Aquarius213
@Aquarius213
8 Years
Comments: 0 ¡ Posts: 76 ¡ Topics: 11
NEW YORK CITY
Tokyo is same.
Old feel is gone.
Old feel is gone.
the new hipster thing:
http://nypost.com/2017/08/20/why-rich-new-yorkers-are-hiding-their-wealth-and-privilege/
The struggles of the impoverished are well documented. But how about the unique pain and struggle associated with being wealthy in New York City?
In her research for âUneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluenceâ (Princeton University Press, out Sept. 5), Rachel Sherman interviewed 50 New York-area parents of young children, whose household incomes ranged from $ 250,000 to $ 10 million and with assets totaling up to $ 50 million. These locals live pampered lives â with multiple high-end properties, teams of household employees and frequent, lavish vacations â but still, they do impressive mental gymnastics to avoid identifying themselves as truly rich.
For instance: Helen, a stay-at-home mom with an annual family income of $ 2 million, describes herself as âin the middle, in the sense that there are so many people with so much money. They have private planes. They have drivers. They have all these things.â This kind of creative (and self-serving) logic is prevalent among Shermanâs subjects as a way to reconcile their outrageous spending habits with the need to see themselves as normal and down-to-earth.
Sherman calls this a question of âhow to be both wealthy and morally worthy,â and explains that itâs an issue that the vast majority of her subjects â all of whom are in the cityâs top 5 percent of earners â grapple with. Over and over, her subjects make an effort to distinguish themselves from the stereotypes of the American rich as âstatus-seeking and lazy but also morally deficient .â.â. snobby, greedy, rude, braggy and self-absorbed,â in Shermanâs words.
To that end, many of these well-heeled New Yorkers are careful to avoid superficial markers of their economic status. Olivia, a 39-year-old mother of three living in a $ 4.5-million Upper West Side apartment, petitioned her local post office to remove the letters âPHâ from her official mailing address, because she found the abbreviation for penthouse âelite and snobby.â After renovating a Brooklyn brownstone in a good public-school zone, Gary â a father with over $ 10 million in assets â rejected his contractorâs suggestion to install a top-of-the-line porcelain stove, explaining the sacrifice as âvery much about not ending up with a kitchen that looked like the luxury kitchen.â
And when they canât effectively distance themselves from their wealth, the reluctant rich are eager to find ways to defend it. Most often, this means underscoring the hard work theyâve put in to earn it; even, paradoxically, in cases where the bulk of their assets are inherited.
âWork is how they make themselves worthy of their privilege,â Sherman writes. Yet the definitions of âworkâ range from the conventional â a banker or a corporate lawyer who puts in long hours for a seven-figure salary â to the outlandish.
Nicole, who used some of her multimillion-dollar inheritance to buy an upscale Manhattan apartment, argues that sheâs entitled to her home because she helped decorate it: âI did paint all the walls. I mean, now theyâve been repainted by professionals . . . I didnât do the best job in the world. But I worked â you know, I put a lot of elbow grease into this. This was not, like, handed to me on a platter. I feel like we worked for it. Through, like, physical labor.â
Woe is paint-splattered Nicole.
Among Shermanâs subjects, evidence of any kind of work is held up as a badge of honor, as a way for subjects to distinguish themselves from the looming boogeymen of their demographic: the undeserving, idle rich. Betsy, who admits she grew up with money, nevertheless draws a sharp line between her family and other clans whose children attend the private school where she sends her kids. âI kind of have an inside joke with some of the moms that I know, that weâre, like, the âworking class.â You know? Because we actually really work. Not that these people havenât worked . . . [but] we canât stop working and continue to lead a life style that weâre living.â It should be noted that Betsy is a stay-at-home-mom whose husband earns $ 1 million a year.
The life style s that Betsy and the bookâs other wealthy subjects describe are undeniably outrageous, with tuitions, salaries, mortgages and other bills that add up to tens of thousands of dollars a month. But as Sherman points out, her subjects are quick to blame the city, rather than themselves, for their expenditure, attributing it to high cost of living in New York.
