The general feeling is that people with money are high class and people with no money are low class. This is broadly true, but there are exceptions. I met some rich primates on Wall Street, and I have some family members of very modest means who are the classiest people I know.
So class is not necessarily about money. But I just got off a flight from Nashville to Charlotte where a couple of old hayseeds behind me were playing Candy Crush with the sound on, on their iPads. Like a teacher in the summertime: no class. This is why people buy tickets in first class—not for the comfy seats, but to get away from the riffraff picking their toes in coach. I get upgraded to first class fairly often, and I’ve only sat next to a complete rube one time. There is something about having and acquiring money—you get a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood, you drive a nicer car, you start hanging out with people with nice houses and nice cars, and you generally don’t have to put up with people setting off fireworks in their driveway or leaving Bud Light cans everywhere. The Bud Light can phenomenon is real: if I go on vacation, I tell my travel agent that I don’t want to go somewhere where there are going to be Bud Light cans around the pool. That kind of place. Where there is deep house thumping softly on the pool speakers, not SUGARPIE HONEYBUNCH playing on a loop at the swim-up bar.
I’m sure you’ve had this experience where you’ve walked into an apparel retailer and the offerings are sparse—a few garments hanging on hangers, a couple of pairs of shoes, that’s it. Like a YSL store. The lowbrow stores, like Johnston & Murphy, are filled with shit everywhere. You walk into one of these high class stores, and there is virtually no inventory out on the floor, and everything is neatly folded, and you’re like: I can’t afford this. So you walk out. It’s a screening process—those empty stores are intimidating to the riffraff. The type of place where there are no price tags. If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. For what it’s worth, my favorite clothes in the world (for men and women) are Tom Ford. I’m not at the point in my life where I can afford $1200 for a pair of sneakers, but I hope to be someday.
And there is a difference between real luxury and aspirational luxury. The luxury goods business is fascinating to me, with their huge gross margins. Aspirational luxury is Coach. There is a Coach store in Myrtle Beach, or more accurately, a Coach outlet, and that is populated by the $150,000-a-year crowd. You buy aspirational luxury, then you make more money, then you do the real luxury. I’d throw Kate Spade in that category, too, and Michael Kors, though that is a step down. A Louis Vuitton bag is a whole different animal. I know next to nothing about this stuff. True story: one of my favorite reads used to be Departures magazine by American Express. I’d read it just for the ads. I’d get it in the mail, and take it with me on a flight, and drool over watches and clothes and stuff. Years ago, they had the Robb Report. I find this stuff to be highly motivational—I don’t know how you feel about it. Anyway, Departures magazine went online and nobody reads it anymore. The articles weren’t bad, either. They used to get some legit writers—travel writing is a genre unto itself.
But class is a state of mind. I am building a fancy house in a fancy neighborhood and my table manners are still pretty bad. And I kind of don’t care. Not terrible, mind you—I’m not eating with my hands. But I have resisted all attempts to civilize me. But that’s not really what class is all about. Class is something very, very intangible, very ephemeral—it’s about how you carry yourself, how you act, how you speak. Some kids are born into it—others are not. There was a whole Wall Street firm that catered to this demographic, the poor, smart, and determined, that cratered on March 17th, 2008. That was an aggregate loss for the poor, smart, and determined. Since we’re talking about Wall Street, it is pretty much fucking impossible to break into Wall Street as a poor kid these days—unless you get a math degree from CalTech and go to one of the quant firms. But if you are going to be working in debt capital markets at JP Morgan, there is a 98% chance you will grow up in the tri-state area, play lacrosse, and go to an Ivy League school. The open-outcry trading floors were the great democratizers, and that’s where I got my start in the industry. If the P. Coast hadn’t existed, I’d probably be selling insurance, and that’s not an exaggeration. Lots of Wall Street guys in my cohort got their start on the CME, the CBOT, the CBOE, the AMEX, the PHLX, the PCX. Nassim freaking Taleb was a bond options trader on the CBOT. If you want to know where the class hierarchy is, it’s in private equity. There is no poor, smart, and determined in private equity. They hire from the best colleges, the best high schools, and the best neighborhoods. I have never met a poor kid in private equity.
I like to dump on Myrtle Beach, and Myrtle Beach definitely has an underworld, but it also has an underground city. There is wealth in Myrtle Beach. Much of it is inherited, in the form of land passed down from generation to generation. But there are some strivers, mostly in real estate and insurance. When I moved there, in 2010, it was moribund, but now it has a real economy made up of people trying really hard. Some of this is the Northern influence, but some of it has to do with the proliferation of opportunities. People are throwing money at each other. It used to be a very economically cyclical place, dependent on tourism, but now, it is virtually recession-proof. People work pretty hard. Don’t get me wrong, the parking lot at my building is pretty empty at a Friday afternoon, but I remember a day in 2010 when the power went out for 15 minutes and everyone went home. This is part of a larger phenomenon of the North becoming the South and the South becoming the North. The South is rising again. Nashville is a food fight, and it didn’t get to be a food fight by people fucking off. There is a Ferrari dealership in Nashville. Ten years ago, you could get a house for $200,000. Now it’s a milldog. You can thank the SALT taxes for all this.
Class is really about treating people decently, regardless of any socioeconomic differences. One thing I’ve noticed when visiting New York is the complete indifference that people will treat wait staff with when going out to dinner. They’re not being rude, but they’re not being personable, either. A high class person will make the one ounce of effort that it takes to make someone’s day a little bit better, and that doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger tip. That means making a small personal connection with everyone you meet. Trust me, I’m not always in the mood to be making conversation in the elevator, not at 7:45 in the morning when I have a million things to do queued up in my brain. Basically, don’t be self-absorbed. This does not come naturally to me. I spend most of my waking hours thinking about myself, thinking about how to get what I want, and thinking of ways to make more money. I suspect many people are the same.
The best low-class movie I have ever seen was Boys Don’t Cry, about a transgender woman living in Kansas. They were all poor as shit, and the movie does not disguise or gloss over that fact. If you really want to read about class, read Anton Chekhov’s story “The Peasants,” about the most anti-communist thing I have ever read. Now, I just told you to read it, and nobody is going to fucking read it, but I highly recommend you read it. In fact, I think we should send a copy to every member of Congress.
I’ll add one more thing: I’m not much in favor of taking steps to conceal one’s wealth. We all have a moral responsibility to live at our means. AT our means. If you can afford a palace, buy the palace. I have a friend who never posts vacation pictures on Facebook for fear of offending people. Screw that. For some people, it will cause envy and resentment, but for others, it will be aspirational. You care about the latter’s opinions, and not the former’s opinions. Surround yourself with people who will celebrate your achievements, and everyone else can jump in a lake.
Really well done. Big fan!
I read literally everything you email me because I love your writing style and because I disagree with half of everything you write. If I disagreed with all of it, I would likely dismiss it, but because it’s only half, I’m forced to grapple with your ideas and test my own implicit biases. Sometimes that leaves me a more thoughtful, well-reasoned person with a better understanding of why I think what I think, and for that push toward self-reflection, I am truly grateful. Thank you, Jared…sincerely.