearing the clown shoes and the comedy wig today.
You'll need a gat if you want to become a moll.
"Gat" is deprecated in favour of "rod" or "roscoe", Populuxe.
re: 91
I've done tiny repairs on dishwashers and washing machines. But they've all been of the 'open up, find bit of plastic that's snapped off and is jamming the pump/filter', or 'find out hose is blocked with clogged up crap, poke a stick-like thing down it' type. That's not the same thing as doing it well, though.
92: We call it April.
You know what's really easy? Learning how to fly on a private jet. You just walk onto the private jet and they fly it for you. No problemo
Not as easy as "ordering in a nice restaurant". You just have to ask for the food. If they feel sorry for you because you look a bit poor and they think you might fuck it up embarrassingly, they will even bring over a list of suggested food items to give you some ideas.
99 to 97.
YOU WILL GIVE YOUR RIFLE A GIRL'S NAME!
#94 is particularly apropos because I have never, ever known anyone who was convicted for financial fraud. Even where crime is "ubiquitous", it's still pretty rare.
102: well, be fair, dsquared, I never said that conviction for crime was ubiquitous.
102: oh, I could introduce you to a couple people.
102.1: Bit of a non sequitur. Absence of justice is not absence of crime.
There's crime and there's crime. An awful lot of people are involved in the grey/black economy; whether that's buying knocked off stuff, or helping themselves to the odd thing when no-one's looking, or being involved in some way at the bottom feeding end of the drugs trade, or working cash in hand and not declaring it, or telling minor porkies when applying for benefits. But, as dsquared says, in 96, those are very different things from armed robbery.
actually I think the guy I was lawyerishly trying to avoid referring to by using the word "convicted" has now actually been convicted.
Hey remember that time Bob left forever?
88:The problem with those options are the lack of opportunity for advancement. Maybe I should find someone who watched The Wire and actually learned something. Or understand the "cycle of poverty."
I don't know. I don't understand poverty without crime:scams hustles adding dependents when getting on the dole shoplifting.
i>Is a key middle-class assumption that the poor commit crimes because they are bad, stupid, lazy, or what?
I guess this still stands around here? Everybody now, grab your bootstraps.
102: Really? I know a fair few people convicted for financial fraud, usually of the "hand in the till" variety. I don't know anybody wealthy convicted for it, either because I don't know that many wealthy people or because they have good lawyers or because wealthy people are super moral.
100: Ordering in a nice restaurant is certainly something you can do wrong. My favorite story from a waiter acquaintance of mine is someone ordering the "corkage fee" (pronounced as if it were a french word) because it was the cheapest item on the menu.
or working cash in hand and not declaring it
In the U.S., I wouldn't consider that a behavior limited to the poor, or even disproportionately found in the poor.
But, as dsquared says, in 96, those are very different things from armed robbery.
And as I said, less in America than GB, I think.
The question was about needing a gun. There are lots of reasons.
. I have never, ever known anyone who was convicted for financial fraud
CHORUS: What, never?
No, never!
CHORUS: What, never?
Well... hardly ever!
When I was (briefly) seriously poor and working with seriously poor people, a lot of them had figured out various little criminal acts---almost all of which were designed to save money. Mocking up train passes, claiming fraudulent dependents on their taxes, that sort of thing. Most people I talked to about this stuff were utterly unapologetic about it and didn't really even seem worried about possible consequences. Life was such a continual grind that improving matters in the immediate short term seemed rational.
100: So I agree that flying on a private plane is probably easy... But, maybe there are some subtleties that I don't know about. Like if someone lends you their private jet for a trip? Are you expected to get a gift for the pilot? Are you expected to pay for the gas refill on the return trip? Or even more simply, where do you actually *go* in an airport to get on a private jet? Do they take off from GA airports (seems unlikely they're jets and so should need long runways)? Or commercial airports? And if the latter they don't actually get a gate, right?
In fact, I know tons of people who own guns for protection. I think their fear is ridiculous, though.
117: This is all explained in the William Gibson novel Spook Country.
The problem with those options are the lack of opportunity for advancement
as compared to the promotion prospects for middle management in the armed robbing and drug dealing trades?
Flap, flap, flap. That's the sound of your big, funny clown shoes hitting the pavement as you walk along the street, Bob.
104: eh what's the point. They've all probably seen porn.
117: in order, "no", "no", and "the General Aviation or Business Aviation terminal; not always easy to find, just follow the signs or ask someone. No, they won't get a gate".
Heebs, you are in a state famous for that sort of thing, no? Isn't it more like an accessory? A deadly, guaranteed to escalate any situation, accessory? Like an evil keychain, or cursed sunglasses.
#97. And apparently "moll" is deprecated in favor of "gun moll." I'll never make it as a member of the criminal class.
In regards to the gun question, I think what the original question is getting at is much more of a cultural issue than a practical one. Yes, of course, if you want to be an armed robber, then you have to arm yourself. But the vast majority of people with an illegal gun in poor neighborhoods are never going to commit an armed robbery. The fear, rather, is that they will be victims of an armed robbery. Likewise most people who own pit bulls in poor neighborhoods are never going to sick them on anyone, nor use them in dog fights. Rather, the idea is to get others to believe that you could do so if pressed.
Flap, flap, flap. That's the sound of your big, funny clown shoes hitting the pavement as you walk along the street, Bob.
And now I have the image of Sideshow Bob making his way out of a field full of rakes.
Thank you, d2. This will help for a long time.
(Secondary fun: that episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the twins decide to think like a serial killer to catch a serial killer, and end up stalking the waitress in costume. Killer clown costume.)
Sideshow Bob McManus. I like it.
Actually, I now can't help hearing lines like "Maybe I should find someone who watched The Wire and actually learned something" in the voice of Sideshow Bob.
121:The hopes may not be justified but that doesn't mean they aren't imagined.
I didn't get a gun til I was moving pounds. IOW, when my ambitions rose and the psych downsides of moving back down increased. And, as a matter of fact, a few grand got me out of it.
Part of what is involved in the quiz is the difference from maintaining a level, and moving up or down from a present level. Surviving, maintaining at poverty might require an acceptance of always being poor.
As expected, these questions proved once again that I am incapbable of living.
The ones for wealth are mostly stupid. They're indicative of being wealthy, not knowing how to be wealthy.
Absolutely, and it tends to make me discount everything else from that source.
I also disagree profoundly with the general approach, at least insofar as it gets applied at national policy level. Teaching 'social mobility skills' does nothing for equality, and perhaps nothing for mobility, either.
If you want equality, you tackle class divisions directly: there's no point in teaching people to jump / aim higher when it's you who sets the bar, and with no other purpose in mind than having a bar.
If you want mobility, your interest is in virtue: social mobility is justified by having the virtuous go up and the unvirtuous go down. Define virtue however you want (possession of skills, etc.). However, if mobility is your aim, your criterion of virtue can't be anything teachable, since if it were teachable, you'd struggle to find a reason not to teach it to everyone until everyone became an A student. And if everyone were equally virtuous by your chosen criterion, there could be no mobility on account of such virtue: it would have to be on account of something else (height?).
The only get out I'd allow for 'social mobility skills' is where they somehow enhance national competitiveness. I don't see that they do any good at all inside a nation. They might help an individual: if so, good for them. The luck of an individual isn't policy, though.
For real, the biggest difference between crime in the ghetto and crime anywhere else is the sentencing disparities and the degree of discretion. Also, you wouldn't be likely to see a grow house in my neighborhood, because who would be stupid enough to put a grow house exactly where the police are excitedly looking for houses to raid?
"Order comfortably in a nice restaurant" is a pretty good one, and tying a few bits together, was brought up a couple of times in The Wire. How to interact with the dessert tray, for example.
I think that "Ordering comfortably in a cheap dive bar" could maybe go on the lower end of this chart, but it's less strictly money-based (though, personally, I wasn't comfortable ordering or being in bars at all until about age 27 - not coincidentally, when smoking in them was banned around here).
Natilo: or your parents are still doing them [taxes] for you well into your 20s
Who both works (such that there are taxes to do at all) and has their parents doing their taxes? Working, knowing how to do your own, sure, somewhat MC. Not working, not having taxes, also sure. But what's this middle ground?
The school my mom works at once sent her to one of these workshops (or, at least, one where she ended up with a very similar quiz). It sounded appalling: they were told that poor people value their interpersonal relationships more than money, unlike the middle class, and that this is why poor people have more children than they can afford.
I also disagree profoundly with the general approach, at least insofar as it gets applied at national policy level. Teaching 'social mobility skills' does nothing for equality, and perhaps nothing for mobility, either.
If you want equality, you tackle class divisions directly: there's no point in teaching people to jump / aim higher when it's you who sets the bar, and with no other purpose in mind than having a bar.
My friend attended the seminar because she was a public school teacher at a poor school. Teachers don't really have the power to affect class equality on the level you're hoping for, but they can help individual kids get along with their boss who comes with a different set of assumptions about the world than they were raised with. So even if this list is flawed, getting teachers to be thoughtful about this stuff is very good.
And I should have expected Natilo to be the one who gets it.
And the fact is, if you have a reasonable expectation of being the victim of a violent crime, you move very quickly to the acceptance that you might have to commit one. Maybe the cops will let you claim self-defense, but with a fridgeful , it doesn't feel likely.
they were told that poor people value their interpersonal relationships more than money, unlike the middle class, and that this is why poor people have more children than they can afford.
I think there are some totally loaded messages in the workshop, from what I've read, but that it's not this bad unless someone is sitting there with their arms crossed in disgust, looking to take away the most uncharitable message possible.
133: But there were a few things in the middle class category that I can do ("get a library card" -- yes, I can do that!!! And I even know how to use it!!!!). So, I better manage to stay in the middle class, because I sure couldn't do anything in the poverty list. I don't think I need to worry too much about becoming wealthy.
Re: living off interest. If you look at Saez and Piketty's updated work on income inequality you can see that the old rich model of living off of wealth has changed. In fact, even as income inequality has been rising sharply, wealth inequality hasn't really changed since 1945. They've made up the difference with a sharp increase in wages.
Perhaps because the capital is now tied up in corporations instead? And the best way to make their people rich is by distributing a handsome salary?
And the fact is, if you have a reasonable expectation of being the victim of a violent crime, you move very quickly to the acceptance that you might have to commit one.
you need to take the shoes off before you can get away with this macho bollocks Bob. At present, the only violent crime you are in danger of is a custard pie in the face. To which, fair enough, you would probably be expected to respond in kind.