These men and women often point out the many different ways they perceive themselves as frugal, whether itâs because they do their own hair and nails, or shop at discount stores like Target and Costco. But when it comes to their most expensive choices â like taking on costly renovations, buying multiple properties or sending their children to elite private schools â most participants find ways to rationalize them. Alice, a stay-at-home mom with $ 8 million in real estate, claims that compared to the holdings of the indulgent super-rich, her familyâs assets are actually modest: âWhen I think about our homes â I mean, when you add it all up, itâs a lot of value and real estate. But the people who go out and buy, like, $ 20 million homes in the Hamptons or whatever. I just have a hard time with that. Or the humongous houses. I donât know that that would ever be something that I could see as part of our life style .â
As Sherman acknowledges, some of the respondents have a better sense of perspective. Beatrice, a nonprofit executive with a $ 3 million inheritance, admits that sheâs fallen prey to something she calls âluxury creep,â where her sense of whatâs normal to spend has slowly changed over time. âItâs a very insidious thing, you know, because itâs much less conscious than, like, âkeeping up with the Jonesesâ kind of conspicuous consumption.â For Beatrice, itâs about developing a habit of spending more money, even though she doesnât necessarily think of herself as the kind of person who regularly buys $ 6 loaves of bread and $ 25 bottles of wine. (She is.)
Like Beatrice, many of the subjects admit that their actions donât always match up with their ideals, particularly when it comes to their political views.
Kevin, who estimates that his assets place him among the top 1 to 3 percent of New Yorkers, nonetheless identifies with the Occupy Wall Street movement: âIâm Occupy. Thatâs me. Thatâs the weird paradox.â
In fact, many of the participants give back, in the form of sizeable donations to charity or to other institutions, like their childrenâs schools. But very few are willing to significantly alter their life style s in order to do so, and even the most left-leaning men and women cite their high tax burden as an explanation for why they donât give away more. In an extreme example, Gary says that holding onto his fortune is a sign of his personal growth: âIâve learned about humility in the last 10 years. And part of my humility is to think that I could give away all my money, and it wouldnât make a dent in the world.â
For these privileged city dwellers, the possibility of giving their children the best possible lives is often the only incentive they need to stop wringing their hands and start making peace with their wealth. Eliana, who inherited a nest egg of about $ 9 million, admits that although she believes in the public school system, she ultimately decided to send her daughter to private school because she wasnât being challenged enough where she was. The decision wasnât easy, Eliana says, in part because it made her confront certain uncomfortable truths about herself: âIâm going to be in self-hatred all the time,â she explains, âbecause Iâm going to go pick her up at school. Iâm going to line up with the other white mothers on the street, and Iâm going to hate that I am indistinguishable from them. Itâs, like, an affront to my pretensions of uniqueness.â But for Eliana, like many of the parents Sherman interviewed, her ability to provide the ideal experience for her child trumps her misgivings about leading an a life of excess.
Nearly all of Shermanâs subjects expressed real concerns about raising kids with a level of privilege that might eventually be taken for granted, yet they were unwilling to drastically change their life style s in order to make sure it wouldnât happen. Rather, these parents compensate by making an effort to teach good manners and working to instill a level of gratitude and perspective in their kids by exposing them to people who have less. As Sherman puts it, âUltimately, the parents are not challenging their childrenâs advantage but, instead, teaching them how to occupy their advantaged position appropriatelyâ â which means doing all they can do to insure the next generation wonât grow up to embody the ugly, negative stereotypes.
Robert, a participant who sells real estate, admits that for this reason, some couples prefer to be gentrifiers, even when they can easily afford the more expensive neighborhoods. âMy niche would rather buy [a home] in a bad neighborhood, because they want to show their kids a good example,â he says. âAnd they want their kids to have everyday good examples of people and peopleâs life style s and [to know] that not everybody has as much as we do. But their kids will go to private schools.â
And so the next generation of the reluctant rich is born, uncomfortable with their wealth but assured that a good sense of perspective will help balance out the reality of their exorbitant life style s. As Olivia points out, itâs not always easy to be affluent: âI would say itâs harder to grow up with money, in a way . . . [itâs] a badge of honor in America culture, to start from the bottom and climb your way up . . . Nobodyâs going to, like, pat you on the head and say âGood job,â when youâre like, âI grew up as a child of inherited wealth.âââ
http://nypost.com/2017/08/20/why-rich-new-yorkers-are-hiding-their-wealth-and-privilege/
The struggles of the impoverished are well documented. But how about the unique pain and struggle associated with being wealthy in New York City?
In her research for âUneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluenceâ (Princeton University Press, out Sept. 5), Rachel Sherman interviewed 50 New York-area parents of young children, whose household incomes ranged from $ 250,000 to $ 10 million and with assets totaling up to $ 50 million. These locals live pampered lives â with multiple high-end properties, teams of household employees and frequent, lavish vacations â but still, they do impressive mental gymnastics to avoid identifying themselves as truly rich.
For instance: Helen, a stay-at-home mom with an annual family income of $ 2 million, describes herself as âin the middle, in the sense that there are so many people with so much money. They have private planes. They have drivers. They have all these things.â This kind of creative (and self-serving) logic is prevalent among Shermanâs subjects as a way to reconcile their outrageous spending habits with the need to see themselves as normal and down-to-earth.
