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<p>But it is an unusual luxury good, in that the poor get it for free.</p>
<p>Although we children of the 60s should have been the givers, we didn’t follow through very well. Our children, however, will be givers. imho I think they are going to change the world in wonderful ways we can’t even imagine and part of that will probably be because they live in a time of such uncertainty. How can they plan? Nothing makes sense. We burdened and handicapped them, but I think they are going to rise to the challenge. I hope I get to see how it all turns out. And I’m going to try to just stay out of their way from here on out.</p>
<p>"“Feeling rich” is an interesting definition. It reminds me of a conversation I had with friends a few years after we all graduated from law school. Someone asked everyone around the room to raise their hands if they felt like they were an adult, and nobody raised their hand. We were all in our late 20’s, working as lawyers, living a supposedly adult life, many of us married as well, but nobody felt like an adult. Why? Because when we thought of what an “adult” was, we thought of our own parents. Nobody is going to “feel rich” until they’re living the kind of life that has been caricatured in TV and movies for years (personally, I think I’d need at least a butler before I’d feel rich). You’d get a lot more responses if you asked people if they felt “financially secure.”"</p>
<p>I would have said I was an adult at age 21. I had a huge amount of responsibility, flying generals, senators, and medevac missions across the country. There was no doubt. But no matter the amount of income or net worth, nobody in my or my husband’s family would say they were rich. It was understood that it would be arrogant and conceited to claim that. You would just say you have saved a lot, or made a good income.</p>
<p>My family didn’t really discuss money. I was shocked when my grandparents died, ( my mom was an only child), even though they lived into their mid to late '80’s, and grandpa never attended high school, they left well into the 7 figures.</p>
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Just bcs something is elite doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. UC Berkeley is elite, and its in-state tuition rate is a bargain. Cooper Union is (was?) free.</p>
<p>And conversely, just bcs something is expensive doesn’t make it elite. There are a lot of not-so-selective private schools that charge the same list price as Harvard.</p>
<p>If Harvard was simply a luxury good, then there would be no good argument for why poor kids should get support to go there.</p>
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No. “The poor” who get into Harvard have to earn their way in with years and years of effort and accomplishments. It is not simply a matter of Harvard using its largesse to do something charitable for poor students. And of course not all poor students get to go to Harvard. It serves the university’s mission to have a student body made up of different perspectives, socioeconomic background being one of them. They get something out of it too.</p>
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Seems to me the “unpoor” also have to earn their way in with years and years of effort and accomplishments, AND they have to open their wallets and pay a heck of a lot of money for it, too.</p>
<p>Yes, for sure. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. I was simply commenting on sorghum’s repeated suggestion that being poor is a golden ticket into Harvard.</p>
<p>Harvard is a horrible example. Harvard’s Pell students hover around the 10% level, for one thing. They don’t take a great number of truly disadvantaged students. On top of that, Harvard offers financial aid to the middle class. Harvard isn’t like other schools. It’s silly to use it’s financial aid as an example of anything except for why endowments at privates should NOT be tax exempt.</p>
<p>Sorghum, so what that the poor get it for free? The % of poor people who are “lifted” by getting free tuition to H et al is vanishingly small. Feel free to give up everything you have and live on much less if it’s such a wonderful perk. </p>
<p>And paraplegics get to park close to the mall entrance, too. </p>
<p>Resentment of those who have LESS because they have one bright spot in their lives isn’t pretty. Gee , maybe I should resent the cashier at Target because she gets a discount on her purchases and I have to pay full price. </p>
<p>Thought experiment. Let’s say your favorite splurge (let’s make it a luxury hotel in Tahiti) routinely held a giveaway in which they held x number of rooms aside and gave them to poor, underprivileged people for free. Would you all “resent” that the same way you all “resent” the poor slobs who get Harvard for free? </p>
<p>I interpreted the OP’s question as why people, 1-3%ers, aren’t feeling as rich as 1-3%ers in the past. It’s an interesting question in its own since there are more of them. In a way they set the social tone more than 0.1-0.01%ers.</p>
<p>It still doesn’t matter because the kid whose parents make $300k and goes to a school a step down is still well ahead of the kid whose parents are poor but gets into Harvard. You guys have this odd , unsophisticated, fawning vision of Harvard as the life-transforming city on a hill. It’s just a college. The majority of people who go there go to work and go home just like everyone else - they aren’t changing the world. Really, I am embarrassed for some of the people who treat Harvard et al the way they do. </p>
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<p>I never said it is a golden ticket INTO Harvard, just a golden ticket when at Harvard. And I don’t resent it, I just think it should be added into the balance when comparing 50K vs 200K income. </p>
<p>The comparison with paraplegics is tasteless and silly.</p>
<p>Cake for all! Cake for all!</p>
<p>There are 150-200 poor students that get into Harvard a year? There are over 50 million poor people? </p>
<p>Sorghum, and you want to add these scholarships to the amount poor people have when comparing poor people to others. </p>
<p>Ok. </p>
<p>Add 20 cents to what poor people have.</p>
<p>I consider my family to be “rich.” We’re in the 3-5%, we have a good amount in savings, paid for an expensive school, live in an OK house in the nicest neighborhood in a small city, take nice vacations and buy a lot of fancy techie products ( most made by Apple). No yachts. No fancy cars. No designer clothes or shoes. I have never compared our purchases or activities to anyone else and never felt pressure to upgrade. I would say that the ONLY reason I don’t feel “rich” is that I can’t afford that lifestyle in a city like New York or San Francisco unless I significantly downsized from a 3 bedroom to a studio apartment.</p>
<p>I was “poor” growing up – definitely lower middle class. We could afford to eat out at McDonalds once a year; that was a big treat. I shared a bedroom with a sibling and dealt with cockroaches and mice in a crummy apartment. So yes, I do feel rich now. I fully understand that our income places us in the top of this country, so that if someone asked me if I were rich, I’d say yes. Am I really that unusual?</p>
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<p>No, you can parody what was actually said as much as you like. The value of the scholarship can be added to the 50K a year of the poor family who wants the 200K a year folk to confess to being rich.</p>
<p>This affects 150-200 people a year. </p>
<p>Here’s an interesting chart from wikitopia. If the chart is credible, I see why rich people don’t feel rich. It takes far more to be rich these days compared to 1984.</p>
<p><a href=“Affluence in the United States - Wikipedia”>Affluence in the United States - Wikipedia;