And didn't I tell you before about no backing down? You actually claimed that poor people regularly became armed robbers and drug dealers because of the opportunities for advancement. You haven't made a specific statement "no, sorry, I had my clown shoes on, that was silly", so until I haer otherwise I'm going to assume you're still claiming it. Clown shoes on.
What class of person would know what to do when your computer has been infected by a virus? I need to find one of those people.
146: well, if you're middle-class, you ask a friend for help; if you're rich, you ask your secretary to sort it out; and if you're poor, you shoot it quick before it infects you.
re: 146
Install anti-virus software, run a scan, take the clean/delete/disinfect options that come up. Avast, Avira, and AVG seem to be the commonest free options. I have no recommendations as to which you use,
OH, and take off one shoe and sock, so you can earth the bogon flow.
Speaking of library cards and class: A couple of days ago, I went to my local library branch and saw a sign prominently posted that warned patrons that they had until March something to pay their outstanding library fines or they would be turned over to a collection agency. I'm still in shock about this.
Oh, the library card thing? That was bizarre. Lots and lots of poor people have library cards, not least because you need one to be able to log on to the internet at the library. My friend B/ao Ph/i, the poet and activist, and the reason I'm not likely to start class-baiting anyone anytime soon*, talks about how his father taught him to walk to the neighborhood library when he was a small child, and how he credits this with being one of the factors that allowed him to climb the class ladder, unlike his older brothers who basically didn't have the option of being anything but gangsters.
*Ba/o had a great column a year or two back about GI Joes. How it was a commonplace in his neighborhood (which is now my neighborhood) that every boy he knew had exactly one GI Joe -- Storm Shadow. You know how many GI Joes I had, growing up lower-middle class and often painfully aware of the class contrasts between me and my classmates? Like 50. Fifty times as many GI Joes. (N.b. for oldsters: These are the 1980s 3 3/4 inch action figures, not the 12 inch ones from the '60s and '70s.)
Why is "get a library card" middle class? You walk into the library and say "I would like a library card please". Assuming you can produce a bill with your address on it, you're done. And it's free.
146: Apo said not to click that link.
146. There are sites (GIYF) where you can send the results of one of the more complex scans available on line, and a bunch of under-employed nerds will read it and tell you what to do. They will patronise the fuck out of you, so only have recourse if ttaM's ideas don't work, but in the last resort they're there.
You actually claimed that poor people regularly became armed robbers and drug dealers because of the opportunities for advancement.
No, I actually didn't.
Most poor people stay poor, suffer, and die, leaving their poverty to their children. This is because they internalize the bourgeois anti-violence values of finance whizzes like you, Danny.
If those actually are your values, and not just another tool for maintaining your social position.
152: I was feeling so good that there was something that I could do, and now you've gone and ruined it!
Assuming you can produce a bill with your address on it, you're done
I would assume that would be the issue.
137.last: Is this some weird Upper Midwest peculiarity, like the divided check-out lanes at Cub? I really thought it was pretty commonplace that as gently-bred people aged into their 20s, they were still gathering up all their tax stuff and taking it home to have their parents at least help, or, in some cases, have Daddy's accountant look at it for them. Of course, I'm sure there are lots of people at every class level who turn 18 and are very particular about filling out their own taxes with only moderate help from parents, but I though the other option represented at least a large plurality.
"Ordering comfortably in a cheap dive bar" could maybe go on the lower end of this chart
Or, based on my experience with the wealthy, at the top end as well. Class is confusing!
144 is interestng but, without having read the underlying study, seems highly implausible to me, unless stock options/equity are being treated as "salary" and not as "wealth."
Well, I'm sympathetic to teachers who try to help where they can: there's nothing obviously bad about that. This, though:
getting teachers to be thoughtful about this stuff
is policy, or else something that leads towards it. And it does seem to me that getting everyone to teach social mobility skills wouldn't help social mobility; at least, not where that social mobility is a matter of mobility within the same population that does the teaching.
148: That sounds like advice to prevent a virus. How do I install anti-virus software, when my computer is not listening to me?
158: But often there are work-arounds if you aren't paying bills -- Having someone vouch for you, having the library itself mail you a form, that kind of thing. Actually, someone I know who grew up in the suburbs didn't get a Mpls library card for years because they thought that, as at suburban libraries in another state, you had to pay a hefty fee for one. I was pretty shocked to hear that. But people in Minnesota are just better, so what can you do?
163:Windows safe mode with networking. Go get "Search and Destroy" or some other program.
Most poor people stay poor, suffer, and die, leaving their poverty to their children. This is because they internalize the bourgeois anti-violence values of finance whizzes like you, Danny.
God, you really do have the clown shoes on today. I'll take "no, I never claimed that thing I actually did claim" as the closest I'm likely to get to a retraction, but you've now substituted "the main cause of intergenerational poverty is insufficient willingness to carry out criminal violence". Which isn't really much less silly. You are quite literally walking from rake to rake.
I can keep this going till I we both get tired by the way (and you will get tired first because of the big flappy shoes). At least while you're trying to do the workerist tough guy thing with me you're not able to simultaneously offend ttaM.
But often there are work-arounds if you aren't paying bills
Truth be told I have no idea what it takes to get a library card here nowadays since I still have the card I got when I was 10.
It's not the virus that pretends to be anti-virus software, is it? Because that one entails a complicated removal process.
166:The guy in the house on the hill is saying what to the poor in the slums below? Vote for Labour? Trust Omar Suleiman and Obama?
"the main cause of intergenerational poverty is insufficient willingness to carry out criminal violence"
Yup. It's called Revolution. A psycho-social willingness to burn shit down and take their stuff.
158: fair enough, but IIRC they'll accept any sort of official letter or document as proof of address. And as Natilo says, there are generally workarounds as well.
168: That one fucked-over my machine so badly that I just got a new hard drive.
You say you want a revolution, well you know
We'd all love to change your blog
You try to make a contribution, well you know
We all comment on Unfogged
But if you go wearing great big silly fucking clown shoes
Don't you know you're going to fall on your great big silly fucking face
Don't you know it's gonna be alright, alright, alright, alright.
That's all, ladies and germs, I'm off to the pub. Where I will blend in seamlessly with the graphic designers and Irish builders, like the social fucking chameleon I am. Good luck one and all!
174: Thanks. We'll burn the pubs last, so no worries.
168:You can make progress against that fucker, but reformatting was an option for me twice.
Once you have an anti-virus with updates going, it can help to disconnect from the Internet. You can also check in Task Manager for shit that looks weird and remove it before running Spybot or whatever. Sometimes you have to clean multiple times. You don't have to worry about breaking your OS as much as they warn.
173:Hey, fucker, you are the Welshman who dissed the coal miners the other day in your rent a smelly thug post.
This is because they internalize the bourgeois anti-violence values of finance whizzes like you
It's called Revolution. A psycho-social willingness to burn shit down and take their stuff
Disgusting ghoul.
you are the Welshman who dissed the coal miners
Specifically, the Ukrainian coal miners who were bussed in to beat up democracy protesters in the old Soviet Union. And you wouldn't be allowed to wear clown shoes like that under ground, they'd trip you up.
Arseholes
for anyone who hasn't read it, or thinks it is as particular and specific as dsq claims. Yglesias loved the post
"Anyone with a grievance, a beer belly and enough strength to swing a pickaxe handle will do"
I would imagine Wales is full of these, with lots of free time and a need for money.
If the shoe fits, wear it, Bob. Or in your case, "if the shoe is long, red and flappy, wear it".
160
It's broken down into Salaries, Capital Gains, Capital Income, and Business Income. The last time income inequality was bad (pre-WW2), the vast majority (about 2/3) of the income of the top 0.1% came from Capital Income. Now it's about 1/3 salaries, 1/3 capital gains, and 1/6 each capital income and business income. And the share of top 0.1% income coming from salaries has more than tripled since 1980 (in fact the only category that didn't grow much was capital income).
You can look at the study at Emmanuel Saez' website if you're curious.
couple of days ago, I went to my local library branch and saw a sign prominently posted that warned patrons that they had until March something to pay their outstanding library fines or they would be turned over to a collection agency. I'm still in shock about this.
Same. They also said that if your fines ever go up above $25 the same will happen. How much extra income flow can this possibly provide? I realize that budgets are tight, but this is just pure assholishness.
The quiz suggests that use of the verb 'survive' in the context of having no money vs. having a shitload of money might be a class marker.
In the UK, filling in tax returns is a sign of having tax affairs more complicated than just "I have a job/I'm unemployed/I'm retired, tick one" and therefore usually a class marker. Has the US seriously not invented PAYE yet?
AN IMPORTANT BUT STRANGELY NONCOMMITTAL STATEMENT FROM THE ARMY OF UNFOGGED FOLLOWS. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION.
Also, I can remember when Derauqsed gave up reading unfogged because he was offended that someone else gave up because other people thought they were a troll. I for one would regret a repeat of these events.
Also, I can remember when Derauqsed gave up reading unfogged because he was offended that someone else gave up because other people thought they were a troll. I for one would regret a repeat of these events.
Aaaaand I'm lost.
Christians are never lost, donaquixote.
187: I doubt it's any consolation, ms. quixote, but I don't have a clue what that means either.
I'm going to come back here and say stuff, but could someone with more time and googling skills than I have at the moment point me to Ta-Nehisi's piece on the DNC confrontation thing? It would really be pertinent to a race-based conversation a friend of mine is having with her foster daughter.
http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/10/a-culture-of-poverty/64854/
I don't think Bob's a troll. He's not always even a clown. He's just definitely and truly got the clown shoes on today.
In the UK, filling in tax returns is a sign of having tax affairs more complicated than just "I have a job/I'm unemployed/I'm retired, tick one" and therefore usually a class marker. Has the US seriously not invented PAYE yet?
I think most jobs have withholding here. I was certainly shocked and dismayed when I noticed after a few months that my current job does not have withholding.
191: I think this is the relevant post: http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2010/10/a-culture-of-poverty/64854/. Synopsis: he very nearly took a swing at a guy who was being really annoying. The kind of thing that might be normal for a 14-year-old hanging out in a parking lot in Baltimore, but not at all for a 33-year-old writer on the property of his brand new employer, the National Journal.
It's not the virus that pretends to be anti-virus software, is it? Because that one entails a complicated removal process.
I don't know if I've ever had a virus that DIDN'T pretend to be anti-virus software.
I don't think Bob's a troll.
No, personally insulting people all the time in order to make them lash out makes you a troll.
No, personally insulting people all the time in order to make them lash out makes you a troll.
