Absolutely dying at the linguistic hoops she jumps through to say there are no maids. https://t.co/zKIRToq7zU
— zeddy (@Zeddary) December 8, 2021
Had to read US UMC three times before realizing she wasn't talking about the Marines.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) December 8, 2021
Context:
Another way to put this is that they would like to have the welfare state amenities of Denmark without giving up the consumption amenities of an American upper-middle-class household that, for example, assumes one bedroom and one bathroom per household member, plus ample closets. https://t.co/EtYw1gF07W
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) December 7, 2021
If I have to share a bedroom with my spouse and a bathroom with my offspring, is life even worth living? Also: *must* have ample closets!
mrmoshpotato
Bwhahahahahha!
Kent
I’m sure rich Danes can afford maids too.
danielx
I detect a hint of trolling.
Chetan Murthy
Wait, uh, she’s right, isn’t she? Upper-middle-class Americans have cleaners: heck, even not-so-upper-middle-class Americans do. I remember a discussion … here? at unfogged ? about this, and it was pretty clear that a lot of middle-class professionals have cleaners.[1] And all Ms. “Kids should rush the shooter” is saying is that these UMC types are not realizing that eventually, their lives will get less materially wealthy.
I remember an article …. 25yr ago, about how this was one big difference between Europe and the US: Americans worked many more hours, and used those hours to purchase goods and services that Europeans made for themselves, with the free time they got by not working so many hours.
[1] and sure, the UMC has more than cleaners, but even there, if you had to pay actual living wages to your cleaners [including for downtime, travel, etc], a lot of people wouldn’t be able to afford having them.
Cacti
I like how she thinks the average middle class American family lives in a home with one bedroom and bathroom per person.
LoL
Eolirin
@Chetan Murthy: Her analysis is mostly bullshit. They may have to give up maids if we start forcing them to pay those maids what they’re worth, but housing size and heating quality are not things that need to be given up, and are driven by entirely different dynamics than the generosity of our welfare state.
We have generally cheaper energy here, and likely will even after transistion to sustainable energy sources (assuming we pull that off, and if we don’t it won’t matter how big your house is because we’ll all be busy being dead), and we have massively more space.
Captain C
Perhaps she assumes one for the couple with an extra room for the night’s snorer?
Also, above offer does NOT apply in New York City, San Francisco, or, well, many other places (unless we stretch the definition of UMC to silly dimensions).
Eolirin
@Cacti: She doesn’t, or at least those tweets don’t indicate that she does. She’s referring to upper middle class households, the 10-1%ers as opposed to the 0.1%ers who have all the actual money.
mrmoshpotato
@Eolirin:
Stupid death. It eats up all your time.
Anne Laurie
Not average middle class, upper middle class. People who, in MeganWorld, are entitled to have servants.
(Average middle class just wishes they had servants — those are the ‘economically anxious’ wannabes storming the Capitol, or screaming at the waiters in the local chain restaurants for not having the right attitude… )
trollhattan
Knowing a few Danes I’d like to watch McArglebargle tell them how poorly heated their homes are. “And the furniture, so few curlicues!”
This ###ing waste of flesh leftover from Bush II, is she still pining for 9/11? Should’a done the grad school thing instead of bloggiing.
Eolirin
@Anne Laurie: At the very least, the idea that they should have to lose those things in favor of benefits that would accrue to everyone is viewed as a legitimate and inconsequential choice for a society to make instead of a massive moral failing.
The upper middle class she’s describing are more narcissistic and sociopathic than our actual upper middle class. (As a whole, there are definitely members of it that meet and exceed that standard)
Gretchen
The smaller houses take less time to clean. Megan doesn’t realize that she doesn’t need five bathrooms and therefore doesn’t need to hire someone to clean five bathrooms.
Cacti
@Eolirin: If you’re in the top 10%, you’re not in the middle of anything.
