The Seat We Deserve

The place of honor is closest to the host (Bible Art)

Today's Gospel from the lectionary is about the sin of pride, which causes us to grasp what we think is our rightful place, but we run the risk of "disgrace."

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."----Luke 14:7-11

Secular success does not guarantee a good position at the heavenly banquet. The Host values humility and will place us in the seat we deserve.

The Private-Jet Money Club

Last year we noted a WSJ article about how the super-rich signal their wealth to each other and to the merely rich. Owning items such as watches and art are only the first step; talking about them with casual insouciance is a practiced skill.

Flying private makes it easier to bring Fifi (Citrin-Safadi/WSJ)

Another item discussed in that article--flying on a private jet--has become the number one marker of real wealth.

Flying private has become the ultimate luxury splurge for many wealthy individuals, surpassing Ferraris, Hermès Birkin bags topping $14,000 or even waterfront Hamptons homes. For many of those aspiring to join the ranks of the truly rich, having “private-jet money” is the new goal, dividing the 1% from the 0.1%.

The pandemic unleashed a burst of demand, but providers say popular culture has turbocharged enthusiasm and envy for the fly-private lifestyle. Social media has given younger people a glimpse into the lives of jet-setters, whether it is a model flying with friends to a bachelorette party in Los Cabos, Mexico, or a hedge-fund manager hopping a plane to a birthday weekend in St. Barts.

...The club of ultrahigh net worth individuals with more than $30 million in assets hit a record in 2024, according to estimates from the wealth-intelligence provider Altrata. The U.S. added more than 1,000 millionaires every day last year on average, according to UBS. The billionaire club grew more than 50% between 2015 and 2024.

Thee are surely sub-categories within the private-jet club, ranging from those who lease the planes occasionally to those who own the plane outright and pay their crews as full-time employees (much like the difference between owning a time-share versus the entire property).

Note: Grok describes the difference between the 1% and the 0.1%.

As of Q2 2024, the average wealth of households in the top 1% in the U.S. is about $35.5 million, while the top 0.1% have an average wealth of over $158.6 million. This means the top 0.1% hold roughly 4.5 times more wealth per household than the top 1%. The top 1% collectively hold 30.3% of total U.S. wealth ($43.45 trillion), while the top 0.1% own 13.5% of it. The wealth gap reflects the concentration of assets like corporate equities and business income among the ultra-wealthy.

Not Just for Nerds

Jacques Marie Mage - Dealan $870

Always on the lookout for status symbols that I can afford, these "beefy" eyeglasses can be purchased for under $1,000.

Founded in 2014 by French designer Jerôme Mage, Jacques Marie Mage (JMM) handcrafts super-luxe frames in Japan in limited runs. While it offers a range of unisex styles, its signature remains the dark, square, acetate designs (see: the black Dealan and Molino models). Weighty at about 50g, and accented with precious-metal details, these eyeglasses and sunglasses might as well be collectibles, with prices to match: They currently range from $770 to $2,400. You do not forget these in a cab or accidentally squash them while sunbathing.

In recent years the sculptural, subtly logoed designs have become the status glasses in certain circles of wealthy, fashionable men...

With its beefy black frames nodding to the ’50s and ’60s glamour of rock ’n’ roll and film stars from Buddy Holly to Marcello Mastroianni, the brand is staking a claim on a classic style. Stylish celebs including LeBron James, Michael Fassbender, Jeff Goldblum and Denzel Washington have sported the glasses.

The culture has moved on; beneath the Clark-Kent look may just lie a Man of Steel.

Not the McDonald's Demographic

The $14 honeymoon oyster at Water Grill is topped
with roe, sea urchin and a quail egg. (Cahill/WSJ)

The hottest trend in fancy restaurants: single-bite dishes that can cost $30.

Tiny portions of intricately assembled ingredients are gracing menus. Many incorporate caviar, seafood or Wagyu beef. The bites are meant to start the meal, and many cost $20 to $30 each, often more than heartier appetizers.

For restaurants, it’s a way to fatten check totals, since customers remain just as likely to pay for larger plates. And customers order their own because they are too small to share. Diners are drawn to the novelty—and the social media hype.

It's a way to taste very expensive ingredients without breaking the bank, as well as have something to brag about on social media. However, I suspect that many old-timers like myself will gag at the (lack of) value proposition and decline to order. Life is simpler and cheaper when one doesn't care about how many hits one gets on Instagram.

