Widespread Prosperity for the 25%

Carmel High School

Everyone knows America has a lot of super rich people. The top 1% or .1% in particular.

But what’s not talked about is the widespread prosperity that 20-30% of the population is currently engaging in. Think SUVs or F-150s and minvans in the driveways, immaculately kept lawns of trimmed hedges. This class has big houses and cars and engages in upper-class type activities like holiday travel. Sometimes it is hard to notice it because you may be in this class and feel like you are struggling to keep up with the Joneses. The 20-30% category doesn’t mean these people are rich. They only have prosperity in their lives. Meaning a very high level of consumption but generally lacking the elements of leisure and independence we associate with the historically rich.

Last week this video on a giant high school with incredible amenities in Carmel, Indiana went viral on Tik-Tok and Twitter.

That school is not in California or New York. That’s middle America. Yes, the high school is in a wealthy part of Indiana, but it’s still Indiana. There’s 49 other states where you have a few high schools like this. That’s an impressive amount of wealth in places that are not the rich coastal parts of the country.

We can compare to the middle class in Europe who have much lower salaries and less material objects. Take for example this London Doctor who makes under $2k a month. People in other countries notice it. Tony Judt, a British writer was astounded by the libraries in Midwestern American universities.

Or take a look at the salaries for managers at a gas station chain:

Widespread Prosperity

I was out driving in Virginia last week and every other car was a new SUV or Truck. Everyone just seemed to be driving newer cars around. These are not the 1%, this is 20-30 percent of the population driving luxury cars.

Check out the record-high average price for new cars in the US in November 2022: $48,681 for a regular car and $67,050 for a luxury ride. This isn't just the rich folks splurging, it's a sign that more and more people are doing well enough to buy fancy wheels. You can argue it’s just debt, but someone has to give you the money. Wealth is not just a matter of accumulating numbers in a bank account, but rather the ability to enjoy a comfortable standard of living. Being able to borrow large sums of money to purchase luxury items implies a level of financial abundance.

You can see it in other areas like toys

Housing prices are not cheap these days. But if you manage to buy one, it’s going to be bigger than the place any of your ancestors lived in. Only about 8 percent of new single-family homes today are 1,400 square feet or less. In the 1940s, nearly 70 percent of new houses were that small. Households today are also much smaller. There’s much more living space.

Some twitter posters call it “Mass Affluence”. If you look around you can see it everywhere.

The Downsides

There are downsides for people in this 20-30% widespread prosperity class. In the rest of this Newsletter I will do an overview of each of them.

1) Short-Term Luxury. Although there is money for short-term luxury consumption, the long term expensive items like a stay at home spouse and having many children is unaffordable now. The widespread prosperity is about comfort for now, not for long term projects.

2) Imitating the Rich. Attempts to imitate the real rich leads to disaster. Historically, "liberal arts"= training for upper class free men (liber) who were above having a profession. Earning money meant going to vocational or professional schools. The source of the American "liberal arts" degree is the English upper classes imitation of the Ancient Greeks and Romans who despised work & workers. In the Ancient World you are free if your name doesn’t come with a profession. This manifests in Universities putting kids into student debt for liberal arts degrees they can’t pay back. And also in creative fields being dominated by the rich. 

3) Golden Cup. When people get money, they lose control of their preferences, substituting the constructed preferences of people who want to sell them something, complicating their lives unnecessarily, triggering their own misery. One is more likely to be drinking poison in a golden cup than an ordinary one (venenum in auro bibitur)

Short-Term Luxury

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