Neither Trumpain, nor child-optimizing for meritocracy?

[Anonymous]

yeah, lets focus on people who work hard and have smart kids instead of obnoxious billionaires who, in most cases, merely lucked out and who own as much as bottom 90% (the focus of the article).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:yeah, lets focus on people who work hard and have smart kids instead of obnoxious billionaires who, in most cases, merely lucked out and who own as much as bottom 90% (the focus of the article).

It wasn’t an either or.

[Anonymous]

Optimizing your kid so they can be a tool of hyper consumerism and capitalism is not a good idea. I hope the Great Resignation leads to some real discussions of that. The system is on its last legs IMO, but it could still shuffle on for a few more generations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yeah, lets focus on people who work hard and have smart kids instead of obnoxious billionaires who, in most cases, merely lucked out and who own as much as bottom 90% (the focus of the article).

It wasn’t an either or.

it kinda was. he is focusing exclusively on the 9.9%.

also, he is confusing some over the top behaviors (eg prepping toddlers for Harvard bound preschools) with entirely normal people with high expectations for academic success.

finally the idea that 9.9% go to Harvard is obscene. 9.9% precisely the kind of unhooked kid that can’t get in there, assuming his parents can afford it (which is highly debatable for most of that group).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yeah, lets focus on people who work hard and have smart kids instead of obnoxious billionaires who, in most cases, merely lucked out and who own as much as bottom 90% (the focus of the article).

It wasn’t an either or.

it kinda was. he is focusing exclusively on the 9.9%.

also, he is confusing some over the top behaviors (eg prepping toddlers for Harvard bound preschools) with entirely normal people with high expectations for academic success.

finally the idea that 9.9% go to Harvard is obscene. 9.9% precisely the kind of unhooked kid that can’t get in there, assuming his parents can afford it (which is highly debatable for most of that group).

This. Top 10% HHI in the US is 201k. That's too much for aid, and probably not enough to full pay especially if that income level is recent.

[Anonymous]

Our family. We are neither 9.9, nor we are 0.1 - in the way that this article discusses.

In some ways, we belong to both and neither. We have our own culture and training that enables us to avoid the pitfalls of both and ensure that our advantages are sustained over generations.

We are immigrants with centuries of tradition of being educated in letters, sciences, religious and esoteric matters. We are adept in cracking the privilege code of any foreign culture and reaching into our academic bag of tricks to pull out the one talent/skill that is in demand. Without changing too much of who we are at our core and without shortcharging the next generation.

This also requires doing everything to ensure that the children are raised with their emotional and mental health intact and strong. Very rare to have dysfunctional families in our group, mainly because it is a sure way to mess up the children. This means that every individual within the family has to be realized and content - or know how to reach that state.

In this sense, we are different from others of the same racial, ethnic, national origin as us, but from different groups. They can actually attain a lot of material gains in this country (much more than our group) but invariably the next generation crashes and burns.

We are most likely to have an ultra educated parent or grandparents staying at home in this country, because we don't want to have a poorly educated caregiver raising our children. Education and skill building begins from such a young age in our children, and with such hyper-focus, that they are the only children who will deny ever having a tiger parent, because they have never ever felt the pressure to do well in school. They don't understand why they are high performers in school without too much effort. The group I can most closely identify with are the Jews without all that gruesome history of historical persecution, nomadic lifestyle, holocaust, Israel bit...

White Americans find solace in labelling us Tiger parents, because it must mean our kids are secretly damaged emotionally and cutting themselves because they are cracking under pressure. POC Americans find solace in labelling us as complicit collaborators with the dominant culture in a devious plot to keep them and their children down. Both are incorrect. We do not strive to be in any %age point. Money is a means to an end but how much money is also very debatable.

Yes, 9.9 is a difficult place to be. If you are trying to remain there or if you are trying to get to 0.1. You don't need to be a stone that sinks at 90%, 9.9% or 0.1%. These buckets are not the end all. You don't need to be a cork that bobs at the various percentages but remains stationary. What is the point of that?

You can be a sentient organism that can effortlessly go back and forth these various percentage buckets, skimming over them, taking what you need, savoring the experiences and remaining emotionally, mentally and spiritually strong, content and happy.

9.9 is a great place to be but it cannot be your destination. It can be your emergency fund to weather uncertainties but if that is your end all and be all...you will be in an endless race and a whole lot of stress all the time.

[Anonymous]

You are not the only person living that enlightenment. You seem to believe the generalizations you read in that article though.

[Anonymous]

It feels like this article was proposed by some billionaire to divert attention towards the people making a few hundred thousand more and not those making hundreds of millions more. The article is BS. Nobody has all these habits/concerns so it's like a fantasy family the writer is targeting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What I'm more curious about is how do we change this on a societal level. I've noticed most UMC people refuse to talk about this (80% of the time), get really defensive (10% of the time), or acknowledge it and feel bad, but refuse to do anything to change it (10% of the time). I am actually curious how many responses you'll get here, since there really doesn't seem to be much appetite for this kind of thing in the DCUM crowd.