So is being a bloodthirsty ghoul, which he seems to do often for a non-troll.
What do you call going up to someone and saying "Give me your money" As a New Yorker, I'll bet you have at least heard of the practice.
That would be "mugging". The real gente who do it to feed their families might not have ever heard this weird elitist word though.
186: Just about everyone who makes any money at all has to file a return. The exceptions are very limited -- mostly people who are well below the poverty line and not having any taxes taken out of their pittance.
The thing with the group I'm working with is that one of the key missions is to make sure everyone who is eligible gets the Earned Income Tax Credit. Basically if you are earning a small wage and have at least one dependent, the government will give you a bit of money back, even if you essentially pay no taxes. Which sounds great, except that their formula for it is weirdly regressive, and of course you can just be broke and unemployed and then you don't get shit. It's actually pretty social darwinist. 18% of those eligible in Minnesota don't claim the EITC though.
Also, one of the things this group offers is a "one stop shop" experience for collecting benefits. Great idea, except that maybe, since they're government benefits in the first place, the fucking government might want to provide something like that.
Also, why will we never invent PAYE here? H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, that's why. Multi-billion dollar corporations whose business model is based on squeezing a couple hundred bucks out of each of the poorest taxpayers every year for a service they could get for free from a group like the one I'm volunteering for. Or that they could probably do themselves with a modicum of education. Fucking usurers.
190 That sucks. Though my two favorite OLers (Bowers and Stoller) had left already so I no longer read it on a constant basis.
You know what else I learned last night? The IRS standards for volunteer preparers are WAY higher than the standards for paid preparers. So typical.
In the UK, filling in tax returns is a sign of having tax affairs more complicated than just "I have a job/I'm unemployed/I'm retired, tick one" and therefore usually a class marker.
I am amazingly, perhaps sinfully proud of the fact that I managed to have zero non-PAYE income this year, and can now begin the process of persuading the HMRC to not make me file a tax return. Demanding to get rid of the private medical insurance and the other benefits-in-kind was the biggest battle.
It's not the virus that pretends to be anti-virus software, is it? Because that one entails a complicated removal process.
I spent a very stressful and frustrating weekend on that one, but eventually got rid of it. If your AV software isn't dealing with it, I suggest CTL-ALT-DELing to look at what's running on your computer, and googling any process that you have even the slightest suspicion of. That should get you info first on what virus you have and then on how to get rid of it. Also, restarting your computer with the configuration of right before the disease showed up is often effective.
H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, that's why.
I'd have to look for where I saw this, but I think there's some general, rather than industry specific, Republican opposition to simplifying the tax filing process, on the grounds that keeping it horrible feeds antitax sentiment.
200:I'm in Texas. "Stick-up" as in "Stick 'em up pardner" makes a lot of sense. I suppose gswift uses some variation "Hands on head"
"Mugg" Mugg" I don't know how that works, but I am not a sophisticated New Yorker.
Re: viruses, I've had good luck with Malwarebytes and I also have Spybot. There's some rootkits that seem to fly under the radar of a lot of the major anti virus software so I'd also recommend Tdsskiller, found here.
http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363
I haven't run across anything that a combo of Malwarebytes + Tdsskiller couldn't fix.
129:There are three kinds of people:
Those who suffer violence, the poor
Those who employ violence, the rich
And then there are all those standing on top of the mountain of skulls claiming they flew there.
Property is theft. Liberal capitalism is Institutionalized armed robbery. Looking around, I see violence or the threat of violence everywhere I look. Everywhere. It's my high vantage point, up here on the skulls. But I know I can't fly.
Just to clarify, having read the Wikipedia entry on PAYE as it exists in the UK: The major difference, apparently, between the UK and US systems, is that virtually all of the paperwork is routed through the employer in the UK, whereas in the US much more of the burden falls on the individual taxpayer. Also, of course, there is the issue that LB mentions w/r/t the tax code being so insanely riddled with loopholes (this is true on the state level as well as the federal level in most states) that no one really understands the whole thing. That's where you get "private letter rulings", where the IRS gives an interpretation of a particularly confusing or novel tax problem, and it doesn't have the force of law, but until adjudicated otherwise, everyone is allowed to pretend that it does.
Fun fact: In Minnesota, the electricity used by private ski hill operators to generate artificial snow is exempt from sales tax.
Fun federal fact: You must issue a 1099 to any fisherperson from whom you buy fish with cash (i.e. currency), but not necessarily if you pay by check.
208:Malwarebytes is the one I was trying to remember.
And now we've moved on to generalities about the political system rather than personal claims about me or untrue empirical claims, perhaps I can declare the cessation of hostilities against Bob.
196: Thank you, too, Cyrus! I'm extremely busy this afternoon, but this is the relevant post at my friend's blog. Her foster daughter got in a fight at at school and then told my friend that she couldn't have avoided the fight because she (teen) is black and has an obligation to fight, while white people like my friend have the option to stay calm. My friend has printed out the post and is going to pass it along to the teen when they talk more about code-switching and so on this weekend. I'd read the post when it was first linked here but hadn't thought about its pertinence to my friend's situation until it was mentioned above.
Thanks for all the virus-fighting advice! I'm going to battle this weekend!
Re: tax returns, I spent a while looking for this thread and finally found it. To summarize, America's tax policy is borderline hellish for private individuals for several reasons, including the fact small-government ideologues are happy to make government unpleasant to ensure their own success at the ballot box, accounting is an industry big enough to use the government to increase the market for its services, and legislators have a bad habit of legislation by tax exemptions.
I think a lot of these "do you know how to..." come with an implicit "...without embarrassing yourself on the first try." And you're not expected to get zero on two classes and 100% on the third. Rounding some fractions, I hit 1/16 poverty, 7/14 middle class (no kids), and 2/13 wealthy.
The school my mom works at once sent her to one of these workshops (or, at least, one where she ended up with a very similar quiz). It sounded appalling: they were told that poor people value their interpersonal relationships more than money, unlike the middle class, and that this is why poor people have more children than they can afford.
My mom too. She learned that someone might buy their kid designer sneakers even if they don't have enough to eat, because that's how you express love when you're poor.
H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt, that's why. Multi-billion dollar corporations whose business model is based on squeezing a couple hundred bucks out of each of the poorest taxpayers every year for a service they could get for free from a group like the one I'm volunteering for. Or that they could probably do themselves with a modicum of education. Fucking usurers.
So, my ghetto, low-income, heavily immigrant neighborhood is chock full of locations of this outfit -- there are about as many tax preparation places as liquor stores. During tax season, the company hires homeless people/crack addicts to dress up in Statute of Liberty costumes and dance around on the streets holding signs. I counted 20 such folk on the way to work this morning.
Is there anything more awful than a homeless person dressed up in a humiliating costume and dancing like a trained monkey to promote a rip-off tax service that makes most of its money through usurious refund loans? God I hate the way the USA works sometimes.
218: Is there anything more awful than a homeless person dressed up in a humiliating costume and dancing like a trained monkey to promote a rip-off tax service that makes most of its money through usurious refund loans?
The same person dancing around with a sign advertising $5 pizzas from Little Caesar's?
Also, I don't know about out there, but the folx I've seen doing that kind of work around here are more of the cream of the day labor crop than your analysis suggests. Maybe 5 years ago it would have all been homeless addicts, but that was when there was much more day labor work available.
I'd like to see more analysis of the poor people rip-off economy. Off the top of my head I can think of:
Jackson Hewitt
H&R Block
Liberty Tax
U-Haul
Greyhound
Little Caesar's
Check cashing places
Chain convenience stores
The Lottery
And that's not even counting the borderline stuff like liquor stores that cater to the pint-and-under crowd or the whole gruesome manicure economy.
221: Beauty supply stores, maybe? I don't know that that really counts.
What's wrong with U-Haul and Greyhound? Not that I hold any brief for either of them, but they seem pretty harmless -- are they notoriously expensive for what they provide (like, Greyhound's a ripoff compared to other buses?) or what?
U-Haul? I think we used them the last time we moved. We were ripped off?
We also used them to get a piano we found on freecycle.
liquor stores that cater to the pint-and-under crowd
My bus stop near my house is right in front of a big public housing high-rise, and right across from a liquor store. My schedule this semester sometimes puts me waiting for the bus when the liquor store opens. Gruesome indeed.
Catching up on this thread I thought the documentation Pressure Cooker (about a culinary arts competition for Philadelphia HS students), while formulaic, had some really interesting details about social mobility.
It's interesting to watch somebody so explicitly teaching the skills needed to pass in a middle-class setting.
What's the deal with the beauty supply stores? Maybe KR or someone could help explain. There are like 10 zillion of them in my neighborhood -- they must be easy to open -- but I can't figure out who they serve or what the scam is.
In some ways, Little Ceasar's is even more depressing than the tax ripoff mills.
150: It's nice that they warn you. My husband's fines were turned over to a collection agency, which resulted in lowering his credit score so much that it made it substantially more difficult to buy a house.
So, if you can't do any of these rich person things, what exactly will happen? Will your money be taken away? I'm pretty sure you will continue to be rich. I mean—you don't even have to go to French restaurants in the first place. You can be rich and not own more than one home, or care a fig about art. I bet you could even associate with other uncaring rich people.
229: An NYU library did this to me for books I took out when I was 16. I believed I'd returned them (and still kind of do, but what the hell? 16!), but had no idea, since I didn't get the letter from the collection agency until 5 years later. That was all very fun.
Related: apparently if you evade debt long enough that it gets sold to, like, 10 different collection agencies, there's a good chance that, like stupid, stupid, criminal banks, they have not kept the note. Challenge them to provide it and maybe you're off the hook. Or that's what the internet tells me, anyway. Have no idea what that does to your credit rating.
It is important to have a democratic spirit in dealing with readers in popular libraries. The librarian is not, of course, to overlook the neglect of deference which is due him, or to countenance in any way the error which prevails to a considerable extent in this country, that because artificial distinctions of rank have been abolished here, there need be no recognition of the real differences among men in respect to taste, intellect, and character. But he runs little risk in placing readers on a footing of equality with himself. The superiority of his culture will always enable him to secure the respectful treatment which belongs to him when confronted by impudence or conceit.
How is Little Caesar's a scam? I have noticed a drop in advertising. I get how the tax assholes, the check cashing places, bail bondsmen, pawn shops, liquor stores and the rest prey on the poor. I am having more trouble with beauty supply and pizza, though.
231: It all worked out fine in the end, but it's amazing what a $30 unpaid fee can do to wreak havoc at the worst possible time.
And to do that to a 16 year old is ridiculous!
