Half Sigma

Upper-class food vs. lower-class food

A NY Times article headline reads “Warnings Don’t Deter Lovers of Sushi”. (This is in response to yesterday’s number-one-most-emailed NY Times article about how tuna sushi contains unsafe levels of mercury.)

When low-class food, such as McDonalds, is alleged to be unhealthy, the upper class condemn it, and celebrate movies (such as Super Size Me) that demonize it. But when upper-class food is found to be unhealthy, the same people ignore the warnings. The anti-McDonald’s crusade is mostly about rich people feeling smug about their superior upper-class tastes in food.

Class in China

From yesterday's NY Times we learn that the newly rich Chinese are working to ensure that their children remain part of the new Chinese upper class elite by giving them golf lessons and English language lesssons.

I don't know how valuable of a skill golf is in China, but surely being able to speak English with a Western accent will become a distinguishing mark of the Chinese upper class. As you know, once you reach a certain age it is nearly impossible to learn to speak a foreign language without an accent. If you're not taught when you're young you can never catch up.

Visit to a lower class neighborhood

Today I visited a lower class neighborhood. South Washington Heights to be more specific (the 160s and 170s). Here are my observations:

(1) Children everywhere. Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. There are almost as many kids around as there are adults. In Hell’s Kitchen, you can look up and down Ninth Avenue and not see a single kid at all. Lower class people sure know how to reproduce.

(2) People sitting around doing nothing. The streets are busy in Hell’s Kitchen, but everyone is walking somewhere or doing something. In the lower class neighborhood, you see people sitting around on their stoops doing nothing.

(3) Signs in Spanish. Maybe there were even more signs in Spanish than there were in English?

(4) People have darker skin. There’s no place in New York City where everyone is white, but where I live whites are the majority. In Washington Heights, I was the minority.

(5) No doormen. There were some residential buildings big enough to have doormen, but the familiar doormen were not present. However I suspect that many doormen live in this neighborhood when they’re not working. How do people buy stuff from Amazon.com if there’s no doorman to receive their package?

Is rosé the new Chardonnay?

According to the NY Times, rosé is the new trendy wine, but only if it's Domaine Ott which sells for $30/bottle.

This is an example of what Paul Fussell, the author of Class, would call "prole drift." Yes some people think Class is out of date because it was written in the eighties, but the principles of class it lays out are timeless. Once such principle is that sweet drinks are low class.

The people drinking overpriced rosé are probabably the same people who think they are fashionable because they wear overpriced prole clothing from Juicy Couture.

Are people good or bad? Depends on class

Perusing the General Social Survey data, I discovered the following powerful correlation between how much one trusts other people and one’s verbal IQ (as measured by the Wordsum vocabulary test):

TRUST 163. A. Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can't be too careful in life.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Row percent -N of cases		TRUST
		1 CAN TRUST	2 CANNOT TRUST	3 DEPENDS	ROW TOTAL
WORDSUM	0	19.6 15	75.3 59	5.1 4	100.0 78
	1	13.3 23	80.6 140	6.1 11	100.0 174
	2	19.2 57	77.6 229	3.2 9	100.0 295
	3	20.1 118	76.9 450	3.0 18	100.0 585
	4	25.0 260	71.5 744	3.4 35	100.0 1,040
	5	32.7 541	64.2 1,064	3.1 52	100.0 1,657
	6	37.6 849	59.0 1,333	3.5 79	100.0 2,261
	7	44.1 714	52.1 843	3.9 63	100.0 1,620
	8	50.6 541	43.5 465	5.9 63	100.0 1,069
	9	60.0 496	33.9 280	6.1 51	100.0 827
	10	64.9 412	26.3 167	8.8 56	100.0 634
	COL TOTAL	39.3 4,026	56.4 5,775	4.3 440	100.0 10,241

I have to say I was completely shocked to discover such a powerful link between two seemingly unrelated variables.

There are two other questions similar to the TRUST question and they both have the same very powerful correlation with verbal IQ:

HELPFUL 161. Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?

FAIR 162. Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?

All three of these questions seem to be measuring the same thing, whether one has a positive or negative view of other people’s motives. In fact, it’s probably a waste that the GSS has all three of these questions, just the TRUST question would have sufficed.