I am part of this group and I would like to see higher taxes specifically to fund programs that benefit lower income families, such as parental leave, subsidized childcare, early childhood education, jobs retraining programs, universal healthcare, etc. I am willing to pay more (and we pay a lot because we have high income and basically no tax shelters), but corporations and people with passive income also need to pay more such that their contribution is commensurate with that of the UMC at least.

I’m curious, what is your source of income? Would you get paid more, indirectly, if there were higher taxes? So basically, do you work for government of NGOs?

[Anonymous]

having a mandarin speaking nanny with a degree in early childhood education is more like 0.1% Ivanka trump kinda thing. No seriously accomplished academically focused parent believes in that crap. I am 9.9% with two Ivy League degrees and I push my kids academically (obviously) and I laugh when I read about some fifth Avenue housewives lining up for that special preschool. This guy doesn’t understand this group he is so focused on at all.

[Anonymous]

^ work for government, NGOs, other not for profits? Places where higher taxes would positively impact your earnings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It feels like this article was proposed by some billionaire to divert attention towards the people making a few hundred thousand more and not those making hundreds of millions more. The article is BS. Nobody has all these habits/concerns so it's like a fantasy family the writer is targeting.

Exactly - a guy flying his private jet while pointing "hey look at this family! their kids attend the Russian school of math so they can perhaps become accountants".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our family. We are neither 9.9, nor we are 0.1 - in the way that this article discusses.

In some ways, we belong to both and neither. We have our own culture and training that enables us to avoid the pitfalls of both and ensure that our advantages are sustained over generations.

We are immigrants with centuries of tradition of being educated in letters, sciences, religious and esoteric matters. We are adept in cracking the privilege code of any foreign culture and reaching into our academic bag of tricks to pull out the one talent/skill that is in demand. Without changing too much of who we are at our core and without shortcharging the next generation.

This also requires doing everything to ensure that the children are raised with their emotional and mental health intact and strong. Very rare to have dysfunctional families in our group, mainly because it is a sure way to mess up the children. This means that every individual within the family has to be realized and content - or know how to reach that state.

In this sense, we are different from others of the same racial, ethnic, national origin as us, but from different groups. They can actually attain a lot of material gains in this country (much more than our group) but invariably the next generation crashes and burns.

We are most likely to have an ultra educated parent or grandparents staying at home in this country, because we don't want to have a poorly educated caregiver raising our children. Education and skill building begins from such a young age in our children, and with such hyper-focus, that they are the only children who will deny ever having a tiger parent, because they have never ever felt the pressure to do well in school. They don't understand why they are high performers in school without too much effort. The group I can most closely identify with are the Jews without all that gruesome history of historical persecution, nomadic lifestyle, holocaust, Israel bit...

White Americans find solace in labelling us Tiger parents, because it must mean our kids are secretly damaged emotionally and cutting themselves because they are cracking under pressure. POC Americans find solace in labelling us as complicit collaborators with the dominant culture in a devious plot to keep them and their children down. Both are incorrect. We do not strive to be in any %age point. Money is a means to an end but how much money is also very debatable.

Yes, 9.9 is a difficult place to be. If you are trying to remain there or if you are trying to get to 0.1. You don't need to be a stone that sinks at 90%, 9.9% or 0.1%. These buckets are not the end all. You don't need to be a cork that bobs at the various percentages but remains stationary. What is the point of that?

You can be a sentient organism that can effortlessly go back and forth these various percentage buckets, skimming over them, taking what you need, savoring the experiences and remaining emotionally, mentally and spiritually strong, content and happy.

9.9 is a great place to be but it cannot be your destination. It can be your emergency fund to weather uncertainties but if that is your end all and be all...you will be in an endless race and a whole lot of stress all the time.

i'll bite. FSU? I'm from FSU and I agree with most of what you wrote...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family. We are neither 9.9, nor we are 0.1 - in the way that this article discusses.

In some ways, we belong to both and neither. We have our own culture and training that enables us to avoid the pitfalls of both and ensure that our advantages are sustained over generations.

We are immigrants with centuries of tradition of being educated in letters, sciences, religious and esoteric matters. We are adept in cracking the privilege code of any foreign culture and reaching into our academic bag of tricks to pull out the one talent/skill that is in demand. Without changing too much of who we are at our core and without shortcharging the next generation.

This also requires doing everything to ensure that the children are raised with their emotional and mental health intact and strong. Very rare to have dysfunctional families in our group, mainly because it is a sure way to mess up the children. This means that every individual within the family has to be realized and content - or know how to reach that state.