Liz, you shouldn't have married a 16 year-old. They're notoriously unreliable.
well that went a lot beter than I had remotely expected. I had expected the guy to throw a major fit about my having been introduced to the process at all and have to habdle all manner of what have you arising from him feeling he'd been grassed up. In fact he was rather touvhingly embarrassed and now he's going to do the council anger management course. I'm too naturally pessimistic to think that the long term solution has been achieved in a single bound but at least I've got my fucking weekend back.
221: Bank of America and others - monthly fees for no minimum balance, "overdraft protection"
all ATMs. $2 flat fee on cash withdrawals is highly punitive to those withdrawing less at a time.
Oh right, also casinos?
And you got that lovely new phone, to boot.
221:
United States Tax Code, especially FICA
War.
Finance
Health Care Industry
Political Parties
Any part of the economy that depends on a consumption class that is not equally a part of the competitive producer class, which is everything
IP
National Borders and expensive long transportation
I'm now worried that I need to login to my NYPL account and see what it says, even though I moved away almost 3 years ago. They still send me fundraising e-mails.
240: "Pay your fine" isn't technically fundraising.
234: hey, Liz, I've been meaning to check back in with you and tell you that I've been riding through all kinds of godawful snow and sleet and muck and, yup, it's been fine.
230: Will they take your money away?
Yes, God damn them. My family has lost three fortunes this way. Over fishknives. Fishknives!
234: I think it also had to do with a sometimes-shitty step parent who was the reason I had access to the library in the first place. But yeah, I was incensed.
236: That is a seriously good thing. I'm really glad it went well.
This is Brooklyn Public Library. One of my former students--the kid with the memory like a goldfish--checked out a couple of US history documentaries on my suggestion and racked up some $150 in fines. I doubt very much that he's gotten around to paying off the fines. Being reported to a collection agency at 17 years old is the last thing he needs.
228: I don't actually know what's the deal with beauty supply stores and it's probably not as true now that people have access to the internet, but there are a lot of (often racist) complaints about how Korean immigrants have cornered the market in plastic extension hair to the extent that you can't place wholesale orders if you don't speak/read Korean. I'm sure this isn't true as much anymore, but certainly large amounts of money are being spent at BSSs by people who don't really have that much.
the whole gruesome manicure economy.
What's up here?
242: Thanks for the update! I keep looking at those studded tires, but I'm still not ready to risk it.
247: If you go into these shops, some complete stranger will make your nails look like you give a rat's ass about how your nails look. I've always been afraid to enter one.
Related, kind of: People say you are supposed to just push back the cuticle, but I've just cutting it off with a pen knife. Am I going to get some kind of strange nail disorder. So far I haven't experienced any problems.
249: Wait, what? Seriously, what? I thought that was massage parlors?
Yeah, Little Caesar's? Fast-food pizza that was often square? I mean, fast food is never a great job to be working, but what's the specific issue? Are they notably terrible franchise operators or something?
the whole gruesome manicure economy
Why does natilo hate Tippi Hedren?
248: I've been riding on regular 700x23 slicks.
255: If you go to the outlet store, you can get irregular slicks.
256: If you go to Little Caesar, you can get irregular, sicks.
Surely I can't be the only one who read this thread, and throughout, had "Wovon lebt der Mensch?" from the Threepenny Opera playing in my head whenever I scanned past Bob's comments about the, um, different morality of the poor.
I let my parents accountant do my taxes for a while. Ithink it was mostly bc how certain purchases and transfers were classified between me and my parents could be more or les favorable tax wise. In the lower midwest
257: Nobody has really explained how Little Caesar is worse than other fast food or pizza. I'm sure I've eaten it at some point, but I can't recall it being notable in any way except for the "Pizza, Pizza" part.
The class implication being parental sup port during school slash unpaid internship
Surely I can't be the only one...
Nope. Erst muss man fressen, denn kommt das Morale! I usually like to sing Threepenny under my breath, though.
260: That's all I can ever think of when I see their logo. "Pizza, pizza" is a trademark that shouldn't have been granted that causes the courts a lot of grief when other people try to obtain equally descriptive trademarks.
258 Erst kommt das Fressen beim Little Caesars dann kommt die Manikure.
I don't have a huge gripe about LC's. Just that, as with Greyhound and U-Haul, being the place of last resort for people with little money kinda distorts everything.
With manicures, the whole pay-immigrant-women-a-pittance-to-work-hunched-over-and-inhaling-toxic-fumes-all-day is what is particularly gruesome.
Our friends who lost their baby are here today boxing up all of the baby stuff that never got used, so I am really sad and can't continue with the persiflage right now.
I think it's interesting to compare group-specific skills that aren't related to class, too. It still happens to me fairly often that either I know how to do something that seems totally mysterious to my interlocutor, or the other way around.
It took me a really long time to feel like I knew how to get a cab- there aren't any in Montana and I always felt, when visiting cities or whatever, like I was probably doing something subtly wrong and all the onlookers were silently mocking me.
266: Lenin shows you how it's done:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buffalogr/3598135365/
Once he has stolen his 100,000 talers a rogue can walk through the world an honest man.
U-Haul is the place of last resort for people with little money?
"I'd have to look for where I saw this, but I think there's some general, rather than industry specific, Republican opposition to simplifying the tax filing process, on the grounds that keeping it horrible feeds antitax sentiment."
Last year I worked at hr block, and it was definitely a scam (prey much all the profit is made on selling the usurious interest rate refund advances. And the old russian tax preparer who explained to everyone who asked a question along the lines of "why is this tax amount more than I want it to be" by saying "obama is raising your taxes"
Moby, again, if you have to ask, you're in the wrong class. Seems like something you might have heard in school, if you had only gone to the right one.
258/262: Also, Erstes Dreigroschen-Finale
PEACHUM:Natürlich hab ich leider recht
Die Welt ist arm, der Mensch ist schlecht.
Wer wollt auf Erden nicht das Paradies?
Doch die Verhältnisse, gestatten sie´s?
Nein, sie gestatten´s leider nicht.
Dein Bruder, der doch an dir hangt
Wenn halt für zwei das Brot nicht langt
Tritt er dir eben ins Gesicht.
Is Little Caesars really a rip off? Sure, last resort of the desperate and all but I don't think anyone's going in there thinking they were going to get an organic artisan crafted pizza for five bucks from the little cartoon Roman.
Speaking of hidden rules, what are the rules for mixing codeine and alcohol? Nothing drastic mind you. I'm on a couple Tylenol 3's (300mg Acet. / 30mg codeine) and am wondering just how out of it I'm going to be if I add a glass or two of wine in the mix.
Oh, Natilo. That's awful. I'm sorry.
273: You're probably won't get that much more drunk (you're a big cop, right?), but your liver will fucking hate you. It's a lot of tylenol. I wouldn't do it.
273: It's profiting from people's ignorance of botanical history! The ancient Romans didn't have tomatoes!
Yeah, the tylenol thing is giving me pause.
I'm a HUGE cop. 5'9 and 175 pounds of crime fighting glory godamnit.
Coincidentally, I watched the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair last night, and it touches on the amount of money black women spend on maintaining their hair (especially weaves); the belief that Koreans have cornered the market on hair for weaves; and the fact that much of the hair comes from women in India who have their heads shaved as part of a religious ritual (and get no money for their hair).
On the code-switching point, there was an interesting scene in which he interviews teenage girls, most of whom have relaxed hair/weaves, who speculate that someone with natural hair would have a harder time getting hired as a lawyer or something. Interesting because one of the girls had natural hair and looked really chagrined during this interview, but also because this seemed more like an example of kids from a different socioeconomic class guessing at the standards that another class would apply, and coming up with ones that just happen to exactly mirror their own attitudes.
I'd say the same as dona. I wouldn't sweat the opiate/alcohol at that level, but tylenol/alcohol is risky. Probably you'd be fine, but I wouldn't chance it.
What, the codeine isn't making you happy enough?
I like to imagine cops to be larger than me. Nice cops, anyway. Gswift, you seem nice. Crime-fighting glory it is.
279: Codeine is kind of a let down.
Yeah, if you have three drugs that place a burden on the liver, one of which is quite harmful in cases of depressed liver function, it gets difficult to figure what's an acceptable dosage. 600 mg of APAP, or 60 mg of codeine, or 2 glasses of wine are all pretty small doses individually, but together, it's like the three-body problem of hepatic failure.
273, 277:People are way too careful about Paracetamol
But Not With Alcohol and especially w /codeine
While generally safe for use at recommended doses (1,000 mg per single dose and up to 4,000 mg per day for adults, up to 2,000 mg per day if drinking alcohol),[4] acute overdoses of paracetamol can cause potentially fatal liver damage and, in rare individuals, a normal dose can do the same; the risk is heightened by alcohol consumption.
The answer is simple. Don't drink.
And if Wiki tells me 4000 mg a day is ok, I am not going to worry. Risk factor is probably considerably higher than that. And I have done it.
280:They just look taller. They are taught it in cop school. Serious.
I mean, c'mon. Read this and worry about a couple 300s?
The toxic dose of paracetamol is highly variable. In adults, single doses above 10 grams or 200 mg/kg of bodyweight, whichever is lower, have a reasonable likelihood of causing toxicity.[3][4] Toxicity can also occur when multiple smaller doses within 24 hours exceeds these levels.[4] Following a normal dose of 1 gram of paracetamol four times a day for two weeks, patients can expect an increase in alanine transaminase in their liver to typically about three times the normal value.[5] It is unlikely that this dose would lead to liver failure.[6] Studies have shown significant hepatotoxicity is uncommon in patients who have taken greater than normal doses over 3 to 4 days.[7] In adults, a dose of 6 grams a day over the preceding 48 hours could potentially lead to toxicity,[4] while in children acute doses above 200 mg/kg could potentially cause toxicity.[8] Acute paracetamol overdose in children rarely causes illness or death, and it is very uncommon for children to have levels that require treatment, with chronic larger-than-normal doses being the major cause of toxicity in children.[4]In rare individuals, paracetamol toxicity can result from normal use.[9] This may be due to individual ("idiosyncratic") differences in the expression and activity of certain enzymes in one of the metabolic pathways that handle paracetamol (see paracetamol's metabolism).
Codeine is kind of a let down.
Codeine is the nicest thing I've seen.
I like to imagine cops to be larger than me. Nice cops, anyway. Gswift, you seem nice.
Why thank you. Some of us are big. We have a Maori guy who played lock on the U.S. rugby team for a few years.
Is Little Caesars really a rip off?