In order to more accurately measure respondents’ view other people’s motives, I created a composite variable using TRUST, HELPFUL and FAIR, and then did a multiple regression analysis.

Below are the correlates of one’s view of other people’s motives, in descending order of statistical significance:

(1) Black (t=-16.4): black people have a negative view of others compared to white people.
(2) Age (t=13.3): as people get older they have a more positive view of others.
(3) Verbal IQ (t=12.9): smarter people have a more positive view of others (as you can observe from the chart above).
(4) Educational attainment (t=8.5): as educational attainment increases, so does one’s positive view of others.
(5) Family income (t=7.1): higher income predicts a more positive view of others.
(6) Italian (t=-3.5) Italian Americans have a more negative view of others.
(7) Female (t=2.9): women have a more positive view of others.
(8) Jewish (t=-1.4): Jews have a more negative view of others.

I am open to suggestions regarding these unusually strong correlations, but here is my best guess for this phenomenon. A person’s view of other people’s motives is based nearly entirely on environment. If the people you know are bad people, you will have a negative view of others. If the people you know are civil and well mannered, then you will have a positive view of others.

As a person’s class increases (based on verbal IQ, income, and educational attainment), he tends to hang with a better class of people, so he develops a more positive view of others. Despite my blog posts in which I feel sympathy for poor people, I have to acknowledge the fact that as people drop in class, their level of civility severely decreases. If you live in a housing project where people are being shot at, mugged, and the building is constantly vandalized and spray painted with graffiti, you’re going to develop a pretty negative view of people.

One of the primary reasons that people work so hard in the rat race to raise their income a bit is so they don’t have to live with the poor people who are pretty despicable neighbors.

The effect of the other variables is similarly based on the fact that you tend to associate with people like yourself, and your view of others is based on the people you know.

As people age they tend to get nicer. Most of the people in prison are young. Because older people have older acquaintances they develop a more positive view of others.

A disproportionate share of black people tend to be not very nice. This is why the prisons are full of black people. Because blacks tend to know other black people, they develop an extremely negative view of others compared to whites of the same level of IQ, income, and education.

Women tend to have more friends who are women, so they develop a more positive view of others. The prisons are full of mostly men.

Jews are more likely to have a negative view of others. It’s important to note that this relation only comes up in a multiple regression analysis. If you crosstabulate the TRUST question with respondent’s religion, Jews actually come out as the most trusting religion. But they ought to come out even higher based on their increased propensity to earn more money, be smarter, and have higher educational attainment.

I explain the negative relationship based on my previous observation that stereotypes of Jews being sneaky are actually true. Because Jews tend to know other Jews, they develop a more negative view of others’ motives.

A more politically correct explanation would be that Jews are more paranoid because they are a minority.

Italians also have a high level of dishonesty compared to other nationalities, so this explains why they also have a more negative view of others’ motives. But once again, people could explain this on account of Italians being a discriminated against minority.

Class

Some people asked what the classes are in America.

The bible of class is the book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell. If there is one non-fiction book that you must read, this is it. Not only is it eye opening, it’s also hilarious. Especially the drawings.

However, the classes as Fussell describes them are slightly different from what people normally think of, so below is my attempt to synthesize this information:

Paul Fussell name	Normal name	Percent of pop.	Typical job
Top out-of-sight	Upper	0.5%	Philanthropist
Upper
Upper middle	Upper middle	7.5%	BIGLAW
Middle
	Middle	33%	School teacher
High prole
	Working class	50%	Aviation mechanic
Mid-prole			Truck driver
Low prole			Walmart
Destitute	Underclass	8%	Welfare mom
Bottom out-of-sight	Incarcerated	1%	Convict

The school teacher probably makes less money than the aviation mechanic, but class is more than just about money. The teacher has a college degree.

The bottom half of the class structure is pretty meritocratic. If you live by the rules and do everything you’re supposed to, you too can earn a college degree and become a school teacher.

On the other hand there’s no easy way to join the upper middle class. A few gifted middle class students do so well academically that they can graduate from the elite undergraduate and graduate schools and get a job at BIGLAW or in investment banking, but that’s not how most of the upper middle class get there.

