Originally Posted by aquinas
Re: defining "rich"

I live in a large Canadian city with one of the world's highest costs of living on a PPP basis. Even here, $165k/year will buy you a top-10% lifestyle. Housing might not be palatial, but thats a feature of urban geography.

I don't think we should misconstrue what "rich" looks like. I would say being "rich" is about virtually all of life's decisions containing an element of personal choice. If a household can choose which city it lives in, have control over the school the children attend, participate in regular leisure activities, pay for post-secondary studies, and still have money to spare for a comfortable retirement, then that's rich in my books. And, even in the most expensive geographies, a $165k+ household can achieve at least several items on that list.

Maybe a simpler litmus test of SES is whether, on a given day, the bulk of a household's concerns could be lumped under #firstworldproblems. wink

I like that!!

smile That is a great way of summing that up. Pretty much nowhere will 15K grant one that, and there are a LOT of places where 165 or 180K will. There are not that many places where an income above 165K doesn't give you the kind of security that someone raised in that lowest tenth of income cannot even IMAGINE.

I say that as someone who lived most of my childhood in the bottom half of the SES, and some of it in the lowest quartile.

It's about a lot more than teaching parents to interact in more supportive ways with children. It needs to be about teaching an entire CULTURE to interact with them differently. frown These are not kids worried about whether or not they get to go to camp or get piano/voice lessons... these are kids who are worried about basic safety and healthcare needs, and food.

It's really about Maslow's Hierarchy in my opinion. When you spend the first years of your life on the most basic levels, is it ANY surprise that you don't get to "learning" until you reach school, which is (mostly) safer, more pleasant, etc. than "home" is?

Whereas a child in that 165K+ household spends ALL (or nearly all) of their childhood and "home" time at the highest levels of Maslow's Hierarchy.

Maybe some exceptional homes provide the other kind of environment at paradoxical income levels. Wealthy but abusive homes, or impoverished but stable/supportive/loving ones, I mean. That would explain outliers far better than social Darwinism would predict, because they seem to occur in the same kinds of rates that are observable for abuse, KWIM?

Anyway. Kind of rambling. I'm testy this morning about the notion that some kids are "worth it" more than others, too. Just so everyone knows. Local school official and College Board meets out-of-the-box disability accommodations, let's just say.

But that brings up another good point-- as mentioned by Irena in a recent thread. What happens to kids with unusual or extraordinary needs in instances in which parents do NOT have time, knowledge, and resources to devote to solving those problems??


ETA: Cross-posted with Dude above me. Clearly I'm not the only one wondering about that last point.

Last edited by HowlerKarma; 04/30/13 09:15 AM.
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