Gretchen
@Cacti: and that we all have cleaners.
trollhattan
Found this local columnist with thoughts on the truncated final term of Devin Cowboy Nunes. In case it’s paywalled, the closing.
Will any of the checks not bounce? Experts disagree.
Eolirin
@Cacti: Middle class is already well outside of the median value for wealth distribution in the US.
Eolirin
@Cacti: Middle class is already well outside of the median value for wealth distribution in the US.
eclare
So, if I get her points:
1. Dems should tell UMC people to stop being whiny babies, and,
2. These UMC voters should not expect any policies to help them.
Feel free to tell me I’m wrong, because I really don’t know what she’s trying to convince people of other than Denmark sounds like a nice place to live.
And is UMC a common term now? I grew up United Methodist and kept thinking United Methodist Church?
Eolirin
@Cacti: Middle class is already well outside of the median value for wealth distribution in the US.
Eolirin
Sorry for the multiple posts hopefully someone can clean these up.
eclare
@Eolirin: Same thing happened to me on the blog about the same time last night.
Eolirin
@eclare: I think her point is really more, upper middle class Democrats are trying to have it both ways, with an implication that you can’t have socially benefical policy without curtailing the ability for wealthy people to spend money the way they’re currently used to
Just using extremely inane examples.
I think that analysis is flawed anyway, but it’s especially stupid given the things she chose to highlight.
eclare
@Eolirin: I guess I would need her to define what upper middle class means, because it depends so much on where you live.
The people I know who I guess would be upper middle class did not have maids, worried a good deal about putting their kids through college (two state schools and one athletic scholarship), and when the husband lost his job around 2008 found out how quickly fortunes can change
Another stupid word salad from her.
Chetan Murthy
@Eolirin: So, I think I actually disagree with some of your other points (e.g. regarding energy, size of houses, etc), but they’re neither here nor there: not necessary for this discussion, since we can just focus it on your summary
isn’t she right? Again, to me she’s Ms. “kids should rush the shooter” McArgleBargle, so I’d as soon trust her as shoot her, but still, in this particular case, isn’t she right, that the UMC will end up having to live a materially less-rich life, eventually? I remember reading about (maybe even here) “opportunity hoarders” — UMC parents who do everything to make sure their kids will have successful lives, including pulling every string they can, paying for their kids lifestyles during unpaid internships, and on and on. Eventually, if we’re to have a more-equitable society, that sort of thing has to stop: quite simply, the vast mass of Americans who aren’t even acknowledged in McArgleBargle’s tweet (the ones who couldn’t afford a cleaner if their life depended on it) will need to have much greater access to the kind of job that today requires unpaid internships to access — and that means that somebody has to be taxed, somebody has to be poorer, so that those unpaid internships become proper jobs (so that poor kids can afford to even try for them).
OK, enough words. I hate her and her kind. But in this case, I think she’s just trying to, y’know, scare some richie-rich Dems into becoming GrOPers: “ooga-booga they’re comin’ for your Lexus!”
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: Or ooga-booga *those* people will be coming to the burbs. Which tfg did use (or tried to use) as a threat.
Eolirin
@eclare: I think it’s just a fundamental misread of the dynamic regardless of where she puts the line. Given the staggering amounts of wealth in this country, consumption isn’t really the trade off for social welfare, power is.
What the upper middle class gives away is not their large houses or ability to buy things, it’s their level of exclusive access to large houses and ability to buy things. It’s the quantities of people desperate enough to make maid services affordable. It’s the ability to ensure that they have better educational opportunities. That they can get better medical care.
Eolirin
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t think that follows, at least not that much. The actual wealth in the US right now is massively consolidated into the hands of the top 0.1% and the upper middle class doesn’t need to be made materially less well off to the point that their levels of consumption would change that dramatically, except with respect to things like maids and that’s more driven by a need to rebalance labor costs than by things like taxation or wealth reduction through other means.