Watching a Subspecies of Money Men

Last month we commented about how the super-rich signal their wealth to each other without making it obvious that's what they're trying to do. But not all of them, or those trying to be as wealthy as they are, are into that game at least when it comes to timepieces.

WSJ: The Anti-Status Watch: Why Men in Finance Love Cheap, Cheesy Watches

Sponge Bob and Avengers watches worn by financiers
Patrick Lyons and Leroy Dikito (WSJ/Lyons/Dikito)

Though finance guys famously flaunt Rolexes or Patek Philippes on their wrists, an established subspecies of money men goes the other way entirely. In place of a sleek steel case and elegant ceramic dial? Mickey Mouse. SpongeBob SquarePants. Fanta-orange rubber straps.

Over the years, highfliers have made headlines for sporting Swatches. (See: Blackstone Group CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman or former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.) That “wealthy guy, cheap watch” ethos continues to resonate in boardrooms and on trading floors, with men of all seniority levels embracing plasticky, offbeat designs, from superhero models to calculator Casios. Many resemble something you might win in a claw machine. Priced from $30 to a few hundred bucks, they’re a bit of fun and a different sort of flex, conveying an “I don’t need a Rolex” bravado that comes from having made it. Call them anti-status watches.

A practical reason for this anti-status affectation: cheap, everyday watches can be used as conversation starters in business conversations.

It's also possible to be viewed as truly wealthy, especially if everyone knows that a person is rolling in it, by not appearing to care about looking the part. The psychology of wealth, like the most important aspects of life, can be complicated.

They're Different from You and Me

I thought I was fairly knowledgable about communication--both verbal and non-verbal--but a segment of the population does not speak a language with which I'm familiar.

How the Super-Rich Signal Their Wealth to Each Other [bold added]

‘The Asprey,’ a Patek Philippe perpetual calendar
chronograph, pictured before it sold at Sotheby’s
for $3.88 million in 2018. (WSJ/Balibouse photo)

gauche display is out. A subtler set of cues and signifiers is required.

The most straightforward symbols start with watches. One Wall Street macher explained, “You see a gold Rolex Daytona, that’s one thing. You see a Patek Perpetual and you say to yourself, OK, this guy’s playing a different game.”

...Pretending to play down your wealth while emblazoning your net worth in neon requires a lightness of touch. You can’t say it outright, but you want it crystal clear.

It’s extra tricky in Manhattan, where you can’t employ the usual clues of estates and automobiles. Here, people live in apartments many stories up from the sidewalk and out of view. They tend to interact at restaurants and galas, and they never drive.

So everything depends on attitude. You must act like big things in life are, well, no biggie. When you can wrangle people to your abode, serve a tub of Ossetra caviar with Lay’s potato chips. Place it out like guacamole on the coffee table.

Verbal cues confer insider status. High-rollers in the art world now refer to the most rarefied paintings as “pictures.” Thus, for a would-be bidder, a $40-million Abstract Expressionist canvas by Rothko is not a “masterpiece painting” but a “picture.” For most people, a picture is what your 4-year-old paints with a thick brush and primary colors for Mother’s Day.

...Of course, how you travel is essential. As a former Wall Street bank chairman told me, “OK, so you went to St. Barts. So what? That tells me nothing. How’d you get there? That is key.”

To telegraph that you flew private over commercial, those fluent in the language of wealth-speak have created new verbs. People say, “We NetJetted into Aspen. We just had to.” Pause. “Because of the dogs.” Transporting “the dogs” is somehow a constant justification for private travel.

Owning your own jet is a huge notch up on the totem pole. The effort to be blasé about your new Gulfstream G650 can be positively tortured. To signal that your NetJetting days are over, you might drop into conversation with a sigh, “We’ve got to find a new pilot.” This should be said in the same tone as a wearied parent complaining about needing a new babysitter.

Most of the top tenth of 1 percent worked hard to get to where they are. However, they can't clip coupons and relax. They must continue to work hard to signal where they are, discreetly, on the totem pole.

Those Vagabond Shoes

(WSJ Illustration)

The ex-New York-now-Florida uber-rich are back in NYC for the summer. Conversations with their wealthy friends who stayed behind are laced with one-upmanship (one-up-personship?):

It’s summertime, and wealthy New Yorkers who moved to Florida are back North. From East Hampton to Kennebunkport, everyone’s in the same sandbox now. It’s time to compare who has the shiniest bucket: those who decamped or those who stayed.