Sherman calls this a question of âhow to be both wealthy and morally worthy,â and explains that itâs an issue that the vast majority of her subjects â all of whom are in the cityâs top 5 percent of earners â grapple with. Over and over, her subjects make an effort to distinguish themselves from the stereotypes of the American rich as âstatus-seeking and lazy but also morally deficient .â.â. snobby, greedy, rude, braggy and self-absorbed,â in Shermanâs words.
To that end, many of these well-heeled New Yorkers are careful to avoid superficial markers of their economic status. Olivia, a 39-year-old mother of three living in a $ 4.5-million Upper West Side apartment, petitioned her local post office to remove the letters âPHâ from her official mailing address, because she found the abbreviation for penthouse âelite and snobby.â After renovating a Brooklyn brownstone in a good public-school zone, Gary â a father with over $ 10 million in assets â rejected his contractorâs suggestion to install a top-of-the-line porcelain stove, explaining the sacrifice as âvery much about not ending up with a kitchen that looked like the luxury kitchen.â
And when they canât effectively distance themselves from their wealth, the reluctant rich are eager to find ways to defend it. Most often, this means underscoring the hard work theyâve put in to earn it; even, paradoxically, in cases where the bulk of their assets are inherited.
âWork is how they make themselves worthy of their privilege,â Sherman writes. Yet the definitions of âworkâ range from the conventional â a banker or a corporate lawyer who puts in long hours for a seven-figure salary â to the outlandish.
Nicole, who used some of her multimillion-dollar inheritance to buy an upscale Manhattan apartment, argues that sheâs entitled to her home because she helped decorate it: âI did paint all the walls. I mean, now theyâve been repainted by professionals . . . I didnât do the best job in the world. But I worked â you know, I put a lot of elbow grease into this. This was not, like, handed to me on a platter. I feel like we worked for it. Through, like, physical labor.â
Woe is paint-splattered Nicole.
Among Shermanâs subjects, evidence of any kind of work is held up as a badge of honor, as a way for subjects to distinguish themselves from the looming boogeymen of their demographic: the undeserving, idle rich. Betsy, who admits she grew up with money, nevertheless draws a sharp line between her family and other clans whose children attend the private school where she sends her kids. âI kind of have an inside joke with some of the moms that I know, that weâre, like, the âworking class.â You know? Because we actually really work. Not that these people havenât worked . . . [but] we canât stop working and continue to lead a life style that weâre living.â It should be noted that Betsy is a stay-at-home-mom whose husband earns $ 1 million a year.
The life style s that Betsy and the bookâs other wealthy subjects describe are undeniably outrageous, with tuitions, salaries, mortgages and other bills that add up to tens of thousands of dollars a month. But as Sherman points out, her subjects are quick to blame the city, rather than themselves, for their expenditure, attributing it to high cost of living in New York.
These men and women often point out the many different ways they perceive themselves as frugal, whether itâs because they do their own hair and nails, or shop at discount stores like Target and Costco. But when it comes to their most expensive choices â like taking on costly renovations, buying multiple properties or sending their children to elite private schools â most participants find ways to rationalize them. Alice, a stay-at-home mom with $ 8 million in real estate, claims that compared to the holdings of the indulgent super-rich, her familyâs assets are actually modest: âWhen I think about our homes â I mean, when you add it all up, itâs a lot of value and real estate. But the people who go out and buy, like, $ 20 million homes in the Hamptons or whatever. I just have a hard time with that. Or the humongous houses. I donât know that that would ever be something that I could see as part of our life style .â
As Sherman acknowledges, some of the respondents have a better sense of perspective. Beatrice, a nonprofit executive with a $ 3 million inheritance, admits that sheâs fallen prey to something she calls âluxury creep,â where her sense of whatâs normal to spend has slowly changed over time. âItâs a very insidious thing, you know, because itâs much less conscious than, like, âkeeping up with the Jonesesâ kind of conspicuous consumption.â For Beatrice, itâs about developing a habit of spending more money, even though she doesnât necessarily think of herself as the kind of person who regularly buys $ 6 loaves of bread and $ 25 bottles of wine. (She is.)
Like Beatrice, many of the subjects admit that their actions donât always match up with their ideals, particularly when it comes to their political views.
