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'Luxury beliefs' are latest status symbol for rich Americans

7 points by ksap1 6y ago

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
i relate to the first paragraph. i agree with the author's quoted 'friend'. i dont think marriage validation and/or requirement is for everyone. i believe that marriage should be personal and maybe it can be religious for some, but the state and law should have no foothold in how people choose to form unions or define it. there can be no separation of church and state if both of them consider themselves to be the authority that validates marriage. why should the state dictate mormon unions or LGBTQ unions or religious or civil unions. any legal contract should be drawn by the parties involved. contracts should be under the purview of the state, not the unions themselves.
- mamon 6y ago
  Marriage is not about religion, or personal happiness. Marriage is all about "producing" new, physically and mentally healthy, well socially adjusted, future tax payers. Now, since marriage gives you privileges, such as tax breaks( which are supposed to help you raise the future members of the society) it is obvious that the state wants to have some control on who do they give those privileges to, through marriage validation.
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  The state and feds didnt care so much, the religious folks did and demanded govt codify their beliefs into law. Women put decades into a union, raised kids, and then got dumped with nothing. Some people thought that unfair. See the 1900s and DOMA. The Religious couldnt help themselves - they double downed on that word and didn’t grok that meant losing control of it. See Obergefell v. Hodges.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    religion is a belief. religion also fosters community. i worry that if the state starts poking its nose into everything, we'd lose community. religion and state should never be bed fellows. i think its already happening. it scares me more than anything else.
rossdavidh 6y ago
You could put a great deal of individualism into this bucket, I'm thinking. "Everyone should do their own thing", makes a lot of sense, when you have a lot of resources, individually. "We all need to hang together", is more important when everyone is one misstep away from disaster, because they have few resources. "Don't do anything weird", makes more sense when, if you get yourself into trouble, you don't have the resources to get yourself out, and everyone else will have to pitch in to rescue you, and they don't have much in the way of resources to spare, either. The original meaning of "conservative", is very close to "cautious", and it is the normal result of the feeling that you are in a precarious position. Not being conservative, being adventurous even, is more palatable when you have the resources to recover from things going badly for a while. Oddly, I find myself thinking that this NYPost article is an interesting, even insightful one, and that is not what I normally think about the NY Post.
- ksap1 6y ago
  The article wasn't written by a snobby NY Post journalist, but a Psychology PhD student. And this author isn't any psychology student, but an orphan who failed high school. He has skin in the game.

7 points by ksap1 6y ago

i relate to the first paragraph. i agree with the author's quoted 'friend'. i dont think marriage validation and/or requirement is for everyone. i believe that marriage should be personal and maybe it can be religious for some, but the state and law should have no foothold in how people choose to form unions or define it. there can be no separation of church and state if both of them consider themselves to be the authority that validates marriage. why should the state dictate mormon unions or LGBTQ unions or religious or civil unions. any legal contract should be drawn by the parties involved. contracts should be under the purview of the state, not the unions themselves.

mamon 6y ago
Marriage is not about religion, or personal happiness. Marriage is all about "producing" new, physically and mentally healthy, well socially adjusted, future tax payers. Now, since marriage gives you privileges, such as tax breaks( which are supposed to help you raise the future members of the society) it is obvious that the state wants to have some control on who do they give those privileges to, through marriage validation.
hindsightbias 6y ago
The state and feds didnt care so much, the religious folks did and demanded govt codify their beliefs into law. Women put decades into a union, raised kids, and then got dumped with nothing. Some people thought that unfair. See the 1900s and DOMA. The Religious couldnt help themselves - they double downed on that word and didn’t grok that meant losing control of it. See Obergefell v. Hodges.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  religion is a belief. religion also fosters community. i worry that if the state starts poking its nose into everything, we'd lose community. religion and state should never be bed fellows. i think its already happening. it scares me more than anything else.

rossdavidh 6y ago

You could put a great deal of individualism into this bucket, I'm thinking. "Everyone should do their own thing", makes a lot of sense, when you have a lot of resources, individually. "We all need to hang together", is more important when everyone is one misstep away from disaster, because they have few resources. "Don't do anything weird", makes more sense when, if you get yourself into trouble, you don't have the resources to get yourself out, and everyone else will have to pitch in to rescue you, and they don't have much in the way of resources to spare, either. The original meaning of "conservative", is very close to "cautious", and it is the normal result of the feeling that you are in a precarious position. Not being conservative, being adventurous even, is more palatable when you have the resources to recover from things going badly for a while. Oddly, I find myself thinking that this NYPost article is an interesting, even insightful one, and that is not what I normally think about the NY Post.

ksap1 6y ago
The article wasn't written by a snobby NY Post journalist, but a Psychology PhD student. And this author isn't any psychology student, but an orphan who failed high school. He has skin in the game.