Upper class status is a complete crapshoot. You are either born to it, or rise to it by being the lucky and undeserving victor in a winner-takes-all contest—even then you probably won’t be accepted by those born to it, but at least your children will be upper class.

Here is a very brief synopsis of Paul Fussell’s book:

• Middle class people have books in their home and proles don’t.
• Legible clothing is low class. As clothing increases in class, the words become smaller, then are replaced by symbols (like the polo pony), and finally at the top end there are no symbols at all, as with J. McLaughlin. You mean you never heard of J. McLaughlin? This demonstrates how there’s a whole level of clothing above Polo by Ralph Lauren that middle class with pretensions of being upper middle class have never even heard of.
• Upper classes like old stuff.
• Anything that’s British has higher class than something that’s not. That’s why the streets in pretentious housing developments have British-sounding names.
• Proles like to collect stuff stupid stuff, such as limited edition plates.
• The middle class think they’ve accomplished something by just going to college, the upper middle class know that if it’s not Ivy it’s not good. (And if you’re upper class, it’s also important to “prep” at the right place.)
• The upper class “summer” in place like Nantuckett and the Hamptons. The upper middle class are too busy working to do that. The real top upper class summer in places like Dark Harbor. You mean you never heard of Dark Harbor? There’s a whole level of summering spots that the upper middle class with pretensions of being upper class never even heard of. And that’s what Fussell means by “out-of-sight.” Regular people might stumble upon the upper class in the Hamptons, but you won’t see the top out-of-sight summering.
• Bowling is very low class. “If the upper class have yachts, what do proles have? Bowling. If you want to maintain upper status, it’s important that you never, never go bowling.”

Career and class

The comments by superdestroyer, Jody, and The Superflous Man to my post about unpaid internships make some valuable points about career choices and class.

It's probably obvious to most people that if a college professor and a UPS truck driver earn the same salary (and there are many college professors who earn less than the unionized UPS drivers), the college professor still has more class.

But the class distinctions between other jobs aren't quite as obvious and therefore are easily overlooked, or intentionally ignored by people who pretend there's no such thing as class.

Jobs in engineering and computer programming are lower class white collar jobs compared to journalism or museum curating, even though the former jobs pay better. It's easier to earn a six figure salary as a computer programmer than it is as a lawyer, but the lawyer has a higher class job.

When a low class job has salaries that are "too high," people consider this a "shortage" that needs correcting by allowing more immigration. This is why the computer programming field is full of immigrants. And I wrote about the nursing shortage a few days ago. Nursing is definitely seen as a low prestige job despite that fact that four year college degrees are offered in nursing.

On the other hand, there is no call to import more lawyers in order to lower the cost of legal services. To the ruling upper classes, it seems natural and right that high class workers make a lot of money, but if someone in a low class job makes a lot of money then this is a "problem" that needs to be solved by importing more workers from overseas.

What are some of the characteristics that distinguish upper class white collar jobs from lower class white collar jobs besides the social class background of the workers?

The upper classes seem to favor winner-takes-all professions. In computer programming, engineering, or nursing, it's easy to find a job and work your way into a good salary, even a six figure salary, but then your career reaches a plateau. In upper class professions the salary distribution is much more pyramidal. A few lucky lawyers who become partners at big law firms earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, but a large number of lawyers at the bottom are worse off than typical computer programmers.

Upper class professions are more verbal, while lower class professions are more numerical.

Career paths in which the entry level position requires commision based sales are lower class. In higher class careers, one starts out with a salaried position and then gets promoted into sales. For example, the partners at law firms do the sales while the associates do the real work, and the same is true in investment banking except that the salespeople are called "directors" instead of "partners."

Certain types of federal government jobs are upper class but others are lower class. This seems related to the location of the office. If the office is in DC it's more likely to be an upper class job, but if it's located in Virginia then it's probably a lower class job. If it's in Virginia outside the Beltway then all the people working in the office have big beer bellies and drive to work in pickup trucks.