Kevin, who estimates that his assets place him among the top 1 to 3 percent of New Yorkers, nonetheless identifies with the Occupy Wall Street movement: âIâm Occupy. Thatâs me. Thatâs the weird paradox.â
In fact, many of the participants give back, in the form of sizeable donations to charity or to other institutions, like their childrenâs schools. But very few are willing to significantly alter their life style s in order to do so, and even the most left-leaning men and women cite their high tax burden as an explanation for why they donât give away more. In an extreme example, Gary says that holding onto his fortune is a sign of his personal growth: âIâve learned about humility in the last 10 years. And part of my humility is to think that I could give away all my money, and it wouldnât make a dent in the world.â
For these privileged city dwellers, the possibility of giving their children the best possible lives is often the only incentive they need to stop wringing their hands and start making peace with their wealth. Eliana, who inherited a nest egg of about $ 9 million, admits that although she believes in the public school system, she ultimately decided to send her daughter to private school because she wasnât being challenged enough where she was. The decision wasnât easy, Eliana says, in part because it made her confront certain uncomfortable truths about herself: âIâm going to be in self-hatred all the time,â she explains, âbecause Iâm going to go pick her up at school. Iâm going to line up with the other white mothers on the street, and Iâm going to hate that I am indistinguishable from them. Itâs, like, an affront to my pretensions of uniqueness.â But for Eliana, like many of the parents Sherman interviewed, her ability to provide the ideal experience for her child trumps her misgivings about leading an a life of excess.
Nearly all of Shermanâs subjects expressed real concerns about raising kids with a level of privilege that might eventually be taken for granted, yet they were unwilling to drastically change their life style s in order to make sure it wouldnât happen. Rather, these parents compensate by making an effort to teach good manners and working to instill a level of gratitude and perspective in their kids by exposing them to people who have less. As Sherman puts it, âUltimately, the parents are not challenging their childrenâs advantage but, instead, teaching them how to occupy their advantaged position appropriatelyâ â which means doing all they can do to insure the next generation wonât grow up to embody the ugly, negative stereotypes.
Robert, a participant who sells real estate, admits that for this reason, some couples prefer to be gentrifiers, even when they can easily afford the more expensive neighborhoods. âMy niche would rather buy [a home] in a bad neighborhood, because they want to show their kids a good example,â he says. âAnd they want their kids to have everyday good examples of people and peopleâs life style s and [to know] that not everybody has as much as we do. But their kids will go to private schools.â
And so the next generation of the reluctant rich is born, uncomfortable with their wealth but assured that a good sense of perspective will help balance out the reality of their exorbitant life style s. As Olivia points out, itâs not always easy to be affluent: âI would say itâs harder to grow up with money, in a way . . . [itâs] a badge of honor in America culture, to start from the bottom and climb your way up . . . Nobodyâs going to, like, pat you on the head and say âGood job,â when youâre like, âI grew up as a child of inherited wealth.âââ
Maybe I'm just getting old. I used to go to the city a few times a month. Everything was exciting. Now, I find it crowded, smelly and overpriced.
Awwwww my life is so hard because im rich. Shut up
I visited NYC once a few years ago, and really didn't care for it at all. Not as bad as Vegas, but I still left the city feeling very unimpressed.
No offense to the die-hard NYers, but that was just my take away.
No offense to the die-hard NYers, but that was just my take away.
NYC IMHO in a nutshell:
If you have (lots) of money: It's awesome, the greatest place on Earth.
If you make an income less than high six figures: Its a pit.
If you have (lots) of money: It's awesome, the greatest place on Earth.
If you make an income less than high six figures: Its a pit.
Move to Philadelphia
It's like NYC but smaller and less people
Probably like NYC in the 90s
But I know this won't last either
It's like NYC but smaller and less people
Probably like NYC in the 90s
But I know this won't last either
Posted by Aquarius213
AM I THE ONLY WHO THINKS NYC IS SOOOOO BORING THESE DAYS.
THE CITY DOESNT FEEL THE SAME ANYMORE EVERYTHING IS WATERED DOWN AND OVERPRICED. THAT NOSTALGIC NYC VIBE IS GONE. NOW ITS JUST RICH HIPSTERS WALKING AROUND. MY CITY JUST ISNT THE SAME ANYMORE
I want my borough back!
Give my best to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and that chinless ginger chick
Posted by bumboklattExactly, its as if they're slowly trying to change the boroughs to feel like those small boring towns no one cares about.
Hipsters ruined everything
Cities are now overrated
Theyre always complaining about the noise and stupid things like that. If u dont like noise maybe you shouldn't have moved to NYC!
These days the city is over rated and over priced!
Thats why a lot of people who are now visiting nyc for the first time are underwhelmed.
Now a days when i hear of people visting new york they always come back saying it wasnt what they expected or they thought it would be a little bit more exciting
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THE CITY DOESNT FEEL THE SAME ANYMORE EVERYTHING IS WATERED DOWN AND OVERPRICED. THAT NOSTALGIC NYC VIBE IS GONE. NOW ITS JUST RICH HIPSTERS WALKING AROUND. MY CITY JUST ISNT THE SAME ANYMORE