As I keep saying to people, the Establishment is fucking seductive. =-P

Fucking seductive? Man, I once went to Seattle to see the Ring Cycle (Rich grandparents gave a graduation gift to a young and poor wagnerphile) and this is exactly what 90% of the audience looked like. Rich people are a million times more tasteful now than in, say, 1920. Not "Box at the opera and all the jewelry you can pile on." But all their outfits and all the food and the music they sponsored was this level of "perfect" that 99.999% of humanity will never taste.

Have you ever had one of those Foie Gras' that costs like $50? It's actually worth every penny in taste terms. Although shitrichcollegekidssay.tumblr.com is evidence of how bad it can backfire.

(My grandfather was VP of West Michigan's second-largest garden supplies firm, and his daughters married a comedy author and an architect. The income disparity in the family almost makes me laugh sometimes if it wasn't so tragic.)

I'm always amazed by that sense of class in America - because it's a source of comedy in Malcolm in the Middle and Family Guy and tonnes of others - rich stingy "greatest generation" people disapproving of marrying between income brackets

Because they don't want to share.
See, to keep the system in place, American culture subscribes to the mythology that wealth is created by merit, and there's a correlation between hard work and eventual monetary gain. (Which is bullshit, as any economist knows, it's supply-side labor myth. There has to be demand for there to be a curve. People aren't going to pay me to bang a manhole with a sledgehammer, no matter how hard I work at it. I may charge admission, though.)
So, from that perspective, poor people simply don't deserve your lovely daughter, they aren't hardworking enough or smart enough to be rich.

The reason we let that system go on is because (this is hard to explain to Europeans in my experience) we like Horatio Algar stories. Rags to Riches. It's an integral concept to everything about America - how it's unfair to base classes on parentage, but it's actually okay to base classes on income, because you can get a better social class if you just work harder for me and earn more money. You may hate the fact that rich people have it perfect, but think, with practice, you too can one day be that rich guy and have it perfect! Better to have perfection someplace no one can reach than quality spread around equally. The first is Jesus and the second is Communism.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-thing.....o-stop-saying/ David Wong, as always, is among the most "always right" people on the planet. Here's pretty much everything you need to know about rich people in here - and most of the guys you see being quoted are prominent politicians over here.

_{I sadly inherited tinges this mentality from my culture - I really, really want a yacht, I love sailing and yachts are fun. And my first thought when I read about the state of migrant workers in the Middle East (you've seen that shit, passports confiscated by the foreman, appalling working conditions, 4,000 dead to build a stadium, pictures of families that stuck their Asian maid in the trunk between the luggage while they went on vacation) - "God, if I'm rich, I can own slaves? Sweet. I want to be rich, richness sounds awesome." Tells you something right there...}

For myself - my experience is 90% the nervous ambition of the English lower middle class, beautifully written about by George Orwell and others.

I have met the kind of emotionless horrors who end up becoming Mayor of London and they are truly horrible people.

Any books on this I should check out? I've looked at his short stories, but only 1984 and Animal Farm really made impacts on me. (Of course, I've read the latter seven times XD)
But the English Class system still fascinates me... how the very accent of a country changed in just over a century, that's how desperate people are to escape their lot in life. I have, however, been to Belfast, and that little bit of strain of the social ladder kind of agitates the atmosphere. (Being Irish and half-catholic half-presbyterian, I can assure you I can tell that strain apart from religious tension XD) I can't imagine living in the thick of it 0~0
"Nervous Ambition" is just the perfect word for that atmosphere...


Well, I'm already fascinated by serial killers, why not the sociopathic rich? ^^
You want to compare horror stories of politicians? This'll be fun. (popcorn) So what's the Mayor like?
_{(Hmmm... Well, we can always start with the senator last year who told the press that it's impossible to get pregnant from "legitimate rape," because "the female body has ways of shutting that thing down." I don't know if you heard of that in the news... I'm not sure if he was trying to top this, another senator gave a speech the following month that said embryology is a "nonexistant science" and evolution is "lies straight from the pit of hell." Yeah, 'Embryos do not exist?' Seriously?
Representative and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann stated in the press that "there is no study that proves Carbon Dioxide to be a harmful gas," "there are hundreds of nobel prize-winning scientists who believe in Intelligent Design," that gay youth kill themselves "maybe because of what they're doing," that we could gain 100% employment by abolishing the minimum wage, and suggested that lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge should "repent" after getting cancer. She almost won the presidential nomination.
http://www.thebachmannrecord.com/th.....mannrecod.html
In 2/3 of the country by state, you can be legally fired for being transgender; in my home state it's illegal for me to own a house with another gay man or adopt a child; at present it's illegal for me as an LGBT to donate blood (according to the law, it's my job to prove that I don't have AIDS), and ever since the '70s, part of the right-wing argument has been that since gay people can't have kids, they "recruit" and rape your children to turn them gay. This country scares the piss out of me.)}