Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

Posted on 04 June 2019 by Rachel Sherman

A surprising and revealing look at how today s elite view their own wealth and place in societyFrom TV s real housewives to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled But what do we really know about those who live on easy street In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers including hedge fund financiers and corporate lawyers, professors and artists, and stay at home mothers to examine their lifestyle choices and their understanding of privilege Sherman upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing and displaying social advantages for themselves and their children Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society They wish to be normal, describing their consumption as reasonable and basic and comparing themselves to those who have than they do rather than those with less These New Yorkers also want to see themselves as hard workers who give back and raise children with good values, and they avoid talking about money.Although their experiences differ depending on a range of factors, including whether their wealth was earned or inherited, these elites generally depict themselves as productive and prudent, and therefore morally worthy, while the undeserving rich are lazy, ostentatious, and snobbish Sherman argues that this ethical distinction between good and bad wealthy people characterizes American culture broadly, and that it perpetuates rather than challenges economic inequality.As the distance between rich and poor widens, Uneasy Street not only explores the real lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us. Download Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence By Rachel Sherman – kino-fada.fr Wow, I learned a lot from this book In Uneasy Street The Anxieties of Affluence, Rachel Sherman interviews a bunch of super rich people living in New York City about their wealth and how they experience it She draws a lot of intelligent, astute observations from the interviews At the same time, her writing feels readable and accessible to a general audience, such that I always felt entertained and never bogged down by jargon or unnecessarily complex words Some observations from her Wow, I learned a lot from this book In Uneasy Street The Anxieties of Affluence, Rachel Sherman interviews a bunch of super rich people living in New York City about their wealth and how they experience it She draws a lot of intelligent, astute observations from the interviews At the same time, her writing feels readable and accessible to a general audience, such that I always felt entertain...By the time I finished reading the first page, I was overcome with the feeling that something was missing Oh, right, it s that my expectations have been warped by the way we discuss the rich in popular culture Rachel Sherman didn t write this book with the purpose of making fun of the upper class It isn t a parody Though at times it certainly reads like one, and I can t help but feel that it s because we ve been conditioned to expect it and accept it.If the last few years in America have By the time I finished reading the first page, I was overcome with the feeling that something was missing Oh, right, it s that my expectations have been warped by the way we discuss the rich in popular culture Rachel Sherman didn t write this book with the purpose of making fun of the upper class It isn t a parody Though at times it certainly reads like one, and I can t help but feel that it s because we ve been conditioned to expect it and accept it.If the last few years in America have taught us anything, it s that the rich are scapegoats We can blame them for anything And it s totally PC Their problems don t matter because they re rich person problems Remember, it was okay to poke fun at the trust fund kids who ended up stranded on an island without food and medical care at the disaster that was the Fyre Festival While certain publicat...This readsas paper for graduate studies in Sociology than a discussion about any moral implications of economic disparity in America It is a bit clumsy and repetitive but it makes it s point over and over again A horrifying look at the modern day Marie Antoinette s.I didn t think I d enjoy this book as much as I did In fact, I thought I could skip the rest after reading the introduction, which read like a summary of findings.Sherman s true talent lies in her expose of the wealthy s unwillingness to acknowledge the structural systems that allow them to enjoy their comfortable position She critiques their justification of privilege with deser...The rich are different from you and me But they don t really want to feel different, at least not in the ways that matter So, being that we live in a modern Gilded Age, people go through all kinds of mental acrobatics to live with themselves.That s my takeaway from the first 2 chapters of the book which I won t give a star rating, since I abandoned i...Interesting main point that with so much inequality people with privilege must work hard to justify their privilege through hard work, constrained consumption, and being polite Being a person with class privilege myself I found the descriptions apt and insightful, and agreed with the main thrust of her book, that no one deserves their privilege just like no one deserves their poverty The levels of inequality we are experiencing today are dangerous and morally wrong If I feel this way I Interesting main point that with so much inequality people with privilege must work hard to justify their privilege through hard work, constrained consumption, and being polite Being a person with class privilege myself I found the descriptions apt and insightful, and agreed with the main thrust of her book, that no one deserves their privilege just like no one deserves their poverty The levels of inequality we are experiencing today are dangerous and morally wrong If I feel t...I was hoping this book would be good because I think it s a fascinating premise sort of an academic housewives book But no, it s just a catalogue of interview responses from people without much analysis And she also does too much lumping mak...Good interviews, dull analysis A promising book that was ultimately a slog read It was hard to get a sense of the interviewees personalities and keep the storylines straight as they were always interspersed with didactic pondering.Made me thinkThe very rich aren t quite the way I thought they were, in the first generation at least The order in which the author addressed topics mystified me a bit, but I m kind of slow on the uptake with those sorts of things This look at privilege is an int...I decided to read this book after seeing it mentioned on NPR It was what I had hoped for, an insightful and scholarly examination of the views and experiences of wealthy people I found it captivating The book frequently points out a lac...

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

04 June 2019

Rachel Sherman