Like, when you say, that there will need to be much greater access to the kind of jobs that the upper middle class currently goes for in order for us have a more equitable society? No, absolutely not, maids just need to make as much as computer programmers. (Yes I know this doesn’t work for this example because it would break the market for maids entirely, but I hope my point gets across anyway.)
Health care and education are still real costs to that group, so tax increases are partially offset by not having to pay for those things anymore, etc.
Most social programs would still benefit them, even if not by as much. What they lose is their privilege and exclusive access. They can’t hoard opportunities the same ways and will need to compete more.
Chetan Murthy
@Eolirin:
But that is something they currently spend money for: houses in the right school districts, private schools, expensive colleges, all of this is part of opportunity hoarding, and it’s via spending money. And they’ll have to stop that, so that others can get some of those opportunities.
Personally, I know a professor in France, at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, a stellar academic career, and he is seriously underpaid compared to any American professor of his rank in his field; sure, his kids education and his pension & medical care are paid-for, but when he travels, he pinches pennies in a way that a US professor in his field at, say, Harvard, would not.
That’s a good thing, just to be clear. But if we’re to arrive at our better society, eventually the well-paid STEM profs of our leading universities will find their material lives somewhat impoverished.
oatler
Megan’s breed LOVE to hate Europe. It’s like the “Jimmy Carter was history’s greatest monster” trope. But offer them free trip to one of those “Marxist” countries and they’d cream their pants with delight.
opiejeanne
@eclare: I thought she was referring to the United Methodist Church for a second too, but it made no sense. Same reason as you.
opiejeanne
@eclare: She doesn’t know who the upper middle class are or how they live. I suspect she also doesn’t know how the Danish live.
opiejeanne
@eclare: That racist Ooga-booga was what we heard when BART was expanded to our little burg, Castro Valley CA, in the 90s. Those people from Oakland will be coming here, oh no! If they did they would have died of boredom.
Elizabelle
It’s Meghan McArdle, Jake.
Couldn’t care less what that moron is blogging about. Refuse to give her a click. I think an earlier column was about how women would not rise up in the streets over the end of Roe v. Wade. Dunno, cuz refuse to click.
Sloane Ranger
This woman knows nothing about lifestyles in Denmark, or western Europe generally.
Firstly, Danish homes are extremely well heated (and insulated). It’s the climate, stupid!
Secondly, while smaller than American houses, new builds in Europe are increasingly being built with an en-suite in the master bedroom plus a family bathroom. It makes sense when both parents need to get themselves and their children ready for work/school. I can remember the rota my mother ran every Monday-Friday to get my Dad, my brother and me through the washing/breakfasting routine in time with our single bathroom.
Lastly, I don’t know specifically about Denmark, but in the UK, many people employ cleaners who come in a couple of hours a week to give the house a good going-over, meaning only a bit of light cleaning is required during the rest of the week. Hell, I did it myself pre-COVID and I’m not that wealthy. She had a list of clients, came to me 9am – 11am and then left for her next client. I assume that sort of arrangement is common throughout western Europe, including Denmark.
No doubt this person thinks that the Dutch still wear clogs, London still has pea-soupers etc.
NotMax
Things are looking up. Tonight’s storm sponsored power outage clocked in at a mere 3½ hours.
Starfish
@trollhattan: Matt, Meghan, and others have been going on like this for weeks, and the actual Europeans have been making fun of them. The assumed lack of consumption and other nonsense. Is it really a better life to struggle at every interaction with the medical system and to deal with rampant homelessness than it is to have clothes dryers that don’t work as well?
Starfish
@Chetan Murthy: She is actually sitting comfortably in the upper class and making fun of lower upper class people because she has the country club and does not have to make actual friends.
NotMax
Embodiment of putting lipstick on a prig.
//
Jinchi
@Chetan Murthy:
Not by any sensible definition of the term middle class, and you can’t be “upper middle class” unless you still fall inside those brackets.
