I used to work in the ski industry. Almost everyone I knew was a drug-addled hippy who would work from August to March, then take seasonal unemployment and dick around all summer. Follow Phish, play in their own bands, or just do whippits in grocery store parking lots. And these weren’t just college kids or anything. Most of it was guys who’d been doing the exact same thing every year for fifteen or twenty years.
right, people who don’t need employment to live. it’s an optional thing they do. precisely my point.
lots of trust fund types of people work part time for extra money or fun. that’s very different than someone who needs to work full time year round to pay their bills.
Okay, but I’m very specifically telling you that these are not trust-fund kids. These are blue-collar people combining seasonal work, unemployment checks, and cheap living expenses to do exactly the thing you’re saying the working class can’t do. They aren’t saving for retirement, they’ll never own a home, and half of them are getting wages garnished for child support, but plenty of people like that exist.
I mean, hell, Phish sells out stadiums. You think every person there is independently wealthy?
i mean people could argue i’m a trust fund kid because i took so long to graduate college (i think i was 30 when i finished my first graduate degree i am too tired right now). my parents paid my tuition one semester (because my loans were late. i paid them back within a week) and that’s all the help i got from them. they had the money, they just used it elsewhere.
now, i’m also the family tax accountant. i know exactly, to the penny, how much financial help my parents have given each of my siblings. because i do all of their taxes and have since i was 14. so like, knowing that they can be generous and just choose not to, that’s an emotion.
I know people like that too. They are trust fund people to me, not perhaps in the strict sense but in the fact they come from families with money and are largely supported by those families, even if they aren’t strictly trust-fund holders. They aren’t directly themselves wealthy, but they do have access to family money, even if indirectly.
I have know plenty of people who work part time, live dirt cheap lifestyles, and yeah take seasonal work. They can do that because they are living off investments. I knew one guy who had 500K in stock, and he would live off of teh 25K in divides he got a year… he was not living extravagantly, and he was schlubby, acted blue-collar, did season or temp work when he needed extra cash, etc. But he was objectively, independently wealthy. He also never bought a home, and never planned for retirement. he seemed like he was one step up from a homeless his entire life, but he was not.
another guy I know worked part time on and off, lived in a closet, partied a lot and went to concerts, but his parents were multi-millionaires and his brother was a political figure. He didn’t have some big sum of cash or at trust, but his lifestyle was only possible because of the wealth around him and no doubt when his parents die when he is 50+ he will get millions, so his philosophy was why ever work hard? Why make an effort and not just enjoy life. he also loved to tell me and other hard working people what dumb chumps we were.
both of them went to college, but I’ve met plenty of people who never did. I plenty of people in the bike industry who didn’t, who are the same way they works seasonally in bike/ski shops or bartender/waiting, travel/tour for months at a time, spend their money on tattoos, weed, and concerts and boozing. they leave cheap. but they all have parents who are doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc. and anytime they have money trouble they call up the bank of mom and dad. sometimes they are artists or ‘starting their own business’ types too.
Do I think literally everyone who lives these lifestyles is like that? No, but the vast majority are. They are just very good at hiding it, because well, it’s all about the image. They are working-class only in a cosplay sense. Working-class, need to work to survive, these people, are not surviving, they are partying, livin’ it easy’ not having to pay bills or worry about healthcare or debts. Because someone else does that for them.
Yeah a lot of them are bums and deadbeats and they do exploit welfare, but they don’t do it out of necessity. they do it out of entitlement. They don’t have to be productive members of society, because someone else is covering for them.
I mean maybe you take these people are the surface, appearance level, which yeah, you are buying the story they are telling. But there is a lot more to people than appears, and a lot of people are lying about who they really are. The stories they tell you aren’t the whole truth. Usually anymore than wealthy people who tell you they came from ‘nothing’ when their parents are highly educated people with upper middle class careers/lifestyles. Everyone lies to preserve their image.
