Why are Dutch kids so happy?
A McDonald’s worker confronts the CEO.
Nice house, horrible people.
The sports debate hit the New York Times.
The architecture of autism. WOW!
A Tom Waits song this afternoon.
I’m a long time fan of the Pogues, so this news is sad.
I’m enjoying the Gladwell-academic fight enormously.
Apt. 11d 
I don’t think they’re horrible people and yet I dislike them nonetheless. You don’t get to be penny pinchers when you’re grown adults that have accepted a huge financial gift from your parents to buy a more than $2 million house.
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Hmm, I don’t see why they’re horrible people. Partly, I don’t see anything wrong with (i) getting an inheritance (though my own will probably be modest) or (ii) sinking a big chunk of money into a house and pennypinching elsewhere. I mean, we use silverware and copper pans every day, which means we not only have to buy the things themselves, but hire someone to polish them. At the same time, I bring my lunch to work because it’s cheaper than the cafeteria. What’s “horrible” about that kind of choice?
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I assume you could afford to eat at the cafeteria every day if you wanted, you just choose not to because you get some personal satisfaction from the money you save. That’s different than not being able to afford to eat at the cafeteria or choosing to eat at the cafeteria but foregoing some other luxury because financial constraints don’t allow you to do both.
There’s nothing wrong with receiving a large inheritance but if you do you don’t get also enjoy the benefits of acting as if you’re still middle-class. Take the money, be extremely appreciative for what you have, and keep your mouth shut about how you had to spend more than you wanted for the chandelier for your million-plus dollar home.
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Allowing the NYT to profile you for a lifestyle piece is sufficient, but I suppose not necessary, to establish that a person is horrible.
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Amen, @MH. It’s the context here of bragging and oversharing in the NYT lifestyle pages aspect that invites criticism.
Old school etiquette says it’s crass to talk so openly and so specifically about private wealth – here we’re told the source and the exact amount of the money, and are treated to the donee’s misguided anxiety over needing to pennypinch while living at that price point. Why share that?
I’ll grant that “horrible” may be too strong a word. There’s the sense the Andersons have broken some social rules around money.
There’s a difference between being frugal privately, where it only affects you (i.e. keeping meticulous track of your every expense, making your own coffee at home) versus being cheap publicly, where it harms others (undertipping, stealing sugar packets) and neglects social capital (giving a too cheap, non-registry wedding gift after you and your well-off family of 4 attended a wedding-as-weekend).
We as a society like to frown upon overspending, but underspending is also a problem (but not for the Andersons).
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It’s not horrible to be rich and frugal at the same time. It’s horrible to not be self-aware about it. Most people pinch pennies, because they don’t have dollars to spend. The owner of the brownstone talks about shopping at the paris flea market and decorators in one sentence, and then concerns about expenses in the next. I suppose it’s fine to talk about a $3 million dollar brownstone and “pennypinching” when she’s around other rich people, but in a national newspaper, it triggers a gag reflex. That same article without the information about $$ would have been harmless.
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I think the impulse to talk about extravagance in the same breath as frugality is to convey some sense of “we worry about money just like you!” when it actually conveys just the opposite, a lack of awareness that they’re quite a bit different from 99.9% of people out there. It’s fine just to say “we’re extremely lucky to have received a generous gift so that we could live in our dream home” and leave it at that.
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I think it is also possible or likely that one or both of these people grew up middle-class and still think of themselves that way even if they no longer have to deal with the kinds of financial trade-offs that middle-class people do.
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It’s the antlers that did it for me – she’s missing the ceramic owls, chevron pattern and marquee letters.
With social media, decor choices move quickly into cliches.
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“but if you do you don’t get also enjoy the benefits of acting as if you’re still middle-class.”
What exactly are the benefits of acting like you’re still middle class? Interesting comments, ’cause that’s what caught my eye, too, the “horrible people” comment. I read the article trying to figure out why and couldn’t (except maybe the worked for TFA thing, but that’s only terrible among very narrow social circles who worry about the impact of TFA on producing a temporary K-12 teaching workforce, and I didn’t think that was the issue here).
We know a lot of people who grew up “middle class” (though generally an educated middle class, with elite universities in their background) and who are far wealthier than they every expected. They expected to be comfortable, but ended up in situations where decisions about 3M houses, private schools, college costs, second homes, can be made without thought of money. Sometimes this results in let them eat cake moments. Some of them turn into horrible people, but most of them are not.
Love the house and the beautiful woodwork. Don’t particularly care for the decor. I would have liked to hear how much work was done on the house. Can you get a house that looks like that for 2.7M in Park Slope. Or is that what it looks like adding another 500K of renovation and hard work?
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I think the architecture of autism group house article had some fascinating aspects, but thought the architect and the architecture sounded like what I not infrequently feel about architect initiated design — that they are designing for how they think people should live rather than how they actually live.
With the general statement being made more dramatic in this case because the architect is designing for a group of atypical people who have very individual needs.
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bj,
Could you expand on that thought?
I’ve learned a lot from the Not-So-Big-House books, although we’ve wound up living in a So-Big-House, but I do feel good about the fact that every single room gets used every single day.
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I was looking in the comments, and the Dutch commenters feel like the stuff about their school system is wildly misplaced. They think that their system (which sounds similar to the highly-tracked German system) is very stressful and is so starting from an early age.
The blogger’s kid isn’t anywhere near school age, which accounts for the difference in perspective.
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