McArdle isn’t worried about even the wealthiest sliver of the middle class. She’s worried that Elon Musk might only get to own half of Mars.
Kirk Spencer
I’m still boggling at the ability to afford at least a 4 bed/4 bath house being any flavor of middle class. It seems obvious to me that if being in the top 1% is still only middle class then the income balance is broken or the 1 percenters claiming they’re not rich are delusional. Or both.
Elizabelle
I was struck by comments from a jackal on sabbatical in Scandinavia a few years ago — maybe dmsilev?? — who said he had noticed the lack of fear at unexpected medical expenses/the vagaries of life in the Europeans he met.
They have a better safety net, and more value for actual human experience. There’s not the underlying terror at having the ground fall away.
In the US, we can lose our homes over medical bankruptcies, and job loss. And do.
Elizabelle
@Starfish: I would love to see more tweets from the Europeans making fun of these ridiculous “pundits.”
And interesting that it’s a coordinated effort by the glibertarian set. What brought this on??
p.a.
McMeagan’s ideas on Denmark’s housing , and I’m no Denmark expert, were apparently set in amber in 1946.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: You live in interesting times. Good to hear.
Van Buren
@Sloane Ranger: I, too, was immediately puzzled by the inference of shoddy Danish design.
I live in the UMC hellhole of the North Shore of Long Island. Cleaning ladies get about 50 an hour. I think it’s a fair wage.
Jinchi
Which is the counterpoint to McArdle’s nonsense. Being able to afford a home used to be considered the standard for being middle class in America. But home prices and rents have far outstripped average income over the last few decades. The wealthy have siphoned off most of the wealth as they’ve become exponentially richer.
McArdle probably isn’t remotely in the middle class, but she feels (upper) middle class because she looks around and sees what middle class in America are ‘supposed’ to have.
MagdaInBlack
What an ignorant twit she is.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Purely by chance I had ordered a spiffy looking rechargeable (and quite portable) desk lamp late last month when it was on limited time reduced price special sale, and it arrived on Tuesday, as it turns out right in time to test it under optimal conditions.
Tony Jay
A quick update from my minor rant last night (it’s comment 5) about Flobalob’s latest bellyflop into Lake Fuck-Up over here in the UK.
A) Tory backbenchers are apparently livid and/or getting scorched by their constituents over the revelation that Downing St was hosting Christmas booze-ups last year while the country was in Lockdown, and then lied shamelessly about it. Many are openly refusing to back their Leader.
B) Tory frontbenchers have refused and/or been pulled from their planned round of TV and radio appearances this morning. Not a one of them is sticking their heads up over the parapet to defend Flobalob or lie any further about Partygate. That’s a terminal event in the political life of any Prime Minister.
C) This afternoon is Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament. Flobalob is due to march in there naked as a newborn slug, without a shred of pre-delivered chaff from his ‘loyal cabinet’ to hide behind. The SNP spokesman Ian Blackford has already called for Johnson to resign. Labour leader Starmer has been as dithering and politically inept as usual, poo pooing calls for a Police investigation and saying an apology should suffice. Other MPs will likely not be as cringingly pathetic IF Johnson bothers to turn up.
D) Loud rumblings from the Financial Times that the Government are going to throw an almighty Dead Cat onto the table in the form of a Plan B announcement: Working from Home and restrictions on social/hospitality events in the light of Omicron’s spread. Tory anti-Vax backbenchers already opining that Partygate makes imposition of a Plan B effectively impossible, but what else do they have?
E) Food tasters at Buckingham Palace working overtime and a general alert has gone out to all potential terrorists to keep their heads down today, no coincidental distractions.
Popcorn. Beer. Footstool. You may begin.
lowtechcyclist
@Starfish:
All that, and our most precious, fleeting asset: time.
Workers in practically every European country have a reasonable work week, and several weeks of paid vacation.
