SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Conspicuous consumption persists today. But just as the patricians of classical times changed their habits once the masses gained the ability to copy them, so too have modern American elites recoiled from accumulating mere goods now that globalisation has made them affordable to the middle class. Instead, argues Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, a professor at the University of Southern California, in "The Sum of Small Things", they have begun consuming the fruits of "conspicuous production": socially worthy things like fair-trade coffee. They also emphasise "inconspicuous consumption", of services like education. Far from making the world more egalitarian, this shift, in particular, threatens to entrench modern elites' privileged position more effectively than the habits of their predecessors ever did.
[...] Rather than filling garages with flashy cars, the data show, today's rich devote their budgets to less visible but more valuable ends. Chief among them is education for their children: the top 10% now allocate almost four times as much of their spending to school and university as they did in 1996, whereas for other groups the figure has hardly budged. They also invest heavily in domestic services such as housekeepers, freeing up time that the less fortunate must spend on chores.
Rather than frittering away that precious leisure time on frivolities, as Veblen's leisure class did, they devote it to enriching experiences, like attending the opera, holidaying in far-off lands and working out at fancy gyms. Their children, by tagging along and thus absorbing this "cultural capital", develop the sophistication needed to win admission to selective universities, vastly increasing the odds that they will form the next generation's elite.
The rich also throw lavish birthday parties for their dogs.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 08 2017, @06:03AM (5 children)
If it comes to choice, I think choosing your birth country would come easier.
I'd suggest Europe; going to opera or music concert, visiting a museum or art gallery and enrolling you kids in higher education is something that middle class can afford (both monetary and time wise) and actually do.
If you are in a hurry now, avoid the Brits on short term. God bless their soul (they need it, direly so even), they won't be Europeans for long (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:07AM (3 children)
Britain will remain European until they move their country away and wipe out their Caucasian population. What they will not be is subservient to the suicidal policies of the European Union. Bringing in 3rd world with dysfunctional culture and genes is bad on all levels. They will be gone, the uncertainty is just how and when.
The people that confuse Europe with EU are usually the ones that are either working for the lobbyist ministry of propaganda or that have been fooled by them.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday August 08 2017, @08:32AM (1 child)
Wanna bet Brits will be like US in 10-12 years after Brexiting?
No jobs, even more insular and isolationist than it is, spying on Americans (and on its own citizens and the citizens of the other 3 eyes) for Americans.
Perhaps with the minor difference of less free speech rights (no constitutional guarantees and the most draconian restrictions to it), not that it would matter much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:11AM
Wanna bet certain countries in Europe will be like Somalia in 10-12 years after Brexit?
You try to take a dig at USA, but I seen things man, and US is GLORIOUS country by EVERY measure. All your little communist wannabe utopias will perish soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @11:34AM
Indeed, it weren't the brits that were importing third world trash into the UK before the european union even existed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08 2017, @11:55PM
Why would you WANT to go to the opera?