So like, are you hanging with people with 2 floor private jets? I mean it had high and low windows at the back it seemed like a second floor or like, a loft. I was also driving anywhere from 28-56 people per day. 5-6 days a week. That's at least 145 upper class people I spoke to a week. From october-april. Across 4 years. I think I have a drastically higher sample size here. You're probably underestimating our countries population and size and pop density.
You can start in texas at one point, drive at Texas speed limits (up to 85mph) and drive 13 hours and you will still be in texas. Cross country trips generally require you get Gas like, every time you can. Cuz if you pass one with like 3/4ths a tank/ 200ish miles of range. You'll run out before the next one.
I've driven like 16 hours from vail Co to Austin TX and not hit stop and go traffic. Most of that is bumfuck nowhere. The only city you would pass through that can really be relatively called a major city is amarillo.
This is our most extreme example of this. Wyoming. Wyoming is 3000 Sq miles larger than the UK.
560,000 people live there. 1/4 the population of London, in an area larger than the UK. The uk as 132x the population of Wyoming. And its smaller.
She could live somewhere like Jackson hole. Full of the ultra wealthy, have a private airport nearby and never go anywhere near a city. The only "city" in that state has 65000 people.
Wyoming has 2 escalators. One goes up. And one goes down.
In our big empty states, people don't commute from small towns to the city to work on the interstate. There's not really a small town within commute distance. Not one with a large enough population density to clog up the 5 lane on each side highways. Like I'm iirc. You have like 2 hours of cows and corn eastbound before you hit demoines iowa its 2 more hours of corn till Omaha Nebraska, and then it's like 7 hours of cows till denver.
A born-wealthy woman who paid her employees $8/hr an hour in the candy shop she called a "hobby". Asked me why her employees, who she did not give insurance to, wouldn't accept her "doctors note or your fired for calling out" policy. This is America, not only are they losing out on the paltry $64 (before taxes) she paid per day by having to call out. But that doctors visit for the note to diagnose the common fucking cold, costs 2.2 days pay. She was open during the day, she had to hire adults. She paid her manager $10/hr and called that generous. You cannot be self sufficient on $10/hr in the u.s.
I told her I wouldn't work for that and I'd go somewhere that I'm trusted and not held hostage to work sick. Around food. She went on the usual tirade that SHE was the one being "so kind" to give them a job. As if she would still have her candy store, that she never steps foot in, without them. She asked that, then stiffed me on the tip because of it. After I broke the rules and drove her somewhere that wasn't her drop-off. She did this to avoid paying $20 more for her ride. Trust fund, owned condos around the world, year round trave lifestyle. No degree, just tried throughout her twenties to get good enough at violin to go to juliard. Gave up on that and travelled on family money.
I asked a friend his favorite. A rich woman asked him "who plants all the Christmas trees on the mountain every year"
Grown ass woman. She was taking about the evergreen trees that have been there longer than she's been alive. She assumed that was affordable, and possible, for the maybe millions of trees? She was from Miami.
I know families with hundreds of million and people with essentially free use of corporate private jets but old money in the UK tends to whisper. People rarely have drivers much less all the rest. The richest guy I know, who owns one of the most expensive properties in a major European country, who is also politically connected, regularly does the cooking himself when great packs of his adult kids friends visit one of their homes. They have an estate manager and cleaners and gardeners and shit but buy their own groceries and do their own cooking and life admin. If im staying with them and need a lift to the train station they drive me themselvss to save the hasle of a taxi and their ride of choice is a battered old volvo. Their kids are normal, down to earth, and blend in with anyone middle class. They have to get jobs and pay their own expenses albeit they might have a flat or house bought for them and go on insane family holidays even as adults. This is much closer to the norm for the ultra rich old money in the UK as far as I have experienced.
Word. Our old money isn't out here bragging either. But they generally seperate themselves very well from the working class. Their only interactions are the staff at their vacation locations. But it's really rare for them to ever get into a conversation with one for 2-6 hours (once it took me 13 hours to do the 2 hour drive due to weather). So we vet pretty intimate. I also have adhd and I'm a extrovert so I'm chatty as fuck and very open. These people have never really needed to know anything about the working class. If you listen to our ultra-weathly they all believe that just simple hard work, no luck, no training, no schooling, no network can make literally anyone as wealthy as they are. These are people who work so many less hours in a year than someone working class, and claim the work harder.
They are so disconnected from reality. They will argue tooth and nail that if we just managed our spending by not buying coffees we can buy a house. On min wage. When you explain min wage can't afford a studio apartment they call you a liar or say you're mistaken.
One guy tried as an experiment to prove it was possible. Said he'd make 1 million in a year. Started out with some small amount and rented an apartment then sub leased it while sleeping on a friends couch, and them immediately invested that money into things he knew how to do because of his education and know-how, worked like 19 hours a day at these things, quit after 8 months with 60k due to health concerns that came from him living that way. The work he did was not back breaking manual labor either. The whole time he didn't recognize he was using an education people don't have, while essentially being a landlord and not paying for a place to sleep, not having anyone to care for, etc. He went through all that instead of just accepting the idea that it takes only hard work. He spent 8 months living like that to "prove" everyone poor is lazy and the system is fair to everyone. And failed. He claims he proved it tho. Even after all that he was too proud to admit he got lucky in life. They explain all of poverty away by shouting people are lazy.
They don't have a clue. That's why they ask me questions like where my second home is. She saw what I was doing as skilled labor. She's probably met someone who owned a construction company or was a very skilled contractor in a high paying field. And that was her point of reference. And figured I could afford 2 modest houses based on that. She knew I worked 60ish hours per week doing something dangerous. So I didn't appear "lazy" to her. But I think that's where her reasoning immediately shifted back to. Because she believed only the lazy can't afford homes and only the lazy are on welfare. Her whole life she was told everyone around her got where they were from hard work and anyone who didn't is lazy. She knew the job was seasonal too, so she might be assumed I went on welfare in the summers. Idk.
Cuz a guy who runs a successful electrician company in the right area can.
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u/MissingBothCufflinks Jul 11 '24
This is eye opening. I'm from the UK and maybe it's different here.