Palm Beach: the best decision ever? Yep, or so they claim. They golf before work and take a dip on Billionaires’ Row beachfront after work. It’s only two hours by speedboat to go bonefishing in the Bahamas.

But for true Manhattanites, moving somewhere for fishing ease seems positively boneheaded. Asked if he’d ditch New York for enduring sunshine, mega-developer Aby Rosen prefers the big-boy pond. “Wow, gee whiz, how great I’m so free, swimming with kids in the middle of a workweek,” he responded facetiously. “I mean, who does that? I don’t want to putz around. Midweek, I’d rather go to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center or hear good jazz downtown. Kill me if I have to jump on a boat on a Wednesday evening!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich "are different from you and me." Nothing distinguishes a person more than language, and what the rich talk about is very different from normal people, too.

Still Second Place

A problem that concerns approximately zero percent of the American population: some Manhattan Ivy League social clubs can't attract new members and are shutting down: [bold added]

New York’s storied Ivy League club circuit dates back to the 19th century. For years, these membership organizations were considered among the most prestigious in the country.

These days, say alumni and former members, the clubs have fallen out of fashion. The venues are victims of dated decor, mediocre food and in some cases lingering dress codes—for most of their histories, these clubs have required men to wear coats and ties—out of step with young alums.

It appears that the Yale Club will do almost anything to stay in business:

The Yale Club changed its admission process to accept members without an affiliation to the university. Most anyone can now apply to the club if she or he has the endorsement of at least two members, according to a club document.

...Still, the clubs have loosened their rules to some degree over the past several years. For decades, dress codes have been a fault line between older and younger alumni. In 1999, the Yale Club became the first of Manhattan’s Ivy clubs to allow casual dress on Friday in an attempt to attract younger members and creatives.

The Yale Club today allows jeans throughout the clubhouse, and the Harvard Club now permits “casual attire”—except in two of its main halls after 5 p.m.

The Harvard Club:  inviting guests is a good way
to let them know you went there.

Harvard has the oldest (1865) and wealthiest social club, and its membership is one of the few that appears to be growing. Yale's social club, as the New Haven university does in other areas of endeavor, is trying to keep up with Harvard's.

Your humble blogger thinks that Yale's strategy of letting anyone in is misguided. If the price of membership growth is the loss of exclusivity, the price is too high.

"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."--Groucho Marx

Loud Budgeting

I missed this new term in personal finance: loud budgeting.

Lukas Battle (Instagram)

Loud budgeting began as a joke, said Lukas Battle, the 26-year-old comedian who coined the term in a December TikTok video after a night of overspending.

When Battle’s friends then messaged him asking to go out to an expensive Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood, he proposed they all cook dinner at someone’s house and have a game night instead. It was a riff on “quiet luxury,” the trend of favoring well-made, expensive, but understated fashions.

Battle’s video took off, generating over one million views and more than a thousand comments. Hundreds of people have shared their own examples of how loud budgeting helped them save money.

“People want a break or some sort of relief from this constant need to be spending and buying,” said Battle, who lives in New York.

Loud budgeting has helped some combat the peer pressure to spend.

Madeleine Burke (WSJ)

Madeleine Burke, 26, said her best friend visits the nail salon every two weeks for a manicure and pedicure. The last time Burke went with her, she paid $45 for a pedicure and instantly regretted the decision.

“I cannot believe I paid for that and I could’ve done it at home,” said Burke, who lives in New Orleans. The next time she was asked, she felt more comfortable declining. She credits loud budgeting with helping change how she approaches spending.

Burke said her friends now host more potlucks at each other’s homes and go secondhand shopping together.

Your humble blogger admits that during his career he yielded to social pressure by going on expensive outings that he didn't want and couldn't afford--or, to be more accurate, could pay for if he defunded activities that had a higher priority (e.g., retirement savings, replacing a 15-year-old car).

If proclaiming publicly that you don't have the dough gets your non-wealthy status out in the open, that's a welcome improvement over "my spouse and I have other plans" or "we can't find a babysitter." Any friends you may lose aren't really your long-term friends anyway.

