Blanketing opinions that I'll probably regret soon.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

The Yuppie

The online libertarian magazine Reason has listed "35 Heroes of Freedom", and included in the list is "The Yuppie", described below. From reason.com:

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The Yuppie. This widely reviled Reagan-era social construct opened up to ordinary people countless pleasures and pursuits once reserved for the upper class, from "gourmet" food to good-looking cars to nicely designed furniture to fancy-pants literary devices to an obsession with Tuscany. In striving "upward," Yuppies spurred a massive exfoliation of choice at all levels of American society.
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The list includes a range of people from all areas of the political spectrum, including Ted Turner, the Tiananmen Square martyr and Clarence Thomas, but the Yuppie description was so well put. Isn't it true though? I'm not going to chime in on the yuppie/gentrification debate too much but I will say a few words here.

I think it's safe to say that people who are "anti-yuppie" also generally believe the following points:

- Middle class and upper-middle class people should not be able to move anywhere they want, especially if it means to an urban neighborhood of poor white artists and minorities.

- Making money and being successful are desires that are wrong.

- Wanting quality material things---cars, furniture, clothes, etc---is also wrong.

- Poor, just-out-of-college white people are the only white people who deserve to live in poor, minority-dominated urban neighborhoods.

- There must be strict controls on the price of real estate if it occurs in an urban neighborhood. The rest of the world needs no such controls.

- The poor are more noble than people with money.

- Neighborhood economic improvement must only occur if nothing of note really changes and no one has to leave.

- Renting a home is more noble than owning one.

- The middle/upper-middle class person who moves into an urban neighborhood that's improving is directly responsible for those who have to move out because of increasing rent prices. As if the Yuppie is evicting people him/herself.
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