I agree with Will that this Onion article is sort of hilariously trenchant. But given his past commentaries on positional inequality (which often seem overly impressed with the idea that otherwise pathetic people can be really respected in Everquest), I'd like to see him actually examine his own commentary a bit more. Will says:
Income is far from the only dimension of satisfying status. And don't miss the larger lesson: Braxton's ability live a deeply engaging, self-directed, creative, relatively low-income lifestyle is a side-effect of overall abundance. He is, in effect, free-riding off the miserable productivity of his co-workers and people like them. Liberal arts degrees, obscure Russian poets, and vanity bands are for rich people. Being rich and personally having a large income are completely different things.
Those are very good points. They're also for very young people. Braxton's life is essentially defined by an absence of responsibilities, dangers, or economic ties. He's young and healthy, single (but hanging out with an awesome girl!), doesn't own a home, doesn't appear to have college debt, etc. Income doesn't define his status because, at the moment, he doesn't much need income. This will change. Quickly. And then income will define his status -- and not just in an envious manner. Income will define whether his kid gets to go to a good school, and whether his family is safe from medical emergencies, and whether his clothing makes him look suitable for promotion. The ability to seek fulfillment in other realms will not vanish as he ages, but his capacity to eschew material concerns and forsake financial security will.
This idea that the left should stop worrying so much about income inequality and positional concerns because, like, money isn't everything, man, is a very odd one, and only works in conversations between and about people who don't actually need much in the way of income. That's not the case for most of the country, and when they worry about income as a marker of status, it's because that connection has tangible impacts on their lives and livelihoods, as Robert Frank persuasively argues in his new book Falling Behind. It's not because they're insufficiently inventive about alternative arenas of accomplishment, and don't realize that they could become hugely respected on a World War II historical fiction message board. That's not a subsititute. To most people, money matters. A lot. Sometimes in absolute terms, sometimes in positional terms. Really good taste in vanity bands rarely pays the mortgage.