The Taxman Cometh for Them, Too

American influencers should be grateful they only have
the IRS to deal with. Influencer Viya was ordered to pay
1.34 billion yuan ($210 million) in back taxes, late fees
and fines to Chinese authorities. (Time - 12/21/21)

I sympathize with people's tax problems (unless they are committing fraud) but I have a hard time getting worked up over this one:

If an influencer receives a free, unsolicited product from a company, and there’s no agreement to promote it, do they still have to pay income tax?

It all boils down to intent. Accountants will want to know more about the influencer’s relationship to the brand, or how many free items they get, or how they use them.

“The way I see it, it’s all income,” said Lynne Fuentes, managing partner at Fuentes & Angel CPAs and president of the New York State Society of CPAs. “And influencers should be keeping track of it.”

Accountants said the more transparent influencers are with their tax preparers, the easier it is to figure out what’s taxable and what’s not.

"Social influencers" seek fame in order to attract money and merchandise from businesses, who hope that the influencers' use of their wares will induce their followers to buy them.

Successful influencers will get unsolicited free merch, maybe a lot of it. Setting up a system to administer the stuff was a foreseeable consequence of success, and influencers should just deal with it.

Note: Actors, musicians, athletes, etc., for whom becoming an influencer was a secondary consequence of what made them famous have had to struggle with this gift-merch issue long before the internet was invented. For them I do have sympathy.

It's Not Really About Shoes

(WSJ montage)

The Nike Dunk Low Retro White Black (aka "Panda Dunk") was a hot property with aficionados until the shoes became ubiquitous:

The sneakers illustrate the primary conundrum of limited-edition items: Enough have to be available to become a mass-market phenomenon, while remaining rare enough to seem exclusive...

The Panda’s frequent restocks were too much for Miami-based event producer Norma Moreno, who got a pair when the model first came out but decided to give them away after they became too common.

The 32-year-old said the sales represented how streetwear culture has been watered down. “No one is showing that off,” referring to the Panda Dunk, she said.

If the shoes are comfortable, durable, look nice, and are not too expensive (currently over $200 on Amazon), then I would be in the market. Despite the disdain from some quarters, there's still a significant social-status premium embedded in the price of Panda Dunks, so I'm not interested.

Depression and Dementia

(Image from sharpbrains.com)

As if life wasn't difficult enough for teens and young adults with depression, UCSF researchers say that this condition is highly correlated with dementia. [bold added]

Depression in young adulthood might increase risk for cognitive impairment in old age, a new UCSF study has found.

The study — which used predictive models to determine depressive symptoms over a lifetime — found that the chances of cognitive impairment were 73% higher for those estimated to have elevated depressive symptoms in early adulthood, and 43% higher for those estimated to have elevated depressive symptoms in later life.

The conclusions find a receptive audience because they play into our belief that brain disorders are related. However,....

1) There are a great many years between youth and old age. Youthful disease is not destiny.

2) Depression is better understood today than in the past. Therapy and changes in attitudes and behavior (gratitude, social interaction, self care, hobbies, and "cognitive restructuring") can help, and for severe cases medications are available.

3) By social interaction we mean the in-person kind, not social media, which can be mentally toxic to teenagers.

4) The UCSF study is based on "predictive models" that have not been verified by observation:

The study pulled data from 15,000 people in different age cohorts, ranging from 20-89 — divided into older, midlife and young adulthood — and used predictive methods to estimate the average trajectory of depressive symptoms. That trajectory is used to make a “best guess” of how older adults with dementia might have been in early adulthood.

While this methodology isn’t as good as studying someone over a lifetime,[ Dr. Willa] Brenowitz said, it’s the best researchers have now — and should spotlight the need to start observation for dementia risk factors earlier in life.

Predictive models are works-in-progress, as we have seen from much more elaborate climate, epidemiological, and econometric models that have made predictions that proved to be wildly inaccurate.

It's useful that the connection between depression and dementia is being explored. It's also true that the models can be wrong, and even, if true, there is time to take the steps that can break the connection.

It Doesn't Read Your Mind.....Yet

(Images from Frontiers in Psychology)

Apple is pouring billions of dollars into developing medical applications for its devices. Although the emphasis continues to be on wearables, the iPhone is at the center of the push into mental health.

Apple Inc. is working on technology to help diagnose depression and cognitive decline, aiming for tools that could expand the scope of its burgeoning health portfolio...

Using an array of sensor data that includes mobility, physical activity, sleep patterns, typing behavior and more, researchers hope they can tease out digital signals associated with the target conditions so that algorithms can be created to detect them reliably....