I used to work in the ski industry. Almost everyone I knew was a drug-addled hippy who would work from August to March, then take seasonal unemployment and dick around all summer. Follow Phish, play in their own bands, or just do whippits in grocery store parking lots. And these weren’t just college kids or anything. Most of it was guys who’d been doing the exact same thing every year for fifteen or twenty years.
right, people who don’t need employment to live. it’s an optional thing they do. precisely my point.
lots of trust fund types of people work part time for extra money or fun. that’s very different than someone who needs to work full time year round to pay their bills.
Okay, but I’m very specifically telling you that these are not trust-fund kids. These are blue-collar people combining seasonal work, unemployment checks, and cheap living expenses to do exactly the thing you’re saying the working class can’t do. They aren’t saving for retirement, they’ll never own a home, and half of them are getting wages garnished for child support, but plenty of people like that exist.
I mean, hell, Phish sells out stadiums. You think every person there is independently wealthy?
i mean people could argue i’m a trust fund kid because i took so long to graduate college (i think i was 30 when i finished my first graduate degree i am too tired right now). my parents paid my tuition one semester (because my loans were late. i paid them back within a week) and that’s all the help i got from them. they had the money, they just used it elsewhere.
now, i’m also the family tax accountant. i know exactly, to the penny, how much financial help my parents have given each of my siblings. because i do all of their taxes and have since i was 14. so like, knowing that they can be generous and just choose not to, that’s an emotion.
I know people like that too. They are trust fund people to me, not perhaps in the strict sense but in the fact they come from families with money and are largely supported by those families, even if they aren’t strictly trust-fund holders. They aren’t directly themselves wealthy, but they do have access to family money, even if indirectly.
I have know plenty of people who work part time, live dirt cheap lifestyles, and yeah take seasonal work. They can do that because they are living off investments. I knew one guy who had 500K in stock, and he would live off of teh 25K in divides he got a year… he was not living extravagantly, and he was schlubby, acted blue-collar, did season or temp work when he needed extra cash, etc. But he was objectively, independently wealthy. He also never bought a home, and never planned for retirement. he seemed like he was one step up from a homeless his entire life, but he was not.
another guy I know worked part time on and off, lived in a closet, partied a lot and went to concerts, but his parents were multi-millionaires and his brother was a political figure. He didn’t have some big sum of cash or at trust, but his lifestyle was only possible because of the wealth around him and no doubt when his parents die when he is 50+ he will get millions, so his philosophy was why ever work hard? Why make an effort and not just enjoy life. he also loved to tell me and other hard working people what dumb chumps we were.
both of them went to college, but I’ve met plenty of people who never did. I plenty of people in the bike industry who didn’t, who are the same way they works seasonally in bike/ski shops or bartender/waiting, travel/tour for months at a time, spend their money on tattoos, weed, and concerts and boozing. they leave cheap. but they all have parents who are doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc. and anytime they have money trouble they call up the bank of mom and dad. sometimes they are artists or ‘starting their own business’ types too.
Do I think literally everyone who lives these lifestyles is like that? No, but the vast majority are. They are just very good at hiding it, because well, it’s all about the image. They are working-class only in a cosplay sense. Working-class, need to work to survive, these people, are not surviving, they are partying, livin’ it easy’ not having to pay bills or worry about healthcare or debts. Because someone else does that for them.
Yeah a lot of them are bums and deadbeats and they do exploit welfare, but they don’t do it out of necessity. they do it out of entitlement. They don’t have to be productive members of society, because someone else is covering for them.
I mean maybe you take these people are the surface, appearance level, which yeah, you are buying the story they are telling. But there is a lot more to people than appears, and a lot of people are lying about who they really are. The stories they tell you aren’t the whole truth. Usually anymore than wealthy people who tell you they came from ‘nothing’ when their parents are highly educated people with upper middle class careers/lifestyles. Everyone lies to preserve their image.
So your argument is that I’m naive and service industries are rife with secret rich people pretending to be poor?
I’m sure it happens. I lived in a slum downstairs from a Rockefeller who’d wait tables part-time. But he was the exception, not the rule.