Unpaid internships are more common for upper class career paths, as pointed out by superdestoyer. I think there are two reasons why this is the case: (1) students from middle class backgrounds are less able to afford unpaid internships; and (2) the higher class career paths are more likely to be winner-takes-all, and therefore it is crucially important to get on the right track in order to avoid being left behind. On the other hand there is an opening for every single qualified nurse so there's no need for nursing students to further enhance their resume.

Unpaid internships, another class divide

Anya Kamenetz, the author of the book Generation Debt, has an op ed piece in today's New York Times about unpaid internships.

This fits in with a theme of my recent blog posts, that young people are worse off today than they were in the past. In the past, students' summer jobs would pay them money. Today they work at unpaid internships, or sometimes even pay for the privilege of working for free. Ms. Kamenetz is correct that a pool of educated but inexperienced laborers willing to work for free will depress wages for the educated but inexperienced who actually seek to make money.

Given the importance of one's first job, it's a sensible career strategy to take an unpaid internship. Young people need to do whatever it takes to build up their resume so they can get on the correct career track. Ms. Kamenetz is therefore wrong to advise young people not to take unpaid internships. (Although if everyone refused to work for free then everyone would benefit: an example of a prisoner's dilemma.)

The new trend towards unpaid internships creates another class divide because rich parents can afford to pay for their children to work for free in expensive cities like New York while children of middle class parents have to work in a paid job which doesn't advance their career. Furthermore, the middle class values of the middle class, who believe in the virtues of "hard but honest work," tend to torpedo the future career prospects of their children.

Young people receive money from parents

From today's NY Times:

AT 23, Jason McGuinness lives a postcollege life in Manhattan that is very nearly typical. He works as a media research analyst, making about $30,000 a year. Sharing a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building with a roommate on the Upper East Side, his portion of the rent is $1,100 monthly.

$1,100 is about as cheaply as you can live in Manhattan. Jason's walk-up apartment is surely tiny and crappy. Yet still, how can a guy making only $30K per year afford it? Read on:

...like many of his peers — educated, employed, urban-dwelling young adults — he receives monthly assistance from his parents, in the form of a $300 check and the payment of his cellphone bill.

...

"Everybody I know is supporting their children in some way," said Gail Horowitz, Mr. McGuinness's mother, a vice president of the Zlokower Company, a public relations firm in Manhattan. Unlike young adults who "boomerang" back home to live with their parents — the subject of the recent comedy "Failure to Launch" — these young people live independently. But they need help to make ends meet, or put another way, to maintain a middle-class way of life.

And why is this happening?

Dr. Schoeni said his study suggests that extended education, the exploration of career options and delayed marriage are the causes of the long transition to self-sufficiency. Parental support "is not the driver of a delayed transition, it is a response to it," he said.

I believe that extended education does indeed play an important role. I don't buy into the delayed marriage argument. Just as likely the cause and effect works the other way, the inability of young people to support themselves independently discourages them from getting married.

But also, Dr. Schoeni misses a crucial point. As I expalained in previous blog posts, the income earned by young people is declining relative to older people, and this is especially true for young men.

At the same time that income is falling, the cost of housing has risen substantially, and the amount of student loan debt carried by the typical college graduate is at an all time high. This explains why young people need financial support from their parents.

What distinguishes the upper middle class from the lower middle class is that the latter's parents can't afford to give them support so they have to live at home. In this new era, social mobility is declining because living at home means that those young people are denied employment and social opportunities that could raise their social status. The cost of college education rising faster than inflation also leads to a decline in social mobility.

Tooth brushing, class, and weight

Marginal Revolution informs us that children who brush their teeth more than once a day are less likely to be overweight.

At least the guy who write the quoted text was smart enough to realize that there's no direct connection.

I say it's a class issue. People from higher social classes are less likely to be overweight simply because it's seen as low class. And furthermore, people from higher social classes are also more health obsessed in general so are more likely to make sure their children brush.

What time do you arrive to work?

As hinted at in my previous post, it's uncool to work an early work schedule.

At the new company I work at in Manhattan, which is a small but up and coming media company that you have probably heard of, I noticed that at 9:00 AM most of the offices here are still empty. The place was more crowded at 6:15 PM when I left last night. Obviously I've picked up some bad habits working for the government, like getting to work before 9:00. (Not to mention the whole bad work ethic problem.)