The research projects are still at early stages, and may never lead to new device features...While prior academic studies have shown some evidence that people with certain mental-health conditions use their digital devices differently than others, it remains to be seen if reliable algorithms can be created to detect the conditions...

If they are successful, Apple and its partners could improve the detection of the conditions, which affect tens of millions of people world-wide. But the extent of user tracking that may be required could spark privacy concerns. To address them, Apple aims for algorithms that work on users’ devices and don’t send the data to Apple servers...

The pandemic drove an increase in mental-health-related complaints. The percentage of adults reporting anxiety or depression-related symptoms reached 41% in January, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly quadruple the early-2019 figure. Mild cognitive impairment, which can develop into dementia, affects around 5 million Americans over 60 years old, estimates the Alzheimer’s Association...

UCLA has said its research studying signs of stress, anxiety and depression began with a pilot phase last fall tracking Apple Watch and iPhone data from 150 people and will continue with a main phase tracking similar data for 3,000 people starting this year.

UCLA researchers will track data from the iPhone’s video camera, keyboard and audio sensors, and data from the watch related to movement, vital signs and sleep, according to the documents and people familiar with the study. The data that may be used includes analysis of participants’ facial expressions, how they speak, the pace and frequency of their walks, sleep patterns, and heart and respiration rates. They may also measure the speed of their typing, frequency of their typos and content of what they type, among other data points, according to the people familiar with the research and the documents...

Biogen and Apple said in January they are collaborating on a study to use the iPhone and Apple Watch to track cognitive function over time and identify mild cognitive impairment, a condition that can develop into Alzheimer’s. The two-year study aims to follow about 20,000 participants—half of them at high risk of cognitive impairment—and will use device data in a way similar to the UCLA mental-health research, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. The work follows a 2019 feasibility study that showed that 31 adults with cognitive impairment exhibited different behavior on their Apple devices than healthy older adults.

Biogen is collaborating on the study because it hopes it can help Apple develop an iPhone feature to detect mild cognitive impairment early and encourage relevant users to seek care earlier, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company will compare the data against standard tests of brain health including traditional cognitive assessments and scans that track plaque buildup in the brain, according to the documents and the person familiar with the work.

Biogen’s drug Aduhelm, which costs about $56,000 a year, was approved earlier this year by the FDA for people with early-stage Alzheimer’s.

Diagnosing mental health conditions is difficult even for trained clinicians who are able to interact with patients in person. An iPhone algorithm that matches facial expressions, eye movements, etc. with depression or early-stage dementia can be beneficial. If a mental health app is able to screen millions of people quickly, and users are made aware that a positive reading is private, should be checked out and does not necessarily denote illness, that should lessen user concerns.

Note: it would be ironic if the same smartphone whose use triggers depression in teen-age girls is the device that warns that the user may be depressed.

Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show

“Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” the researchers said in a March 2020 slide presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves”....

“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,” said another slide. “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

Among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram, one presentation showed.

The "Doctor" is In

Joseph Epstein ( David Kanigan)

Mr. Joseph Epstein, with only a B.A. from Chicago to his name, stirred a hornets' nest by advising Jill Biden to drop the "PhD" and "Doctor" honorifics while she's First Lady. The blowback was instantaneous---worse than any tweetstorm from the current President when anyone insulted or even mildly criticized him.

Of course, that prompted your humble blogger to read Mr. Epstein's short essay. The first paragraph alone likely was sufficient to prompt an avalanche of negative letters:

Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden ” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.

Mr. Epstein's offense was compounded when he dissed the education and social science establishments' credentialism:

In contemporary universities, in the social sciences and humanities, calling oneself Dr. is thought bush league.

I've always been impressed by Jill Biden, not only because of her talents but also her character and strength. IMHO, she doesn't need to put the letters in front or at the end of her name, but has the right to do so, and Joseph Epstein has the right to voice his opinion as well. Putting the future First Lady aside, what about his other points?

To me the piece is written in a light hearted tone. The general theme is that the proliferation of educational credentials and the appending of them to one’s name is off putting to a lot of people. I agree.

If one is well-known because of something that’s got nothing to do with one's degree, the credentials are displayed only on rare occasions. Both Shaquille O’Neal and Bill Cosby have earned PhDs in education but don’t insist on being called “doctor.”