In this sense, we are different from others of the same racial, ethnic, national origin as us, but from different groups. They can actually attain a lot of material gains in this country (much more than our group) but invariably the next generation crashes and burns.

We are most likely to have an ultra educated parent or grandparents staying at home in this country, because we don't want to have a poorly educated caregiver raising our children. Education and skill building begins from such a young age in our children, and with such hyper-focus, that they are the only children who will deny ever having a tiger parent, because they have never ever felt the pressure to do well in school. They don't understand why they are high performers in school without too much effort. The group I can most closely identify with are the Jews without all that gruesome history of historical persecution, nomadic lifestyle, holocaust, Israel bit...

White Americans find solace in labelling us Tiger parents, because it must mean our kids are secretly damaged emotionally and cutting themselves because they are cracking under pressure. POC Americans find solace in labelling us as complicit collaborators with the dominant culture in a devious plot to keep them and their children down. Both are incorrect. We do not strive to be in any %age point. Money is a means to an end but how much money is also very debatable.

Yes, 9.9 is a difficult place to be. If you are trying to remain there or if you are trying to get to 0.1. You don't need to be a stone that sinks at 90%, 9.9% or 0.1%. These buckets are not the end all. You don't need to be a cork that bobs at the various percentages but remains stationary. What is the point of that?

You can be a sentient organism that can effortlessly go back and forth these various percentage buckets, skimming over them, taking what you need, savoring the experiences and remaining emotionally, mentally and spiritually strong, content and happy.

9.9 is a great place to be but it cannot be your destination. It can be your emergency fund to weather uncertainties but if that is your end all and be all...you will be in an endless race and a whole lot of stress all the time.

i'll bite. FSU? I'm from FSU and I agree with most of what you wrote...

DP. Very rare to have dysfunctional families? Ultra educated parent staying at home? Nay, not FSU

(Born and raised in FSU)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for sharing. I've been thinking about these questions for a while now, and I think I've gotten so addicted to this site because it's sort of a window into how the 9.9% think.

"I think that meritocracy mostly gets invented after the fact...People make this false assumption precisely because the inequality is already there, and they’re looking for a justification."

I see a lot of this on DCUM - posts twisting logic into knots to argue that they deserve their privilege, and everyone else must just be lazy.

The one part of the article I disagree with is about hiring nannies...most of the nannies I know do not have education backgrounds, and aren't optimizing kids. It's just much more convenient than daycare for many reasons, so if you can afford it, why not? And once you get up to 2-3 kids, I don't think it's much more expensive than daycare. Even middle-class people I know have nannies (assuming there are two working parents), they just refer to them as babysitters.

Anyway, the answer to how you as an individual can avoid this is pretty simple. Just don't do it. I posted a couple of weeks ago about how we moved to a "middling" school district, and several people thought I was a troll because this concept is apparently so shocking to the UMC mind. But you can do this, and it's not going to screw your kid up.

Actually, since that post, I've connected with several families in our district who are in the same position, some with much older kids. And everyone's fine and happy. No one is Trumpian

We do still live in the UMC bubble to some degree, and I don't think you ever can fully leave it, so that insecurity about making different choices than everyone else, about going against these values that seem so ingrained in our society, will always be there and I don't like it. But it's definitely better than the alternative. And knowing others who are doing the same thing helps so much.

What I'm more curious about is how do we change this on a societal level. I've noticed most UMC people refuse to talk about this (80% of the time), get really defensive (10% of the time), or acknowledge it and feel bad, but refuse to do anything to change it (10% of the time). I am actually curious how many responses you'll get here, since there really doesn't seem to be much appetite for this kind of thing in the DCUM crowd.

I’m in Los Angeles and from NYC and I do agree with the nanny part. More and more nannies I we are college educated Americans women and it’s does definitely make a difference in the child’s early education. Yes, there are still the housekeeper/nanny types but it’s a changing profession.

+1 I was a nanny in New York City just out of college and it was definitely a trend to hire a "drifting recent graduate in the humanities from a selective liberal arts college who loves kids" as a nanny. Even better if they grew up UMC and had gone through private school K-12. Like me. I had always volunteered with kids, been a camp counselor etc. so I had some experience. But the kinds of conversations I would have with their kids are more like their parents have with them (or would have had with them if they had their kids at 22 and weren't so busy with work). People who work in daycares--even elite daycares--tend not to be from the same background. It gave me something paid to do while "I figured out my life" and applied to grad school and also staved off the 'I want to have kids right now" urges. But it can be kind of a trap for aimless SLAC grads unless the family you work for is willing/able to use their connections to help launch you in your field. But I definitely think it optimizes child meritocracy--I knew how to have the conversations, open-ended play, cultural experiences, rich literacy environment that set kids up for the "right" preschools in NYC. I also had similar nanny friends and we'd meet up with the kids at the park, organize activities etc.