Paul Fussell, in his book Class, mentioned that the higher you are in class, the later you eat dinner. Maybe it's because the higher classes are still at work when the lower classes are eating?

Maybe the thing is that higher class people have fun and classy things to do at night, while the boring lower class people are just watching TV so they can go to sleep early in order to get an early start on the next day?

Please utilize all doors

This evening, while boarding the Metro, the conducter announced "Please utilize all doors of the train. Please utilize all doors of the train."

I thought this was pretty funny, because it was right out of Paul Fussell's book on Class. He says the middle class like to use big words because small words just don't seem important enough. So the conductor misuses the word "utilize" where he meant "use."

But a train conductor job is surely high prole at best, not middle class. Is the conductor trying to affect the manners of the class above him? Or has living in Washington, DC, where our government goes out of its way to use big words, acronyms and the passive voice, infused the conductor with the need to mimic governmentese?

J. McLaughlin vs. Juicy Couture

The following quote from yesterday’s NY Times article about class in Nantuckett piqued my interest:

On the sidewalks, class speaks through clothes. "The old money wears Lily Pulitzer, J. McLaughlin and C K Bradley," said one saleswoman, who wanted her name withheld to avoid offending customers. "They wear gold hoops, and if they buy new jewelry it is pearls or they upgrade their diamond rings. The new money wears Juicy Couture, Calypso and big necklaces.

I never heard of any of these brands, and this got me slightly worried. What if I couldn’t tell them apart? What if I was giving off crass nouveau riche signals by wearing Juicy Couture inspired clothes?

The top 0.1 percent

Today’s articles in the NY Times class series are the best written so far. Previously I’ve expressed only disdain for the series, but today is different.

The theme is the “hyper-rich.” The well researched article by David Cay Johnston uses statistics to shine light on the top 0.1 percent, a group seldom talked about. Kerry talked about the top one percent in his campaign, but never said anything about the top 0.1 percent.

The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002.

That a pretty uneven distribution of income. People will criticize the article and say it reads more like an editorial, and it does. It also uses some deceptive statistics that are designed bolster the point of the writer rather than shed any light. I give a big thumbs down to deceptive statistics. They are especially uncalled for considering that the non-deceptive statistics, like the one quoted above, are so illuminating.

With great wealth comes great power. The power to bend supposedly democratic government to one’s will. The interest of the new aristocracy is to hang onto the power they’ve obtained. Their interests are not the interests of regular Americans.

I know some libertarians will say “but they deserve their wealth.” I don’t buy into that argument for reasons that are too long to explain here. Even libertarians have to agree that their children certainly don’t deserve anything based on any accomplishments besides being born. Yet their children inherit a role in the aristocracy and wield great power.

* * *

The article about Nantuckett by Geraldine Fabrikant is also worth reading.

They [the new rich moving to Nantuckett] feel they have earned their money, and they are not shy about spending it. They construct huge mansions, outdo one another in buying high-end status symbols like mega-yachts (100 years ago it was private railroad cars) and not infrequently turn to philanthropy. Their wealth is washing over the upper reaches of society as it did a century ago, bringing cultural and political clout as they take up positions on museum boards and organize presidential campaign fund-raising dinners.

It sure seems to me like the author stole these ideas from two of my recent posts. I recently wrote about income and status seeking and about how people seek status through charity.

One thing that’s silly about the Nantuckett article is that the writer wants us to feel sorry for the middle-class being forced off the island. These people are making million dollar profits on their houses when they sell them and leave. I don’t feel sorry for them, I feel envious of them. If only I could be so unlucky.

The relo class

Today’s NY Times has a very long article about the “relo class.” As usual for articles in the series, it’s extremely wordy, as if trying to make up for its shortness of insight with sheer length.

The article wrongly describes as “upper middle class” the group of employees who get paid high salaries but have to move around the country a lot. Paul Fussell, the author of Class : A Guide Through the American Status System, would more correctly call these people middle class, because although they may make enough money to be upper middle class, being at the mercy of their employers and forced to move at their employers’ whims brings them down in class.