Here in America, the loopholes in the 40-hour week are extensive (don’t apply to managers, professionals, etc., and ‘manager’ can mean a shift manager at a MickeyD’s who’s making just $1.50/hour more than the rest of the crew), and there’s no universal requirement of any paid vacation or sick leave. IT people I’ve known say a 60-hour week is basically expected of them. That’s fucking insane. Europe’s doing it right.
raven
Anyone else watching “Maid”? We really liked it.
Soprano2
We live in the older part of town and have an old house; when we built our shed, we put in a toilet so we’d have two! Someday when we sell the house the first thing the buyer will probably do is figure out how to add another bathroom. On the other end of the scale, when the city smoke tested the sewer many years ago we had a call from a man who had eight bathrooms in his house! We told him to make sure to run water in all those drains so he didn’t get smoke in his house. Who needs eight bathrooms?
Starfish
@Elizabelle:
Look further up in this thread. It is Matthew Yglesias and Josh Barro being insufferable.
Look at Matthew. From various estimates, he is making a million dollars a year off his substack, so he is spending his time dunking on the upper middle class who spend money on reading substacks.
ian
@Eolirin:
This is the point I was going to make. The distinction between ‘upper middle class’ and ‘semi-wealthy’ is rhetorical at best. It is word salad designed to make well off professional people feel like they are part of a greater block of normality. I can also see it cutting the other way as well, a term used by ‘normal middle class’ to make themselves feel more successful. These are not definable policy terms, and each person’s definition will vary.
Jørgen
@Sloane Ranger: As a Dane, my experience is that using a weekly cleaning service is quite common. Many of my acquaintances do this. Even my father-in-law used a weekly cleaning service, and he was by no means upper middle class, living only on his state pension. The pension is not generous, it is less than a minimum wage job.
Betty
@Tony Jay: Looks like things are coming to a head. Too bad there doesn’t seem to be a better alternative at hand.
Sloane Ranger
@Tony Jay: Don’t know if you’re still around Tony, but I think Keir did a pretty good job. He even brought in the Queen as a contrast, which is likely to appeal to traditional Tory voters.
Taking the issue out of politics and making it about leadership and modelling required behaviour allows him and Labour to take the high moral ground.
The other thing I noticed was how quiet the government benches were. For Americans, normally when their guy is under attack, government backbenchers are there jeering and cat-calling loudly. This time I didn’t detect as much as a hoot.
This reminds me very much of the last days of the Major government. It wasn’t so much any single scandal or any particular bit of sleaze that brought it down, it was thing piling on another thing and then another, until the proverbial straw happened.
Tony Jay
@Betty:
No, but every journey begins with a single step.
Eventually the Labour Party will elect a genuine leader, purge the rabble wrecking it at present and start turning things around.
Until then, there’s a used handkerchief in the corner with smears of baby sick and old dog food on it. Still a massive leg up on Johnson. it can be in charge.
ThresherK
Has McArdle ever posted a photo of her Kitchen Aid stand mixer with ingredients spattered on it?
Tony Jay
@Sloane Ranger:
Starmer is what he is, a transparent hand-puppet for big-money donors who want a long-running franchise to take over when the time comes for a change of background colour. His weakness in the face of Johnson’s predictable evasiveness has gone beyond a quirk and into Renfield territory.
How hard is it to demand that Johnson and everyone who was at that Party or knew about that Party and lied about it resign? Sure, they won’t do it, but it’s the Opposition’s job to get that marker laid down for when Johnson inevitably tries to throw some low-level SPAD or advisor under the bus and move on.
There’s a Tory Party civil-war happening and a lot more to leak out. By not getting out in front of it now so he can say booting Johnson (which they will) isn’t nearly enough, Starmer is proving once again that he and his team of backroom trolls are utterly useless at any political activity that doesn’t revolve around exploiting internal Party rules to expel non-centre right members.
