Stunning lack of empathy, wealth privilege scum, remark of the week

[Quixote1818]

So I was just talking to my sister who is an Interior Designer and has a lot of wealthy clients. She was talking to a client about how expensive college was getting and that she was barely able to put her daughter through college. She then went onto say that soon only the wealthy will be able to afford to send their kids to college to which the rich piece of shit replied: "Good!"


Yep, they don't even try to hide their shallow, cold hearts and huge ego's anymore. This lady comes from old oil money and has never worked a fucking day in her life! She even has nanny's take care of her kids and her brain has gone to mush because she doesn't use if for anything. It took my sister everything she had not to go off on this lady. In any other circumstance she probably would but she has to pay the bills and pay off those college loans.

[whathehell]

1. Wow..

That woman IS a shit...Did she give your sister any reason for her response? Did your sister say anything at all io her remark?

[Quixote1818]

8. My sister didn't respond

As I said, it's hard to bite the hand that feeds you. I didn't get all the details because when she told me this I completely went off the handle in rage! Now you have me curious to find out more about the conversation. She did tell me she is from old money and I think she said they made their money in oil. The city is Dallas, Tx.

[HubertHeaver]

15. I was guessing Corsicanna.

[TNNurse]

19. I am thinking that she got money

instead of making it as if she ever worked.

[nilram]

26. Can't blame her for not responding.

I do have to think it's time for her to raise her rates -- especially for one client in particular.

[whathehell]

45. I understand..

Even if she didn't respond, sometimes stone silence says quite a bit. Good luck to her. Those situations can be difficult.

[Eric J in MN]

2. If the next president is a Democrat

...then there will be some effort to address college costs.

Bernie Sanders wants to make public universities tuition-free.

Hillary Clinton talks of "debt-free college" which is a more modest approach.

But even her approach is more than politicians were talking about a year ago.

[Unknown Beatle]

18. Hillary is all talk and no action.

She has to change her positions according on which way the political wind is blowing. If she is elected president, expect the status quo or maybe even expand on tax cuts for the rich.

[LiberalArkie]

3. That is the way it used to be. College was for the rich elite families. Factories and farm

work for everyone else. The non rich going to high education is a relatively new thing. Trying to think, maybe the 1940'ish maybe.

[Hortensis]

6. Of course. People who are comfortable with social stratification,

much less those who really like it, don't want to associate with their inferiors, however they are defined. That's as old as...inequality, different pay levels, religions and ethnicities, etc. It's a big part of what is behind the move to charter schools.

[LiberalArkie]

7. Yea, they got tired to paying the big bucks for the "Christian" all white schools. So they

created the "Charter" schools to do the same thing and get money from the taxpayers.

[tblue37]

13. In the 19th century land grant colleges were established to make higher education--

especially in the agricultural and mechanical/engineering subjects--accessible to the children of the laboring classes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/at-150-land-grant-public-universities-struggle-to-return-to-roots/2012/06/22/gJQAR2aLvV_blog.html

At 150, land-grant public universities struggle to return to roots

When Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act on July 2, 1862, the Civil War was raging. But the law, named for the Vermont congressman who introduced it, set aside federal land to be used or sold to establish public universities in every northern state, to educate the “sons of toil” in practical subjects such as agricultural science. After the war, it was extended to the South, and, later, to U.S. territories and possessions.

Few people outside higher education have heard of the Morrill Act, but it helped establish more than 70 of what are now among the nation’s most prominent universities — mostly public, but also private and quasi-public — including Auburn, Cornell, MIT, Purdue, Rutgers, Virginia Tech, the University of California system, and the universities of Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, plus Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania state universities.

{snip}

[hifiguy]

41. As a very proud alumnus of the University of Minnesota,

which still prominently identifies itself as a land-grant university, I note that there is a Morrill Hall on campus. Named for that very Morrill.

