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Asia's new aristocrats
- bediger 16y agoHelp out a poor, ignorant American: what's a "social class"? One of the Gazillionaires mentions that "everyone in his social class" lost someone they knew in the Mumbai terrorist attack. In 25 words or less, what's a "social class"?
- gnufied 16y agoThe people of similar income, taste and values as the guy quoted in the article.
- bediger 16y agoSo, if you obtain enough money, and at least profess the same taste in canape's and worker relations, you can be one of the new asian aristocracy? Or is there an ethnic or length of wealthiness component? Like the "old money" vs "new money" distinction made in the US east coast in the late 1880s?
- alnayyir 16y agoThe only old money in India are the Brahmin and descendants of royalty, and even the Brahmin have to work for a living. The dichotomy doesn't likely have a lot of meaning there. Virtually everyone or their direct ancestors earned their wealth in China and India, honestly or otherwise. A social class is a cross-section of the population that shares an economic banding and cultural values. That is, yuppies (middle-upper class professionals, frequently white or asian in the US), the working rich (MBA grads and entrepreneurs that built their wealth and frequently must continue working in order to maintain their status). How old are you?
- mdwrigh2 16y agoDo most people really consider those with MBAs to be the "working rich"? Or are you conflating those with MBAs and successful businessmen?
- alnayyir 16y agoNot conflation, just cherry-picking the vehicle for the top quartile of MBAs to become wealthy businesspeople without necessarily being entrepreneurs. I know plenty of MBAs that make less money than me but that actually drops them into the yuppie category. You'll notice that the specific category was "working rich". Corporate CEOs generally lose access to a lot of their income and wealth building avenues when they stop working, even if it scarcely means anything to their quality of life. I don't consider my hackernews commentary to be research-grade so you'll excuse me if my precision isn't turned up to 11. I use shortcuts. I trust the community here to be competent enough to know what I mean without some kind of pedant-autistic nitpicker harassing me every single bloody time I'm even slightly imprecise in discussing a subject in a way that isn't even remotely important. I am exhausted with that tendency here.
- mdwrigh2 16y agoI'm sorry, my wording was pretty poor there. What I was really attempting to ask was whether most people consider MBA grads to be "rich", not accuse _you_ of conflating the two terms.
- alnayyir 16y agoI misunderstood then, sorry, but I've had a stream of nothing but nitpicking from the community lately. The answer to your question is, "it depends". It depends on their socioeconomic class and how many MBAs they know. It might also depend on how much class/profession specific resentment they feel towards MBA holders. The poor are going to universally consider anyone with a business-oriented graduate degree to be rich, to a fault. There's little deviation you're going to find there unless you encounter the occasional circumspect/self-educated exception. The middle class would probably vary wildly, depending on who they associated with. (A lot of the middle class don't associate with people of their exact quintile, so a lot of it's going to depend on whether they're looking up or down.) No hard answers for you though.
- gnufied 16y agoThere isn't any ethnic component to it, I can tell you that. Wealth is obviously a factor, but it isn't exclusive.
- retube 16y agoOh come on, I know everyone in the US is judged by where they're going, not where they're from, but you do have the concept of working and middle classes right?
- bediger 16y agoNot so much. Almost everyone claims to be "middle class", the definition is so vague as to be meaningless. People who are obviously very, very well off claim middle class status. Only a very few would claim "working class" status, and typically, that's claimed for ideological reasons, not actual tradesman or craftsman membership.
- hugh3 16y ago... but you obviously understand the concept then, and that it may apply more readily to India?
- noblethrasher 16y agoI think he was wondering what the concept means to Indians since the referenced phrase is not at all idiomatic for U.S. English. Upon my initial reading, I wondered whether or not it referred to a caste.
- bediger 16y agoThank you! That clarifies what I meant, as I was indeed struck by the "social class" phrase as out of place or something.
- RickHull 16y ago> In 25 words or less, what's a "social class"? Your social class is defined by the people you associate with, typically in terms of wealth and culture. Some people do not have a well-defined social class. Others may associate only with financial and cultural elites, etc. etc.
- smysore 16y agoWhat's interesting in India is that you'll often find a slum right next to a super luxurious hotel like the Oberoi or the Taj. I've never been able to understand why squatting "sticks" there but not here (I've seen police trying to "clean up" the slums -- you'd think the violence would scare people away).