There’s a guy at my church whom I like a lot but for years signed all his emails with “PhD”. The degree was in hard science and he needed it to establish credibility in the engineering community, but for church? C’mon, man!

It’s one's right to put the letters after one's name, especially to get a job or establish credibility when giving a speech, and Mr. Epstein seems only to be suggesting, not demanding, that one use judgment about when to do so.

Paul Gigot, the WSJ editorial page editor writes:

By the way, the Journal editorial page’s longtime style is to use “Dr.” only when referring to medical doctors. Henry Kissinger gets a “Mr.” Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick Cheney, is Mrs. Cheney despite her Ph.D.

For the record I don't think that Joseph Epstein wrote a strong essay. It was unnecessary for him to spend as much time on his personal success at Northwestern; it's more effective to mention his own story in a throwaway line then talk about other successful people who didn't go on to graduate school. He made a mistake by using "kiddo", because many people did not know the diminutive is a favorite of Joe Biden's and took it as an offense to Jill. Finally, inveighing against the spread of honorary degrees has nothing to do with Mrs. Biden, who earned her degree.

Display your educational achievements if it helps you accomplish your goals; in general, it's better to omit them because in America no one likes an elitist (though many of us are, in our heart of hearts).

Puppets on a Screen

(Image from South Asia Times)

The documentaries that I find most fascinating are the ones that tell me something new on topics that (I thought) I was familiar with. Netflix' "/the social dilemma" is such a movie.

It describes how the Internet companies--Google and Facebook, primarily, but also Twitter, pinterest, Tiktok, LinkedIn, Snapchat, et. al.--watch everything that we read, write, upload, download, or view. They know the identities of our friends, families, and business associates and where we are at all times.

The companies use that data to show us ads that are likely to trigger a sale, but marketing efficiency is only a small part of the algorithms' power. The programs predict what we'll do next; a search that begins Climate change is.. will fill in "a hoax" if one is a conservative or "a threat to humanity" if one is a liberal.

The user is steered toward sites and news--even fake news and conspiracy theories--that the algorithm believes will keep the eyeballs fixated. By making it so easy to view materials that one agrees with leads to today's political polarization; it is the rare user who actively seeks alternative points of view.

The movie dives into the ways in which social media hooks the users--for example, continuous notifications about friends and celebrities, or beeping when someone likes their selfie--but is weak when it comes to suggestions about what to do about its pervasive influence. Some speakers call for much greater government regulation--just after a section on the danger of letting tech tools fall into the hands of governments. Parents wage a lonely battle trying to keep their children unplugged when all the other kids stay connected.

Your humble blogger doesn't have any solutions either. I'm just grateful that I grew up when high schools and colleges actively introduced students to different points of view. My education and career beginnings occurred long before the Internet but after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, grossly simplified, said we must judge individuals for what they can do and not who they are. (Obviously there existed a large gap between the law and reality, but everyone knew what the aspiration was.)

15 minutes from the end, the movie runs a clip from Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) at a 2019 Senate Commerce Committee hearing:

I am 62 years old, getting older every minute the more this conversation goes on, but I will tell you that I'm probably gonna be dead and gone, and I'll probably be thankful for it, when all this s*** comes to fruition. Because I think that this scares me to death.

I identify with Senator Tester more than anyone else in the documentary...and I'm sure that Facebook, Google, et. al. already knew that!

Below is the testimony from Tristan Harris, whose ideas are featured prominently in /the social dilemma, at the same hearing.

Embracing the Fake

I ordered some college paraphernalia, and they sent me the wrong shirt. It's two-sizes too big, I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't go to law school.

If I do wear it, people might get the impression that I'm smarter than I really am. Also, they might ask me about law stuff, and I could bluff them for only about 30 seconds.

Besides, going to a school named after a slave trader and owner is not cool and maybe even dangerous to the shirt wearer.

But I do like the shield emblem, and I do like the color. Eh, I'll keep it. When pressed, I'll say I got it from a friend.

Watching the Watch Owners

Apple Watch: more useful but frankly not as beautiful.

Back in the day of men wearing suits I used a mechanical watch.

It didn't have the prestige of a Rolex or Patek Philippe, but the Omega was respectable enough for a bankers' meeting.

After nearly two decades of wear, the Swiss timepiece was put away in 2016, displaced by the less expensive but more useful Apple Watch.