But that’s just my opinion. 8-) Maybe the shitty weather is making me stabby.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Elizabelle: I traveled in Sweden for two weeks in the summer of 2019. Great trip. EVERY building I saw was in immaculate shape – just spectacularly good repair. EVERY car on the road looked like a late model or a well restored classic car (there were a ton of classic car shows featuring mostly mid-century American cars) – I saw not a single broken down jalopy of a car on the road. By all outward appearances the entire country looks like an American upper middle class neighborhood, except there aren’t any huge McMansions anywhere, just standard-sized American family homes.
So, like, there are plenty of houses the size of my current one. What there aren’t are the oversized houses that the well off in America buy to financially measure their dicks against the other well off folks. The thing is the Swedes don’t even really seem to want that anyway. They seem content with enough living space rather than too much.
cmorenc
You can use the fact that RWers will never admit that Denmark (or any of the Scandinavian countries) are economic and social success stories that produce a happier society than the US, to subtly detect the politics of another person you’ve met in a setting where it’s impolite or unwise to overtly bring up politics, Remark about how economically prosperous, civil and happy people seem to be in Denmark and Scandinavian countries. RWers will feel compelled to try to debunk the Denmark success/happiness story, and also point out that (even aside from denying its success) Denmark is a small country with a homogeneous population (unlike the US) and so whatever they’re doing couldn’t possibly work here.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@raven: Re “Maid”- it’s excellent. I just recommended it to a young relative of ours, who’s struggling to get her life back together after leaving her abusive spouse.
Just One More Canuck
Is there anyone more clueless than Megan McArgleBargle?
superdestroyer
@Kent: Think about the upper middle class being able to afford a lawn service, a cleaning service, or a handyman versus having to do it all themselves.
Elizabelle
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Good comment. I’d noticed the late model cars and cleanliness (also that Swedes speak English very well and without an accent).
The key. Greediness. And dick-measuring. We’re number one!!
Elizabelle
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I love also that Europeans live, happily, in buildings that are hundreds of years old. Not a tear-down society. They improve the buildings and live in them another century or two. (I am writing this from Germany, where the building next door dates from the 1400s. My friend’s neighbors live in a former ballroom, with centuries old window glass.)
European land use is so much better.
Walkable cities. Trains! Trains! Trains! That run on time, and are relatively inexpensive. EU standards for food and home products, more stringent than our own.
Those who sneer prove themselves to be those slow on the uptake.
NWO Joe
“Another way to put this is that they would like to have the welfare state amenities of Denmark without giving up the consumption amenities of an American upper-middle-class household that, for example, assumes one bedroom and one bathroom per household member, plus ample closets.”
I have a studio apartment; hell, I LIVE in an ample closet.
JaneE
My cousin married an architect. Of course their home was a mansion and a showplace, somewhere north of 7,000 sf. When we visited them my mother asked her how she managed to keep it clean. My aunt just said “she has help”. Different expectations.
TheTruffle
How does McMegan keep getting published? Does she own blackmail photos that she shares with Chris Cillizza?
Nutmeg again
She’s such a dope! I wish we all had gigs that paid like hers, to be dopes, in public where everyone could see us.
My adult kid lives in Europe–not Denmark, but close (very very close, in fact). What Megan McDope seems not to get is that the entire system is different, is built around the idea (1) that people’s lives basically matter*, and (2) work is not the be-all and end-all, and (3) quality of life matters.
To take a for example, my kid’s out-laws have an xx bedroom house, with at least two bathrooms (honestly, plenty for a mostly retired couple with grown kids)–bathrooms with heated floors, mind you. And this is nummer (4) everything from door latches to bathroom design to coffee machines to whatever is designed and carried through to last, be highly functional, attractive, and basically not be plastic shit. It’s amazing! And still the economy thunders on. Yes, they are both professionals, educated (by the state, thank you)–grew up (a) on a farm, and (b) child of a rural baker. Not privileged rich kids. Harrumpf.
*Sadly, exceptions still apply.