- gnufied 16y agoBecause it is political. Besides I find nothing strange about a slum next to a 5 star hotel, but I am an Indian. :)
- yummyfajitas 16y agoIn a country with rule of law and transferable property rights (most of the western world), one would expect market forces to prevent this. Underutilized land (such as a slum) would be purchased from it's owners by investors hoping to make more efficient use of it. Both parties would wind up richer because of the transaction. The phenomena of nontransferable property rights exists only in a few parts of the US, so most Americans are unfamiliar with it. NY is one such place - claims on public housing or occupancy in a rent control apartment are a form of property rights (it's very difficult to deprive you of them) which is not transferable. NY is also one of the rare places where we have land used by very rich people directly adjacent to land hugely underused by it's occupants [1]. Most of the US is better run than NY, so phenomena like this are absent from most people's experience. [1] Most of the value of the land is caused by it's proximity to institutions like GS or Bloomberg, but the lower middle class occupants of public housing and retirees living in rent controlled apartments do not make use of this proximity. Thus, the land is underused.
- liftman 16y agoYea, I noticed this as well. Probably because there is not much of a middle class. However, I have read cases and articles expecting their middle class to grow rapidly in the upcoming years.
- gnufied 16y agoI am surprised no one is talking about "hukou" system? Heck, I didn't know that! In India obviously we do not have anything like that, but there is a hint of resentment towards outside people who throng cities for jobs. North Indians were beaten up in Mumbai. You will hear faint sigh of a Bangalorean, how city has lost its culture and beauty. A Bank clerk in Chennai - for example can no longer afford auto rickshaw fair.
- FraaJad 16y agoSigh, my laid Bangalore is no more :|
- garply 16y agoLearning about the hukou system disturbed me at first, but the longer I live in Beijing, the more I approve of the system in some form. There are too many people here. Live with Beijing's traffic for a couple of years, or push more people than you can imagine can fit into a crowded subway train. There are not enough resources to go around. How would you deal with it?
- kevinskii 16y agoPerhaps deporting you to the countryside would be one small first step. Or is restriction of personal freedom only okay when it isn't applied to you?
- Charuru 16y agoWut? hukou is just a citizenship system. Much like how mexicans just can't wander into the US, or Chinese can't wander into Korea. Every country operate the same way, just that in China it's more local because of its feudal history persisted longer.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoThere are not enough resources to go around. How would you deal with it? Allow prices to rise until people stop coming. For traffic specifically, impose congestion prices and raise them until the traffic reaches a reasonable level [1]. Allow the same process to occur with rents, food prices, etc. Also, don't impose unnecessary regulations which would prevent construction to increase capacity. [1] If the price is high enough, it will make financial sense to increase capacity.
- javanix 16y agoSome Indian gazillionaires are flashy I wasn't really expecting to read the word "gazillionaires" in an economist article. Has to mark some sort of a first for the publication.
- contravert 16y agoThis story reminds me of my experience. I immigrated from China at a young age, but the impression I got from my family is that even in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, people were almost universally poor. I remember my dad telling me that even if you had the money, buying a television or refrigerator required connections. My father and mother both came from rural areas, where mud huts were not uncommon. Even in China, my dad didn't eat rice until he was in his teens. My father did extremely well on the national exams and managed to get into a university with most of his expenses paid by the socialist system at the time. After getting a PHD, he immigrated to the US with me. Having visited China a few times with my family, I met some quite successful businessmen, all of whom have humble roots in poor countryside villages. Some of them didn't even graduate from elementary school, but due to connections with the government (the military for example), they managed to start businesses and acquire factories during the time of China's economic growth. There are a lot of rag-to-riches stories in China, but at the same the time, the sheer size of the population means that there are even more stories of poverty. In my father's family, only he and one of his brothers out of a family of 6 or 7 managed to escape the rural area. Although life is getting better even in the rural areas, it seems there is a massive difference between the skyscrapers of Shanghai and a traditional farming village.
- theoneill 16y agoEven in China, my dad didn't eat rice until he was in his teens. What did he eat?
- contravert 16y agoHe said that he mainly ate sweet potato or yam (I'm not really sure of the difference).
- malnourish 16y agoIt would be very interesting to see the percent of these "rags-to-riches" events compared to the less-fortunate population of China. It is quite amazing that your father's university was covered by the government, and in a logistical sense, good to see that they want to promote intellectual pursuits. Also, when you leave a country you emigrate :) I hope you are living a good life!
- malnourish 16y agoSo can we conclude that parts of Asia, primarily China and India, are experiencing what the US went through in the early-mid parts of the 20th century? A development of the middle class and a wider gap between said middle class and the upper class?