Not in the sense of being a fraud, but it's emblematic of cheap, horrible, processed food that will make its recipients feel terrible and maintains the USisan poverty/obesity connection. It's also not much worse than other fast food places in this regard but LC's is more concentrated in poor neighborhoods with few other options. I realize that I am a little insane on this topic.
I don't get U-Haul or Greyhound or Little Caesar's. I mean, all three suck, but not in a way that seems especially designed to rip off poor people.
Which is more signficant to GDP: the poor people rip-off economy or the old people rip-off economy? Particularly egregious examples of the latter (off the top of my head) are AOL.com and these things ($147.97!!).
LC's is more concentrated in poor neighborhoods
I'd need to see some evidence on that one. Compared to White Castle? Bojangles? Hardees?
Little Ceasars was what we always ate when I was a kid. Because it was cheapest, yes, but fuck you.
What we ate when we were eating takeout pizza, I mean. We didn't always eat it. We ate at Hardees a lot, too.
They just look taller. They are taught it in cop school. Serious.
I'd like to hear more about this top-secret sinister mind control technique. Was it the Rockefeller Commission that clued us into the concept of "good posture"?
I've lived in poor NYC neighborhoods for years, and I don't think I've ever seen a Little Caesar's. Godawful fried chicken places that give me high blood pressure just smelling them, yes.
It's actually the mustaches. You get one of those big cop mustaches going, it increases perceived body-mass by a factor of up to 1.5.
A big enough mustache increases actual body mass by a factor of up to 1.5.
God, Little Caesers sucks. Any random pizza place is better. That's one of the big mysteries of the American diet. I understand why McDonald's exists -- you're not going to make a great burger for a dollar -- but I don't understand why a place like Little Caesers exists. The local pizza place costs about the same, and will probably be better. But chains have a hypnotic power over the American psyche.
The local pizza place costs about the same
"About" is doing a lot of work here, and that small difference in cost matters to someone who just wants as many calories of pizza/dollar as possible. IME, the few local places that don't cost more are going to be worse.
293:Wikipedia doesn't appear to have a decent article, but here is a list of article mentions of
It most certainly can be taught, and I presume cops are taught how to walk into a biker bar and have everyone instantly quiver and quaver. I kid, but not all that much.
Compared to White Castle? Bojangles? Hardees?
I have never been to any of these places. I know of Hardee's only because it is a co-brand of CKE that also runs Carl's Jr. I know White Castle only because of the Beastie Boys/the H&K movie. I've never even heard of Bojangles.
299:Arggh
Mentions of commanding presence
U-Haul is the place of last resort for people with little money?
My dear, people of means hire movers.
300: okay, well different chains for different parts of the country, as expected. But I have trouble believing LC is disproportionately clustered in poorer neighborhoods in LA, compared to other inexpensive fast food.
White Castle? Bojangles? Hardees?
Um. Really? Bojangles is a place? Bofuckingjangles?
It's true that u-haul is the cheapest and shittiest national rent-a-moving-van company. But they're upfront about that. They honestly don't seem any more of a rip-off to me than something like budget rent-a-car. And they're really not catering to poor people, anyway. (I mean, I don't know the demographics of their customer base, but I'd bet it's much more working class.) Poor people mostly move in cars or friends' trucks.
I hadn't actually done the research on the demographics and brand locations of Little Ceasar's before posting, to be honest. Who the fuck knows. Now you know my shame. Anyhow, the local inexpensive fast food is variants of "Tom's" burgers a la "Ray's" pizza in NY -- there's Tom's, Tam's, Tommy's, Tom's #2, etc.
I don't actually know why I picked them--I'm not that familiar with them. I was trying to think of shitty fried chicken. They may be more upscale. I haven't been to one in while.
Um. Really? Bojangles is a place? Bofuckingjangles?
Is this a movie reference or something?
Poor people mostly move in cars or friends' trucks.
Probably should be definitional that poor people don't have furniture.
I don't know about Little Caesar's, but one of the best righteous rages I've seen in decades was from a statistician who had worked out the market strategy of payday loan places. Statisticians are usually calm and dry, in my experience. Apparently it's because they're rarely convinced. This one was convinced.
(Not only do the loan joints seek out poor regions with few banks, but they like army bases because there's some terrible advice the Army gives its recruits.)
Way way back to the original post, the 'wealth' questions seem wrong because the survival of the rich *person* isn't in question; it's the survival of the *money* as a big ol' self-sustaining lump that depends on class knowledge. Or, as my grandmothers used to say, 'Three generations' (shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves). Also, they clearly believed in Don't Touch the Capital, having themselves been daughters of men who had pissed away what wasn't lost in a waw.
That's a good point, mcmanus.
Rent-to-own furniture places should definitely be added to the list in 221.
Am I wrong in thinking that the name "Bojangles" has a fraught racial history? And now it's a fried chicken chain? Seriously?
306. I was told that the Tom/Tommy/Tomy etc. restaurants, including the Original Tommy's chain, are all descendants of "Ptomaine Tommy," a historic chili burger place in Lincoln Heights.
I miss Pioneer Chicken.
I don't understand why a place like Little Caesers exists. The local pizza place costs about the same
I thought the distinguishing fact about LC is that you can buy an entire large pizza for literally $5.
Furniture rental places are only good for ripping off poor people, porn films, and boiler rooms. Remember that congressman who got caught with like a hundred grand in his freezer? I think I remember reading that he made his fortune in furniture rental places in his home community. NICE GUY.
Apologies if this has been covered already as I've been skimming the thread:
I read the quiz being less a matter of literal survival skills (obviously, you'll do alright if you have a lot of wealth, charity board position or no), but more a matter of how social dominance/signaling markers vary.
To me this explains the gun thing. There are scores of both middle class and poor americans who look at gun ownership as important for "protection", but for MC guys it's not a particularly difficult or noteworthy feat to acquire one, and for someone in poverty to own a gun might be a more dramatic status marker. As Natilo's point about pit bulls shows, the assumption that every dude with a gun has consciously decided to commit crimes is seldom true; there's all sorts of rationalizations about being able to defend oneself employed. (And when you're wealthy, you don't just own guns, you own security guards, the matter isn't one you need give any thought.)
So the restaurant-ordering and such for the wealthy is what signals competence in how you interact with others of your class. Survival is really the misleading term here. But the actual quiz seems about right to me (having as I do little real knowledge of extreme poverty or wealth).
273, 297 - Little Caeser's was the vendor of choice at all the (UMC) birthday parties/sleepovers I went to as a kid, because 10-year-old boys are not discriminating about the quality of slice they eat, so why pay more? It's weird seeing it cited as a particularly exploitative chain. IIRC it was in fact cited in Fast Food Nation as a decentish one, although I believe that was more because of the local franchisee than the chain itself. (And the real issue is the lack of supermarkets with appealing, non-outrageously-priced produce in poor communities. Maybe Alice Waters will get them all some lovely heirloom tomatoes.)
Tax preparation chains, on the other hand, are monsters and should be burned to the ground. Jackson Hewitt apparently screwed the pooch and the Treasury Dept. cut off their ability to offer usurious loans, meaning that their entire business might go under. Good.
||
Very worth reading on pregnancy practice.
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It upsets me that J/osh M/arshall only references that some Southerners tried the same thing 50 years ago. Really? That's...there was another thing. Earlier. Way, way earlier.
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He's talking about southern governors and civil rights. He knows very well what nullification is.
316: I think we messed up the assignment long ago.
JMM has a Ph.D. in American History, no? Maybe that was F.A.'s point in 320.
318 is, indeed, very worth reading. Cheerful, too! Kidding about the last part.
Social dominance and signaling is a much more sensible phrase than survival, but not nearly as good for comic misunderstandings. (Comic misunderstandings: telling taste of which class? Fussell probably had an opinion.)
321:We can always get it back.
A long while ago I was thinking whether there was a necessary mindset to being rich, beyond any interaction with your peers.
neb said you don't have to live nice even if you are rich. But if you have two billion in the bank, and are living in a shack deep in the woods with your dogs (Heaven), I think it is very likely you will wake up one morning, say WTF, and give the capital to the Sierra Club. I cannot personally imagine that morning not arising, therefore, neb is wrong, and you most likely cannot be rich and live a middle class lifestyle. IOW, staying rich, under most imaginable circumstances, requires a certain level of commitment to the intrinsic value itself of being rich. Then all the other markers start coming into play. Can't stay rich without ambition.
And as I have said before, I think a myth of upward mobility and material ambition is definitional for the middle class, and probably detrimental for the poor.
There is likely another story for the bourgeois.
I know he was talking about civil rights. It just seems odd to me to not mention all the rest of it. The fact that it's a recurring idiocy seems worth mentioning, if only because GODDAMN have any of these state politicians taken a history course.
I am still of the belief that we should mock the stupid until they have shame.
320, 322:Oh, perhaps nullification was at least arguable before the civil war. The post-civil war amendments made it ridiculous (?). A degree in Am Hist would provide that nuance.
Leaving "nineteenth century" in only the post title probably was too subtle. But IIRC, nullification has been discussed in fuller detail on TPM. It's a recurring subject. (Their site search isn't working for me, and I've got work to do anyway.)
Well, the main 19th-century event "nullification" most commonly refers to was the 1832 South Carolina thing, right? -- certainly the start of the Civil War involved the same kinds of claims, but in that case there was no actual federal law to nullify. I think if one's writing quickly as with most blog posts, the civil rights movement is a more morally compelling precedent to point to than a squabble over taxes, even if they all featured the same lineage of assholes.
AND i just read the actual title of JMM's post. The one that I freaking linked to. He wins. I perhaps need to take a break.
One of the earliest and most famous examples is to be found in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, a protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts. In these resolutions, authors Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that the states are the ultimate interpreters of the Constitution and can "interpose" to protect state citizens from the operation of unconstitutional national laws.
I don't consider nullification all that theoretically silly. We, the Union, will just shoot you if you try it.
The photo of Calhoun is a nice touch.
332: My wife wanted to put up baby pictures and art, but I said a living room needs Calhaun.
Northern states in the 1840s and 1850s attempted to block enforcement of the pro-slavery federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. The most famous examples of this centered around northern states' personal liberty laws. These actions had the effect, in many local situations, of nullifying the effectiveness of the federal fugitive slave statutes, but did not declare that the fugitive slave laws were nullified. The U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the validity of the federal fugitive slave laws in the cases of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) and Jones v. Van Zandt (1847). The Supreme Court also dealt with this issue of northern abrogation of the federal fugitive slave statutes in the 1859 case of Ableman v. Booth, in which the Supreme Court held that the Wisconsin courts did not have the power to prevent federal officials from enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.