The more that you are bossed around at work and told what to do, the lower your class. The upper class man is his own man, bossed around by no one. But at factories, workers often have to ask permission to go to the bathroom.

Most of the relocated people mentioned in the NY Times article also seem to be in sales. Once again, Paul Fussell would tell us that sales is a lower class way to earn money compared to other professions. Successful salesmen have money, but they don’t have class. The salesman’s lack of class should be evident from the fact that parents send their children off to college so they can become doctors, lawyers, business executives, maybe even scientists, but you never hear of someone going off to college to become a salesman. This is despite the fact that a significant percentage of people in the top 10% of incomes are indeed salesmen.

Class and college in the NY Times

Of all the articles so far in the NY Times Class series, the article on college is the absolute worst. Just about everything here is wrong, or based on some liberal agenda not bound to reality.

The article has the basic supposition that college is Good, and if only everyone went to college then everyone would have nice middle class jobs with good salaries and all our country’s problems would go away.

This is patently false. College only benefits society as a whole to the extent that the economic productivity of the college attendee is increased by an amount greater than the cost of the education. No one has ever proved this to be the case for the vast majority of college students.

As I explained in my previous post, more about student loans and the value of a college education, statistics which show college graduates earn more, on average, than non-college graduates do not in any way demonstrate that college has a net economic benefit either for the graduate personally or for society as a whole.

It should be obvious that in a society where every single person had an additional four years of formal education beyond high school, there would still be a need for factory workers, retail store workers, and all the other lousy jobs that are now done primarily by non-college graduates. So such a society would simply have all these lousy jobs performed by people with four extra years of formal education and no one would be better off because of it.

In our society, most people who are intellectually capable of succeeding at college do in fact attend and graduate from college. For this we must thank the SAT, a test which the article wrongly mentioned in a negative light. (Liberals hate the SAT because liberals worship equality, and the SAT shows that we are not all intellectually equal.) No modern institution has done more for class mobility than the SAT. Thanks to the SAT, a student from an economically deprived background can demonstrate that he is intelligent enough to succeed in college. (I’ve previously expressed concerns that the new SAT is a step backwards in this regard.)

Class and religion in the NY Times

Like the other articles in the series, today’s class article is mostly anecdotal, and the story is about Tim Havens, an evangelical Christian who attended Brown University and did his bit to try to bring Christ to the Ivy Leagues.

Being loudly religious is low class. This isn’t going to change just because evangelical Christians are making more money than they used to.

After reading the article, I’m not sure if I should laugh at the evangelicals’ futile attempts to transform the Ivy Leagues (not a chance in hell of that happening), or be worried about a shadowy secret organization of super wealthy evangelical Christians trying to control society.

Once again, I recommend the novel I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe for its depiction of class differences among students at elite universities.

Marriage and Class in the NY Times

Today’s class article in the NY Times is about marriage. Like the previous articles in the series, it’s long on anecdotes and short on real analysis. We get a very long article about the marriage of upper class Cate Woolner with working class Dan Croteau.

Today’s story is a bad way to demonstrate class differences because, the way I see it, the bigger problem in the marriage described is that the woman has money and the man doesn’t. This would be a big problem for their marriage even if both were born to the same class but the woman earned more money.

At least the article describes liberal guilt:

She was always uncomfortable with her money; when she came into a modest inheritance at 21, she ignored the monthly bank statements for several years, until she learned to channel her unease into philanthropy benefiting social causes.

The article also reveals that she wouldn’t date anyone who was a Republican, and that she worked at an “anti-poverty” agency. What a waste of an Ivy League education. People on the right want to believe that rich people contribute more to society, but it’s obvious that she contributes very little.

I guess this is as close as we’ll get to an article in the NY Times that explains how the core of the liberal movement is rich kids who feel guilty about inheriting money from mom and dad.

Class vs. income vs. wealth

Wealth is how much money you have, income is how much you earn, and class is how much other people think you have based on how you behave.

People often don’t realize class exists because most people only associate with people of their own class. They don’t comprehend that people from other classes behave and think in ways totally alien to them.

If people are aware of class, it’s only of the class directly below them whom they feel superior to. Yes, class has a lot to do with looking down at people, which is why it’s a topic that’s seldom talked about. It’s not politically correct to admit that you look down at people.