Picture of inner turmoil: socks, gold watch, no pants (WSJ)

The COVID-19 lockdown has caused all of us to re-assess priorities. Were expensive watches acquired for social standing or personal enjoyment?

Strapping on a Patek Philippe for Zoom calls just to have friends and co-workers salivate over your bezel is gauche, but the timepiece habits of dedicated collectors have scarcely changed in the Covid era....A good watch is a capstone to any outfit, but these days, people aren’t wearing outfits—they’re grabbing whatever’s on top of the laundry pile.

The more possessions we have the more we have to worry about.

Backsliding, But for Good Reason

Old winter favorite

Last year I made some progress on clearing the clutter. I went through closets and drawers and bagged up clothes that were in good condition. The bags and boxes were waiting for me to muster the initiative to take them to the local charity.

As in many other areas sheltering-in-place has caused me to re-evaluate priorities.

Marie Kondo's advice to tidy up is still important, but

No one's coming to visit;

I don't have to wear clothes to make an impression;

Some of my most comfortable garments were in the charity pile.

And so it was that I retrieved an old winter favorite to replace a damaged jacket.

It's been unseasonably cold.

Generation Wealth

"Generation Wealth" image via documentary.org.

One might expect Lauren Greenfield's 2017 documentary, Generation Wealth, to be a polemic against capitalism, wealth excesses, and inequality, but one would be wrong. (In the current environment of politics-is-everything progressive critics have criticized the film for not being a bash-fest of Trump's America.)

If there's any one over-riding theme, it's the quest for status. The interviewees believe that personal worth is synonymous with social recognition, itself obtained by money but also by personal attractiveness. Status-seeking is more than an American phenomenon; vignettes of Chinese billionaires and Russian oligarchs show that the quest is common to human beings everywhere.

The audience is tempted to sneer at parents who enter their children in beauty contests, the plastic-surgery addicts, the hedge-fund mansion-builders, and the privileged scions of L.A. celebrities. (Lauren Greenfield has been chronicling the latter since she went to high school with them in the early 1990's; her father recounts how she was embarrassed to have her classmates over to her house.) She re-interviews them years later, and most of the subjects now realize that they have grossly misplaced their priorities.

The filmmaker is honest enough to turn the camera on herself. She accepts assignments thousands of miles away for weeks, even months. She knows that she should spend more time at home, but her husband willingly looks after their pre-teen children, so she averts the hard choices.

Though the subject is ostentatious wealth, I suspect that the film is really about the obsessive pursuit of money, status, beauty, and workplace validation. Relationships with children, or even having children in the first place, are neglected. By the end of the movie the film-maker and the audience relate to these people, who seemed at first glance to live in a different universe of values and lifestyles.

Generation Wealth is not light entertainment, but it's interesting and not a heavy slog. It's available as a Netflix DVD rental and is streaming free to Amazon Prime Video customers. Recommended.

One is Condemned, the Other is Praised

33 wealthy parents were charged with breaking the law in getting their children admitted to the colleges of their choice. The illegal actions took two forms: [bold added]

to bribe coaches and administrators to designate their children as top recruits in such sports as football, water polo, soccer, track and volleyball at universities including the University of Southern California, Georgetown and Wake Forest. Some parents also allegedly paid Mr. Singer as much as $75,000 for test-cheating services.

Yale was worth a million bucks to one parent. He should have saved his money (WSJ graphic)

Parents on the list, like actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, have lost jobs. Business executives have been suspended and also may eventually be fired. Sole proprietors and highly paid professionals have had their reputations impaired, perhaps permanently. The obloquy has been visited from across the political spectrum, as no one can defend cheating by the already-wealthy and privileged.

I can't condone (and I solemnly swear that I never did) what those parents did, but I understand it. And why so much outrage?

1) One source of anger is the belief that those admitted would not have gotten in based on "objective" criteria like SAT scores, but why is it okay for the bar to be set lower for affirmative-action applicants, some of whom also come from wealth and privilege? The latter don't have to cheat to raise their scores, because a low score is good enough if they happen to be in the right group.

2) The parents broke the law in a misguided attempt to give their children a better life. In contrast those crossing the southern border illegally are lauded for doing the same. Of course, there's a big difference; trying to sneak into USC, Stanford, or Yale doesn't put kids' lives in jeopardy like marching across Mexico with no food, water, or money.

The former is condemned, but the latter is praiseworthy. As is often the case, how one reacts to the story is a big story, too.