I suppose there is an important nuance in refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act as opposed to saying it is not binding, as an unconstitutional law. I suppose.
My personal position is that I interpret the Constitution to the best of my ability, by myself, for myself with help. I don't take an oath to any lesser authority. I act accordingly, to the degree I care, to the degree I am able to get away with, to the degree I am willing to suffer the consequences. This is not quite civil disobedience, I might consider laws regulating assembly (marches) generally good laws that I conditionally disobey.
Thomas Moore was completely wrong. It is not disobedience to law that collapses societies, but obedience and subjection to authority. The law suffers no lack of advocates, almost by definition.
Maybe I could build up a practice specialty in the Law of Bob McManus. I've certainly spent enough time reading on the topic.
187: You weren't here then, but...someone was accused of being a troll, to the point where they gave up on this community. Dsquared did so as well, as a protest at their treatment or what he perceived to be such. There are those among us who feel that he risks doing the same to Bob and that Bob is not, on the whole, an entirely negative influence on this gaff.
We commend Ttam for not getting further involved in an essentially pointless ruck. We condemn Bob's indulgence in being the Internet Tough Guy. We warn Dsquared and others against excessive use of rhetoric - you could have someone's eye out.
Now, kindly step aside so we can reverse. Thanks!
336:I am refuted.
The problem with bores is that they don't know they are bores, but think they are interesting and entertaining. Isn't it? Do you think I am talking only about myself?
Way, way back upthread, and apropos of 337, I suppose:
88: Please don't take my response to this question as indicating any sort of open-ended commitment to answering a string of this crap.
I admire this line, and submit that all persons should have it ready in their respective back pockets, for use as needed. It is a bit wordy, though.
All this talk of nullification -- not here, because who cares what people here (including me) think, but by state legislatures -- is creeping me out. The crazy really is on the march.
I've come to the conclusion that I'm not clear on what a "troll" is. I'm also not sure I need to be. I thought just generally being a consistent asshole was a good enough reason for people to tell you to fuck off.
re: 236
Cool, sounds like it went about as well it could have went.
The crazy really is on the march.
I honestly don't know what to make of it. I'm back to the same old question: is this cynical manipulation (on the part of states in order to drum up popular, for which read, electoral, support), or are they really so out of touch? It's surprising, to say the least, when I find myself rooting for the mainstream in the Republican party.
re: 341
I don't know. I think trolling implies a certain insincerity, or posturing for the sake of effect. I can think of a few people who comment here who I think are consistently wrong, and hold opinions that I think are shitty and/or immoral, but they aren't trolls. Their opinions seem sincerely held and argued for in good faith. Being an 'arsehole' doesn't make someone a troll.
Pre-schoolers are trolls. Every last one of them.
290 put the song "Bojangles" into my head. Like, hours ago. And not the whole song, but mostly just the line "the dog up and died, he up and died". It's an insidious earworm.
All this talk of nullification -- not here, because who cares what people here (including me) think, but by state legislatures -- is creeping me out. The crazy really is on the march.
Well, yes and no. I mean, there's certainly craziness afoot, yes. But the basic idea that states can and ought to try to mitigate the effects of federal laws to which their constituents are opposed isn't very crazy at all--think Oregon-or-was-it-WA on euthanasia, NYPD on not-enforcing-federal-immigration-laws, CA on medical marijuana, etc. You don't need to go back to the Fugitive Slave Laws.
I also like having Bob around, though honestly Bob, you should go all the way with your rejection of authority--why would you feel any obligation to the Constitution? It's not a very good constitution, really.
I made a friend of mine go to Harold's Chicken Shack while he was in Chicago and when he got back he said "I don't get it--what's so good about it?" Now I'm hoping I'm not doing some egregious college kid down-with-the-gente thing, because all I could say was "it's delicious is what's so good about it" and he was all "it's just fried chicken and they serve it with Wonder Bread" which is true. Survivors of U of C, am I full of it? I have described Harold's as the nail in the coffin of my vegetarianism.
I honestly don't know what to make of it.
I think it's related, in a way, to the epistemic closure phenomenon. It reminds me of the games of "leftier than thou" that afflicted the other side in the 1970s. It's all there: the frisson of transgression, the competition to outdo the next comrade, the rapid ascent of heretofore outrageous positions to the status of unassailable dogma, the quiet discomfort of the old leadership with unexpected new shibboleths, the inability or fearful unwillingness of the moderates to police the radicals in their own ranks.
I also like having Bob around
Ditto, btw. He personally winds me up something rotten, and talks a lot of shit much of the time -- not a rekindling of earlier arguments, honest -- but also links to interesting shit too, and isn't wrong a fair bit of the time. That last isn't meant to be patronising, either.
Oh. I think my definition of "asshole" mostly has to do with how one interacts with others, and not so much about the content of one's beliefs.
Ok, wait. That's not entirely true. I definitely think some beliefs are assholish. But...first consideration is how one treats people in actual interaction. So sincerity vs. baiting vs. manipulation...all that's more important, in my definition of "asshole."
There is that general rule: don't be a dick. It's actually not hard.
don't be a dick. It's actually not hard.
It's been a long week at work and I've been drinking. Happens to everybody.
Am I wrong in thinking that the name "Bojangles" has a fraught racial history? And now it's a fried chicken chain? Seriously?
347: Mitigating, to use your word, isn't nullifying. The idea of nullifying federal law has a very specific history. That's why I say the crazy is on the march.
Two stylized facts about US federal/state issues, and how to feel about the balance of power between them:
1. The federal government is better run than most state governments; less corrupt, more professionally staffed, more administratively capable.
2. The federal government is also more countermajoritarian and generally sclerotic than most state governments. Insofar as institutional reform, rather than a man on a horse, is the path to improvement, it's easier to achieve at the state level.
My fully considered views on decentralization/federalism are, naturally, outside the scope of this blog comment. But just assume that all possible counterarguments to my intentionally-left-vague position would be acknowledged and overcome in a more thorough articulation.
Alright. Time for drinking. I'm sure I'll be back tomorrow.
I also like having Bob around
This may be the most baffling thing I have ever read here.
355: yes, fine. And I agreed with that, and think KR in 349 identifies key aspects of it, too. But it's easy to get caught up in oppositional thinking in the other direction, too; let's not throw out the federalism baby with the crazy bathwater.
Not to say that actually-existing federalism here is particularly good. But it's not all bad, and changing it purely in the direction of more centralization wouldn't necessarily be better.
For example, DC ought to be a state!
Trolls, I think, take positions specifically intended to get a rise out of other people. Which is to say, they argue in bad faith. This is why I never thought that Stras was a troll -- because he really believed what he believed, which often infuriated people, but he didn't say what he said to infuriate people.
As for Bob, I absolutely agree that he's right quite often (recent events have proven him occasionally prescient), that he links to some interesting stuff some of the time, but he's still as often as not trolling (see above). More than that, though, I find him very hard to take when there's actual blood in the streets. He begins to remind me of a keyboard commando on the right: utterly committed to seeing somebody else kill or die so that his (largely utopian) vision of society can come to pass. Then again, I'd find it more upsetting from Bob if I didn't think he was trolling me and others with his act.
So should NYC. It should be, The Free State of Greater New York City, and would naturally extend to parts of CT & NJ. That would be great.
let's not throw out the federalism baby with the crazy bathwater
Comity.
362: I think I agree, especially with the medical marijuana. In a functional sense, CA tried to nullify federal drug laws. At the very least, it is closer to "nullify" than "mitigate" for the standard* use of those terms.
*I don't even own a lawyer, so there may be a legal definition I'm missing.
As for Bob...recent events have proven him occasionally prescienth
Stopped clock.
349: I think it's related, in a way, to the epistemic closure phenomenon.
Yes, and thanks for the reminder. There have been several comments since I read 349, however.
368: I don't think that's entirely fair. I think his deeply held skepticism (hatred?) of Obama, and centrist Democrats more broadly, has served him well in many ways. Again, it's hard to tease apart the genuine prescience from the trolling bits, but he's been very right about some stuff, I think.
In a functional sense, CA tried to nullify federal drug laws.
CA ballot initiatives are a whole 'nother can of crazy.
351:There is that general rule: don't be a dick. It's actually not hard.
Well, with what d2 and ttam called me earlier, a word that can't pass these lips, my options seem increasingly limited. I forgot "arsehole"
But maybe not!
Yaoi ...don't ask how I got here, I forget. 2009. What a wonderful freakin world. (Read the comments, or Wiki. The article misrepresents a little)
Does everyone else know about this stuff? I wish I had had this to link to when we were discussing Justin Bieber.
371: Back home, people signed petitions and voted down mandatory seat belt laws. Twice. Each time the state government put the law back because federal highway funds would go away otherwise. After the third time, there weren't enough petitions and my own views on the matter shifted because I broke a windshield with my head.
364: This is why I never thought that Stras was a troll
Stras remains a sore spot, and I don't want to see a repeat with respect to Bob (who is not the same as Stras, exactly, but the point remains). We don't need a navel-gazing metathread here, but driving people off is an unfortunate thing.
Yes, everyone else knew about Yaoi. Sorry to break it to you, Bob.
What with your other Japan-related research, we all thought you knew.
Does KR think I have a plan? A method? Good grief.
Aww, y'all are so serious tonight.
Cha No Aji ...is cued up for tonight, just my cuppa
on the original topic, it's worth mentioning that there are a variety of cultures among the truly wealthy, and while the rich list is mostly questions you can answer by saying "throw cash at the problem" there are some things that could irrevocably signal you're one type of wealthy person rather than another. sifu's question is interesting too, what can you skimp on while still successfully giving the impression that you're wealthy? again, depends what sort of wealthy person you're trying to be, I guess. it's sad to hear about the derauqsd family thrice losing a fortune over fish knives. I have some lovely ones I could loan with ivory handles and gold chasing on the pattern but alas they are in a shitty storage unit on east abercorn in savannah, ga. I need to have someone with me who can drive next time I go, since I can hardly trust the movers to go pack it up without me watching. paying $600 a year I've bought some of the things from myself several times over. it was poor planning.
159
last: Is this some weird Upper Midwest peculiarity, like the divided check-out lanes at Cub? ...
I knew someone at my previous job who did their kid's taxes so I expect it is fairly common.
