Uneasy street The anxieties of affluence

Rachel Sherman, 1970-

Book - 2017

"[The author] draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers--including hedge fund financiers and corporate lawyers, professors and artists, and stay-at-home mothers--to examine their lifestyle choices and their understanding of privilege. [The author] upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing and displaying social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society. They wish to be 'normal, ' describing their consumption as reasonable and basic and comparing themselves to those who have more than they do rather than those with less. These ...New Yorkers also want to see themselves as hard workers who give back and raise children with good values, and they avoid talking about money. Although their experiences differ depending on a range of factors, including whether their wealth was earned or inherited, these elites generally depict themselves as productive and prudent, and therefore morally worthy, while the undeserving rich are lazy, ostentatious, and snobbish. [The author] argues that this ethical distinction between 'good' and 'bad' wealthy people characterizes American culture more broadly, and that it perpetuates rather than challenges economic inequality. As the distance between rich and poor widens, [this book] not only explores the real lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us."-- more