[HubertHeaver]

16. The GI Bill.

[corkhead]

21. I think it was the GI bill after WW2 and we all know what that did to destroy the economy in the 50s

[PatrickforO]

28. Two things caused the non rich to be able to get a higher education:

1. The Land Grant Colleges, created under the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, which ceded federal land to the states which they could sell to endow state colleges with funding. This made practical education in agriculture, engineering, science and liberal arts available. Of course, if we're fair here, we must mention these colleges were funded by selling land that our forbears committed genocide to possess. So there is that...

2. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill. It was created to help veterans of World War II. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages available and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. By the time educational benefits were ended in 1956 over 10 million WWII vets had gone to college. This helped create the huge, strong American middle class that made us the envy of the world, at least until Reagan oozed into the White House like a plague bacillus.

Source for land grant colleges was Wikipedia.

Source for the GI Bill was the History Channel website.

[eppur_se_muova]

32. Think G.I. Bill. Truly revolutionary and enlightened. nt

[LiberalArkie]

33. I knew about the G.I. bill but I hate that we have gotten to the point of

someone has to join the military to go to college. But those that are not fit for the military are left out. I was pretty deaf when I tried to join after high school, so I became 4F. I was not really into agriculture and animal husbandry the the land grant provided.

[Warpy]

36. Yes, it mostly started with the GI Bill

but a look at pre WWII high school textbooks is a real eye opener. A high school education back then did prepare you for just about any job out there. College degrees were needed for medicine, architecture, engineering, and being a gentleman.

[thucythucy]

37. FDR's "GI Bill of Rights"

was an enormous boost to middle class and poorer people who wanted to go to college. By aiding the tens of millions of men and women who served in the Armed Forces, the bill also stimulated an explosive growth in public and community colleges. The result being that colleges, especially but not exclusively state universities, became hotbeds of political activism--the free speech movement at UC Berkeley, for instance, SNCC and other civil rights organizations, Freedom Summer, and the antiwar movement all drew on student support, which came mainly from middle class kids who were less invested in the status quo than "legacy" students like the Bushes.

One of Reagan's priorities, when he was elected governor of California, was to eliminate public higher education as a factor in American politics. Turning back the clock to the 1920s and '30s--when only the rich could afford college--has meant a decline in left-leaning campus activism--which is precisely what was intended.

Just another foul legacy of the Reagan administration. It breaks my heart when I hear younger people refer to Reagan as some sort of hero. His administration was the beginning of the long slide we've been experiencing ever since.

[Ilsa]

4. what an awful experience to have.

I'm sure, if she had not been in shock, she could have come up with a strong retort about having only commumity college grads for surgeons and bookkeepers defend their tax returns to the IRS. For that matter, maybe the rich bitch would like to be driven by her chauffeur across a bridge built by giant lincoln logs instead of structured by engineers.

Rich people like that need long lessons in survival.

[PatrickforO]

30. You actually could build a bridge with Lincoln logs.

I don't think it would take much weight though...

[lpbk2713]

5. The Priveleged Class is a very exclusive club.

They don't allow any riff-raff anywhere near them if it can be arranged.

The fact that she was so candid is a bit surprising though.

[PatrickforO]

31. She probably shared this with this lady's sister because she's a trusted person who has probably

done lots of work for her and she likes her. Perhaps she mistakenly believes that her class are well liked by the 'servant' class...

Likely she forgot herself for a moment and spoke too freely to an 'underling.'

[hifiguy]

42. A lesson I learned first-hand after graduating from Harvard Law

despite coming from working class roots and being raised in a very working class suburb of Mpls. The elite firms wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole, Harvard or not, and one of the first questions I was asked in every interview was "so where did you go to high school?" Graduated summa cum laude from college and rather easily made it to Harvard even though I was a high school dropout. It meant less than nothing.

That they would much rather have a rich kid who went to Hamline Law than a poor one who went to Harvard could not possibly have been more obvious.

It's their club and the proles ain't in it and never will be.

[smirkymonkey]

9. What a horrible person!

[KT2000]

10. they are nobodies unless

they attempt to make others feel small.