I learned, once I graduated college, that the family of one of my best friends from high school had constructed an elaborate, decades-long ruse about their wealth. It turned out that though they had a huge house, drove German cars (Audis or maybe Mercedeses), sent their kids to very expensive private schools, looked down on those of us who went to public school, and sat on various boards of directors and charitable committees, they had towering mountains of debt. It was a strange enough thing that I decided not to give it another thought. Until right now, that is.
Ah. Yelling at bob. You just need a way to invoke meta-yelling at bob and then the entire thing goes away.
28: Still way ahead of someone like me, but no longer with the mystic power of driving a car for fifteen minutes with his head pressed up against the door-frame to feel the vibrations and diagnosing the quality/reliability of the car -- a used car now, he doesn't know much more about than anyone else. The kinds of things that go wrong with cars now, I think you need to be a mechanic with the computerized diagnostic tools they have.
I think this is a problem with an older person being intimidated by computers. Because, yes, it is very handy to have an ODB-II reader (works for all cars past '96) and they're around 150-200$. But if you have one you can just plug it in ask Mr. Car to sing of its troubles and and it will do so.
However, that kind of thing only works for the sensors and other electronic parts (and if the computer is shot, it can't tell). So, for a used car it's back to 1) looking at the fluids, 2) looking for drips (after a test drive) 3) listening to the engine/transmission while driving, and in particular, sniffing the tailpipe after the car is warmed up. It's also very useful to have a piece of broomstick that you can push against a non-moving part of the engine so you can listen for certain bad noises. If a used car checks out with all of the above, even if you don't have a diagnostic, then you don't have a worn out engine or transmission, which makes it 'good' for a used car. (You might still have emission problems, or worn rubber or something, but that stuff is fixable.) What you would be trying to avoid is (first and foremost) a skunked block (cost more to replace than the car is worth) or a transmission that's going to need a rehab.
(Body squeaks aren't that important anymore - with the new collapsing unibody cars, if the car has been in a serious wreck, it'll probably get totaled and you'll be able to see the damage (even if they swap the outer panel). Costs too much to fix these days.)
I run into people older than me going about how it's impossible to deal with newer cars, but it's the same shit, just with a computer attached. I think a lot of old people are just attached to fiddling with carbs to make things run better, and they can't wrap their minds around the concept of sensors.
34:I thought the thing to do with shocks was to try to bounce the bumper up and down, and if it oscillates at all rather than returning to its neutral position, you need new shocks. But I really don't know jack.
That's right! Stand on the bumper and jump off. Back and front. A broken shock with go down and stay down so there is very little play left. A worn shock will return very slowly. (It helps to have another car handy to make the comparison.) If it waddles a lot and is very boingy on return, then the springs are wearing down. If the car just sits very low, the springs and the shocks are bad.
FWD cars have the shock/strut combo (I forget the name), so replacing the one replaces the other. (I think it's kind of physical bitch to do, myself, but it can be done.) It's easy to replace the springs too at the same time. (The springs have to come out anyways.)
You (Moby) probably want to jack the front end up and check to see if there's any play in the wheels. (One hand on top of the tire, one hand on the bottom, pull the top and push the bottom: it should move. Same deal with the front and back.) If the shocks are gone there's a decent chance the balljoints are worn.
91: Is there anyone here who really knows how to repair their own dishwasher, and do it well?
Appliance repair is a dying art. The manufacturers of such things have moved steadily to highly intergrated parts (makes 'em cheaper), so there can be minor things wrong (that can clog up the outtake, for instance, leaving a bunch of standing water), but with a dishwasher it amounts to, 'does the spinny thing spin?' If it does, the fix needed is to something else and is minor, like a clog. If it doesn't spin the motor is fucked: buy a new one.
181: for anyone who hasn't read it, or thinks it is as particular and specific as dsq claims. Yglesias loved the post
Actually, Matthew just referenced it. DeLong quoted it in full. I thought it was entirely too freakonomics for my taste.
340: All this talk of nullification -- not here, because who cares what people here (including me) think, but by state legislatures -- is creeping me out.
Eh? They went nuts for secession resolutions (in the event Obama 'banned' guns') back at the beginning of '09, as was noted here. They also invoked nullification. As near as I can tell it amount to 'still at it'. They're going to run that sucker up and salute it and nothing will come of it.
max
['I guess I'm not shocked by it anymore. They already went bugfuck two years ago, and excitingly enough they're still bugfuck.']
Regarding Greyhound, rumor has it they treat their customers badly. For example there is no reserved seating so if you are supposed to change busses and there aren't enough seats on the new bus you may find yourself stranded at some bus station in the middle of nowhere at 2 am. Some might suspect the bad treatment is related to the fact that most of their customers are poor.
If it doesn't spin the motor is fucked: buy a new one.
Or take all the electronic parts apart as far as you can, apply/remove grease/grit as seems appropriate, and put it back together. Worked for us.
there's also the fact that the greyhound station is invariably in the absolute shittiest part of every town ever, so you have people selling crack in the station and shit. makes it scary and family-unfriendly.
As for U-Haul, I was mildly excited about the possibility of moving recently, if only because it meant I could avoid getting a U-Haul. Unlike the last time I moved, I'm now the proud owner of 1/4th of a trailer. Or, the one-fourth owner of a whole trailer. Whatever. I have trailer access...laydeez.
how do you feel about driving to savannah and supervising professional movers while they pack up my stuff and/or put shit in your trailer for you to drive to the freight forwarder? I would seriously pay someone plenty of money to do this. like 2500 for one day's work?
likely you would also get free furniture out of the deal, if you wanted it. my mom is moving out of her house too, so I'll end up with a second storage unit in maryland. 2 seems a bit much.
likely you would also get free furniture out of the deal, if you wanted it. my mom is moving out of her house too, so I'll end up with a second storage unit in maryland. 2 seems a bit much.
Not quite a scam but grey hound is all the pain in the ass of flying, although with no security theatre, except instead of getting you there faster than driving, it takes three times as long
387: I'm pretty sure I could convince my bandmate (one of the other trailer owners) to make that trip with me. He loves Savannah, as do I. If you're at all serious, you could email me so I can think about it when I'm not already tired and bedward.
One caveat: his fiancée's dad seems to be dying of cancer. As in, they decided to just stop the chemo and move on to hospice care. So the bandmate isn't as up for whimsical travel ideas right now, with every day sort of touch-and-go.
Oh, and it's not a huge trailer. A pull-behind big enough for a drumset (broken down into cases), five amps, four PA speakers, the PA amps, lights, and six or so guitars. Not much else.
My experiences with Greyhound between DC and New York City have all been positive or neutral. The best was when I went up to New York at the start of a snow storm: traffic was lighter than usual and we were early; some people who tried to fly were stuck in airports for longer than we were on the road. I was lucky to not run into full buses where I got stuck waiting. Actually, the lack of reserved seating meant that multiple times I showed up an hour or so before the departure I wanted and ended up getting on a bus within 10-15 minutes because that's just how the line moved. I think Greyhound now offers certain kinds of reserved tickets (I can't remember what the conditions are).
I've taken a couple of the competitors that try to cater to the young professional crowd - I can't remember which companies - and the seats were marginally more comfortable and it was nice to have a seat guaranteed. But since I couldn't buy far in advance, it wasn't any cheaper. I'd probably go with them again, just for the scheduling, but they weren't obviously better.
There's a non-Greyhound private bus line that runs pretty much every day between NYC and Charlottesville. It's not crazy expensive ($99 one way, $179 roundtrip, but you can find coupons). Having ridden it a few times with mostly empty coaches, I'm still puzzled how they turn a profit. But they seem to.
Late beyond late, but I am most amused to find that with that quiz-thingy, I fit best into the wealthy class AND poverty. Hurray! I'm rich! Boo! I'm poor! (So much of the middle class stuff revolves around a family I don't have - what gives?)
it occurs to me that I don't need the trailer so much as I need someone to supervise the movers while they pack; they can then take it away in their giant truck. Everything's in boxes now, but they're old and rotted, so the dudes have to re-pack it all for international shipping. some shit is crazy valuable, is the thing.
I'll email you. xoxo
379. al, I'm pretty sure dsquared was referring to this poem on the subject of fish knives. In days gone by, fish knives were regarded as distressingly non-U, because the upper classes at fish with two forks.
These days, fish knives are not class markers. I inherited a set from my grandmother, but they're plain ivory handled things and we never use them.
Class marker indeed. We have a fish knife (just the one), but until this thread I have never known what it was and have mostly used it for soft cheeses. Had I encountered the term "fish knife" without context, I'd have assumed it meant the big ones you use to gut them.
Well, with what d2 and ttam called me earlier
self-pity doesn't suit you, Bob.
I have some lovely [fishknives] I could loan with ivory handles and gold chasing on the pattern
Don't worry, your secret is safe with me.
You (Moby) probably want to jack the front end up and check to see if there's any play in the wheels. (One hand on top of the tire, one hand on the bottom, pull the top and push the bottom: it should move. Same deal with the front and back.) If the shocks are gone there's a decent chance the balljoints are worn.
Maybe I will just vacuum it out, wash it, and ask my FiL. It is four wheel drive, so it is usually even more complicated.
385: Pittsburgh's Greyhound is in a new building in a nice area of the downtown. It is across the street from the train station, which is mostly useless because there are no trains.
mostly useless because there are no trains
I'm wondering how it's useful at all without trains, and I've decided there's either a random nice restaurant inside or they leave the doors open so that you can step inside to dry off during an unexpected rain.
d`2, reading your schtick over at CT in the Michael Lewis thread, where you the Finance Guy are trying to distract with fairy ring sneers from the story of the System-That-Ate-Ireland, I no longer have much doubt about what side you are on. Did you get over by shorting Anglo-Irish?
I kinda thought Bertram and Healey and Farrell were better than that/you and would notice those classic methods of distraction.
I am willing to do this work for alameida.
405
The comments to that thread are a bit strange but I don't think d^2 is to blame. It appears to me that writing a critical (and pessimistic) article about Ireland can elicit a defensive reaction similar to what writing an analogous article about Israel would produce.
402: Pittsburgh's Greyhound is in a new building in a nice area of the downtown
Now. And the old station lived down to expectations.
The bus company whose business model I sometimes wonder about is Megabus. My kids and friends use it extensively and sometimes pay almost nothing. And probably more except that somewhat strangely the eastern routes do not connect with the midwestern ones (Toronto/Buffalo/Pittsburgh/Knoxville are the western edge of the eastern connected routes while Cleveland/Columbus/Cincinnati/Memphis are the eastern of the west). Maybe this keeps them within some definition of "regional carrier".
I am willing to do this work for alameida.