People don’t pay as much attention to the class above them. Perhaps because people fear sinking in class so they make sure not to behave like the class below them. Fear is a powerful motivator. Or perhaps it’s because people are unable to admit to themselves that they are inferior to people above them, so they avoid observing how the class above them is different. It’s much more psychologically comfortable to focus on how you are superior to people below you.

With the publication in the NY Times of a series of articles about class, I had hoped that bloggers might be talking about class, but instead both the NY Times series (so far) and the blogosphere are mostly focusing on income and wealth mobility. This is what the blog posts at Washington Monthly, The Stone City, The Fly Bottle, Pandagon, and Meat Eating Leftist mostly focus on.

Now, unlike some people on the right, I think that income mobility and the unfair distribution of wealth is a topic worth talking about. But the topic of class I find even more interesting because it’s so seldom discussed and because it’s so hidden and mysterious.

I suspect that liberals hate genuine discussions of class because they envision that the government can “fix” the uneven distribution of wealth by redistributing it, but the government can’t redistribute class. When a construction worker wins the lottery, he may be rich but he still has no class, and other people in his new wealth bracket aren’t going to want to hang out with him or be his friend.

Class and healthcare in the NY Times

The second article about class is in today’s New York Times, and once again we are treated to lousy reporting.

Using healthcare as the platform, the goal is more to tell us how much it sucks to be poor rather than inform us about anything we don’t already know.

Many risk factors for chronic diseases are now more common among the less educated than the better educated. Smoking has dropped sharply among the better educated, but not among the less.

Someone is confusing “education” with “intelligence” and “wisdom.” It’s not like the Ivy League has courses in not smoking. If people can’t figure out that smoking is bad for them, then they are just plain stupid. Of course there’s a connection between intelligence and class, which is why I recommend The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray.

The story in the article about the Polish immigrant with a low prole job (low prole being a term from Paul Fussell’s book) adequately demonstrates how stupid she is.

But lot of what educated people think they “know” about health isn’t even true. I previously wrote about the study that showed it’s actually healthier to be a little overweight. There is also evidence that what we’ve been told about cholesterol is a big lie too. Visit Dr. Ravnskov’s website.

The article completely gets wrong the issue of hours worked:

People have less time, if they're poor, to devote to health maintenance behaviors when they are juggling two jobs.

It’s the middle class and upper middle class who are working longer hours. People with prole jobs who get paid by the hour still enjoy the forty hour workweek.

Class in the New York Times

Matthew Yglesias writes, “I'm glad someone decided to write about class in America,” and links to a NY Times article about class.

First of all, I’ve been writing about class in my blogs for a long time. It comes up all the time in my posts, such as my reviews of I am Charlotte Simmons (part I and part II), my comments about Jessica Cutler and values, and my recent post about ugly children.

My opinion of the NY Time article is pretty low. It says very little about class. If you really want to understand class, read the book Class: a Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell (which in addition to being educational is also very funny). And if you want to know about social mobility, read The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. If you read these two books, then you’ll understand what’s really going on in American society.

Attractiveness cause and effect error

David Tufte takes at face value the conclusions of a study mentioned at FuturePundit.

Researchers observed children in shopping carts at supermarkets, and rated the children for physical attractiveness on a scale of one to ten.

Findings showed that 1.2 per cent of the least attractive children were buckled in, compared with 13.3 per cent of the most attractive youngsters. The observers also noticed the less attractive children were allowed to wander further away and more often from their parents. In total, there were 426 observations at the 14 supermarkets.

Harrell, who has been researching shopping cart safety since 1990 and has published a total of 13 articles on the topic, figures his latest results are based on a parent's instinctive Darwinian response: we're unconsciously more likely to lavish attention on attractive children simply because they're our best genetic material.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

People from higher social classes have more attractive children. (Higher social classes value attractiveness more, and because of cross-assortative mating they tend to have better genetic material.) People from higher social classes also look more attentively after their children. Thus it is the higher social class that causes both the attentive behavior and the attractiveness. Mr. Harrell has his cause and effect backwards.