[rhett o rick]

11. It's obvious that some people worship the wealthy class. Why else would they support a candidate

that the wealthy are supporting. They will tell you that killing the middle class is worth it if we can some social justice.

Vote for the Billionaires choice and watch the poverty rates increase.

[hifiguy]

43. EAT THE RICH!

We poor folks are tough and stringy.

[Hydra]

12. That's just who they are

They do not in any way support equality. They are "better" than us in every way.

I've noticed the same sort of thinking running a nasty thread through DU lately. Very RW ideas have made their way into our party.

[Old Crow]

22. I agree 100%.

I have been shocked more than once by some of the posts on DU that are smugly assertive of the status quo and the privileges of wealth. Most of the posts are coming from, I'd estimate, about five or six individuals. I won't specify what individuals or what camp they belong to, but anyone who frequents DU should have no difficulty at all knowing what I'm talking about.

There are some profoundly anti-democratic, elitist voices on here.

[hifiguy]

44. And they ALL seem to support the same candidate.

Spoiler - it's not Bernie.

[ejbr]

14. She should have said

"See you next Tuesday"

[Dont call me Shirley]

17. Have a great time swallowing your filthy oil for dinner when the oil industry collapses.

[GoneFishin]

20. The second part of your story is as significant as the first, namely that your sister could not say

anything because she could not afford to, which is exactly the point of cutting the social safety net and pushing down wages. When people are secure and can provide comfortably for their families they get "uppity" and have resources, however modest, to participate in our democracy. It peaked in the 60s and 70s with public protests against war and inequality, and the elites did not like it one bit. So they did something about it, and here we are.

[thucythucy]

38. Precisely. Nt

[paleotn]

23. Good?

...ok. What the wealthy have in the back of their minds, other than pitchforks and torches, and for good reason....



violent response? Yes, but a fitting one.

[hifiguy]

40. It really is going to have to come to that, I fear.

Heads on pikes might awaken at least a part of the parasite class.

[TexasBushwhacker]

24. The thing that gets me

Is that this rich bitch is essentially telling your sister that she SHOULDN'T be able to put her kids through college either. She has the gall to actually say that to your sister's face!

When we eat the rich, people like this woman will be first on the menu.

[Old Crow]

25. The equation that many of the Rich have in mind is this:

Economic Desperation + Lack of Critical Thinking Skills = Easily Controlled and Exploited Underclass

That is the equation the elite in this country have been pushing relentlessly for as long as I can remember. I don't think the woman referred to in the OP is intelligent enough to fully comprehend it in all its nuances, but even the dumb ones absorb the mindset by osmosis.

"Good!" she said.

[TexasBushwhacker]

27. Yup

"Economic Desperation + Lack of Critical Thinking Skills = Easily Controlled and Exploited Underclass "

And we wonder why

1) They fight against sex education in public schools and free birth control to any woman who wants it, including teenage women.

2) They push for defunding public schools with vouchers.

3) They say they want to get rid of undocumented workers, but THEY DON'T.

4) They support wars over "American interests" (like oil) because it's mostly poor kids who serve in our all volunteer military. If they're part of the MIC all the better!

And the list goes on.

[Quixote1818]

35. I have meet a few of her clients and I could be wrong but I bet this lady didn't even realize

she was insulting my sister. Don't get me wrong as some of her clients are really great people, many self made etc. but some of them have been pampered all their life and have no sense of identity or individuality. They are married into wealth or come from wealth and don't have to work or challenge their brains and they literally lose the ability to think critically. They really are very strange people and they lack a lot of basic common sense and people skills.

[Brickbat]

29. "Yep, they don't even try to hide their shallow, cold hearts and huge ego's anymore."

They never have.

[closeupready]

34. Minor quibble - 'old money' is not Texas.

Old Money isn't even the Rockefellers. Old Money is the Mellons or Pews or the Rothschilds.

Don't ask me to explain the difference very well, but suffice to say that this woman's manner of speaking is low class, which is kind of the hallmark of 'nouveau riche'/New Money - lots of cash, no class.

[hifiguy]

39. It is well past time for the tumbrels

to return.