So am I. Road trip!
where you the Finance Guy are trying to distract with fairy ring sneers from the story of the System-That-Ate-Ireland, I no longer have much doubt about what side you are on.
If you've ever wondered why everyone's so mean to you, Bob, it's because you say things like this.
410:Well, you know I just don't understand why you would seek to discredit Michael fucking Lewis and a serious* article about the real estate bubble while we are in Capitalist Crisis. Lewis is not my enemy. I don't get the fun.
*Serious, as in decent on the facts, by a popular audience, reaching a huge audience.
To the OP:
I think the quiz works best as less of a skills test and more of a test of habitus/situational consciousness. This means, in addition to specifying the US twenty-five years ago as the applicable world as the field of application (how do you locate useful grocery store dumpsters? You travel back in time to the period before liability concerns had turned these into locked compactor boxes, or you move on to bakeries and restaurants), you have to translate the framework to "You just might be a redneck poor/middle class/wealthy person if ..." Strictly speaking, I think you also have to change "know" to "think you know." Just as there's no real way to protect your clothes at the laundramat other than sitting next to them, there's no way to know whether a yard sale is any good other than checking it out, but people who rely on or habituate such places will form many theories about how to do it right (I believe the laundramat thing is a matter of positioning certain items in your absence to suggest your possible imminent return).
I believe the laundramat thing is a matter of positioning certain items in your absence to suggest your possible imminent return
In the days when I used Laundromats, the way to ensure that your stuff wasn't stolen was to go at the time the neighbourhood old ladies were there. You could start your stuff and go off to the pub secure in the knowledge that anybody who tried to touch anything in the place that didn't belong to them would rue the day.
the period before liability concerns had turned these into locked compactor boxes
Huh. This shift definitely hasn't happened here. My old roommates would routinely go dumpster diving at several area grocery stores, and this was within the past year. Actually, the only locked compactors I can think of are behind restaurants, not grocery stores. (And for Stormcrow: there's one in the Corner Parking Lot here, for all the Corner bars and restaurants.)
We've written several articles about the Irish crisis, and crucially, by having access to Irish people who aren't taxi drivers, we managed to do so at a significantly greater depth than Michael Lewis and without any outright stereotyping or bullshit.
See? Civil response to a not wonderfully civil question. It really isn't a good idea to go around telling people that they're your enemies; sooner or later one of them might believe you.
Fine, ruin my generalizing with regional variation. And, yes, there are plenty of restaurants and bakeries that go to various lengths to prevent dumpster diving as well. Of course the literal answer to the quiz question would be something like "Look behind the grocery store; maybe try the sides if it's not there," but that seems to obvious.
To neb's point about being able to remain wealthy without knowing how to do wealthy people things, yes techinically, but film and literature would seem to tell us that this inevitably becomes a source of unending torment: no longer able to relate to poorer friends, one remains shut out of the wealthy society than deems the vulgar rich unworthy. More practically we are also told that one will be excluded from opportunities for even more money getting and betrayed at the first opportunity because you were never really one of them. Some aspects of this may have been exagerated over the years for dramatic effect.
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Is there a known bug on this site such that once you've posted a comment from Chrome the back button doesn't work? And if so, is there a get round?
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by having access to Irish people who aren't taxi drivers
See what he does?
Go read the article linked at CT and decide for yourself if that is an honest characterization of the content.
415: Dumpster diving at the bakery in Berkeley was pretty common among certain types of crunch twenty-somethings. Since the only thing that ever ended up in that dumpster was less than one day old bread in individual paper bags there was very little sketchy or unsafe about it.
Right, so I'm a tool of the international money conspiracy and probably an evil short seller, while Michael Lewis is a tribune of the people. Clown shoes on again, I see.
Leave it Daniel, he's not worth it.
It almost goes without saying, but you have to read Michael Lewis's tour de force on Ireland in Vanity Fair. It's long -- over 13,000 words -- and it's beautifully written, giving both a big-picture perspective on the Irish economic boom and bust, and a credible account of the fateful meeting at which the Irish government decided that it should go ahead and guarantee the debts of all Irish banks.
You know, it is rarely even difficult for me to take your stuff.
chris I'm kind of entertained that you're telling d^2 there's no point to yelling at mcmanus in this thread while you're yelling at mcmanus in the other thread.
Oh, sorry, I missed the emphasis by Salmon
It's "have to read" Vanity Fair was also italicized.
I gave up. That's why. He lives in a world of his own where Felix Salmon is the arbiter of journalistic accuracy about countries he may or may not have visited. He expects a Leninist revolution in a country with no revolutionary party. He's an expert on poverty who lives in a house with air conditioning, but that's OK because it's fairly crappy. Fuck it.
But while you're here, any ideas about the back button and Chrome?
You know, the difference is that I just try to get people to read stuff and other people try to limit the discourse with insults and tribalism. Don't read Lewis. Don't read Salmon. Don't read Bob.
Up to you folks read the Lewis or not. Until the last lighter fourth I found it informative. I also read the older articles at CT, of course. I try to read as much as possible, instead of policing comment threads.
I read Lewis. It had a few entertaining anecdotes in it. As far as analysis is concerned, I heard better from my wife's aunt on the phone the other night. She's lived in Dublin all her life, and knows from Irish politics. What are Salmon's credentials?
The CT article started by affirming he was a good writer, but suggested he was a bit credulous in this case*. The CT article was written by an Irishman. Don't get your knickers in a twist.
*In case you didn't get the joke in the title, the Luas is the Dublin Metro.
This is the first I've heard of that Chrome thing and I can't imagine how anything on this site could be causing it.
dsquared, does the email address linked in your comments here work? The domain appears to be inhabited by squatters.
neb, fine, just curious. It's not the end of the world.
429:Morgan Kelly was neat, and I enjoyed his story.
There was also an important lesson in Kelly's story, in that before and during the crisis, there were approximately zero Irish experts economists/bankers/RE/politicians that would/could tell you the truth about what was going on.
I should trust them now?
430 is too dismissive. All I meant is, it's not known (to me) and I'm not sure how it could be happening, if it is to do with this site. But if it really does happen only here, then it's probably worth investigating. My imagination isn't the limit of technical possibility.
433. As a general rule, trusting economists/bankers/politicians is a mug's game (I've no idea what RE means, I thought it was Religious Education). Why would Ireland be an exception?
I have known economists, bankers and politicians (and in one case an Irish religious educator) I would trust with my life. But I've wanted to see some substantial evidence first.
I haven't noticed any problem with Chrome and the back button, but I'll try it out by submitting this comment and then trying back.
You'd trust economists more in a real estate bubble?
Or if you mean there are more mugs in a bubble, that's pretty much a tautology.
Yup, no problem.
439. Dunno then. It goes back to the empty comment box and then sticks. Doesn't happen here in Firefox or IE (at work, gawdelpus). Doesn't happen in Chrome anywhere else.
Put it down to experience.
438:No, as in FIRE, in America RE stands for Real Estate, it being clumsy to say "contracters, builders, developers,etc"
it being clumsy to say "contracters, builders, developers,etc"
Every morning, I walk down to the beach, fill my mouth with pebbles, and shout "contractors, builders, developers,etc" over the crashing surf. Another six months and I'll have it smooth.
442: "He shouts silly shit down by the seashore"
415: And for Stormcrow: there's one in the Corner Parking Lot here
Shit, that was where I was planning to do lunch if I ever visited.
I've been through Pittsburgh a couple of times on the train. I haven't been to any other part of the city.
From the train, you only get to see the back of the bus station.
I'm wealthy...when it comes to my many good friends at Unfogged! THE BEST!
446: The train goes other places than the station, Mister Hick. But true that as in most places you get an interesting but atypical look at the place you are traveling through from the train.
448: It's true! For years I thought Milwaukee was nothing but burned out warehouses.
Right, but the train doesn't go to the other side of the bus station.
413: The thing about dumpster diving is that it's never static. Should be a tautology, but some people seem to forget it. A radical acquaintance just dumpstered 300 pounds of cheese curds (probably from Town Talk, but I didn't ask). Of course, that's not happening again soon, but for now, all the anarchist houses are awash in fregan cheese curds. But not in Wisconsin.
Heraclitus reminds us that you cannot enter the same dumpster twice.
Heraclitus reminds us that you cannot entershould hang the same dumpsterbankster twice.
452:
Didn't TTD close mid January? Oh, right, it's winter, so I suppose the cheese curds will still be good.
On the other hand, my PILs are firmly convinced that cheese curds should be consumed as quickly as possible — ideally on the day of their creation. That way, you get the least possible flavor and, more importantly, the greatest latex-like squeaking of proto-cheese against your teeth.
455.2 yep, that's the "right way."
Damn it, that were me.
456: Yeah, culture is a funny thing.
Cheese curls should always be consumed as quickly as possibly because they fucking rock.
but for now, all the anarchist houses are awash in fregan cheese curds. But not in Wisconsin.
Just as well. They'd only wear them on their heads, anyway.
You mean the back button stops working even if you go to a new site, or only stops working for moving through previous Unfogged pages in the same tab? If the latter, why would you want to hit "back" after posting a comment anyway? -- you'd see a less-recently-refreshed page, after all; and if you're viewing the thread in the default popup window, there's nothing previous to that to go to.
If the latter, why would you want to hit "back" after posting a comment anyway?
I admit I wondered this as well.
Does anyone else have the problem when viewing Unfogged in Safari on an iPhone that the back button reverts it to a much earlier front page?
400: you see, and this is why I love the man. plus he knows irish people who aren't taxi drivers! it's win-win.
458:
I am simultaneously a slob and a wanton glutton in this regard. I will pretty much only eat Barbara's Jalepeno Cheese Puffs (I mean I'll eat other cheese puff/curl/crunch products, but only in that disinterested I-have-not-yet-the-energy-to-move-myself-or-this-thing-that-I-am-eating way), but I will eat with gusto and abandon until they are gone or until cooler heads can remove them from my reach.
Curse you gourmetish junk food!!!!
all the anarchist houses are awash in fregan cheese curds
The lead single from the forthcoming Sufjan Stevens Easter album.
"You've been talking to that venomous fishknife Addison DeWitt!"
[This not-quite-a-joke is intended for k-sky, who seems to know the same movie lines I do, though anyone's welcome to it.]
Looking for the new(ish?) Barbara Ehrenreich at Joseph Beth, it suddenly occured to me the linked quiz reminded me of Nickled and Dimed, which I suppose is an obvious comparison. Some poor person should have gotten a grant and written the opposite book.
UK combines transit with national health service to get you home safely.