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  #1  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2023, 9:31 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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How US cities/states/regions vary in terms of social egalitarianism?

I'm not talking about political liberalism vs conservatism or D vs R. But rather interested in comparing cities and regions in terms of "elitism" (social hierarchy, status distinctions, emphasis on history and traditions etc.)

It seems that the two most "elitist" regions are the Northeast and the South, in different ways; Northeastern elites are very different from Southern elites. The former is politically liberal, very strong emphasis on educational attainment and degrees, Ivy League education, the desirable suburbs are quite bucolic and NIMBY. The conservative-minded Southern elite also stresses hierarchy and tradition. More emphasis on fraternities, there's an expected deferentialism to your superiors etc. To put it simply the Northeast is liberal-elitist and the South is conservative-elitist.

The Midwest and West have less status hierarchies. The West Coast is liberal-egalitarian, while the Midwest varies politically.

Obviously this is an undeveloped, simplistic sketch.
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  #2  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2023, 10:33 PM
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This is just a word salad without definitions for all of these terms you are using.
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  #3  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2023, 10:35 PM
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Thanks for your always thoughtful input.
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  #4  
Old Posted Dec 9, 2023, 10:55 PM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Thanks for your always thoughtful input.
How are we supposed to discuss something like "social hierarchy" if you don't explain what you mean by that?
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  #5  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 8:53 AM
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I have no problem understanding the question the op is asking. It is fairly straightforward.

The places I've spent the most time in my life are upstate NY, the Twin Cities, Chicago, rural Indiana, Savannah and south Florida. The Twin Cities are by far the least hierarchical place I've been, it is part of what drew me to it. Upstate NY, Savannah and south Florida are all fairly elitist. Chicago and Indiana were kind of in the middle. Upstate NY is less elitist than downstate but still everyone from the top tier of society put those stupid college decals in their cars when I was growing up just to show off that their kids were in college or that they were going to an elite one. I don't know if people still do that. Minnesotans never did that, people would think that it was a crass way of showing off.
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  #6  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 10:29 AM
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I guess there are places where some establishment (a so called elite) of any kind sets standards when it comes to social interactions, politics, the economy or culture in general.
That would be the case of any widely urbanized populated area where you need some codes to be established for people to live together anyhow.

Whereas some other places are more "Libertarian", such as New Hampshire whose official motto screams "Live Free or Die".
That's a bit radical and may cause some chaos when taken to mere anarchy.

I think an establishment is not necessarily or entirely harmful to society, but it's often selfish, made up of people very worried about their personal interests, as opposed to common good.
Whether it would be Socialist, Liberal, Conservative or Nationalist, the establishment wants to remain in power anyway.

That must be about it.
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  #7  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 5:07 PM
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I agree with this. The East and South have a different history than the Midwest or West.
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  #8  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 5:16 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chef View Post
I have no problem understanding the question the op is asking. It is fairly straightforward.

The places I've spent the most time in my life are upstate NY, the Twin Cities, Chicago, rural Indiana, Savannah and south Florida. The Twin Cities are by far the least hierarchical place I've been, it is part of what drew me to it. Upstate NY, Savannah and south Florida are all fairly elitist. Chicago and Indiana were kind of in the middle. Upstate NY is less elitist than downstate but still everyone from the top tier of society put those stupid college decals in their cars when I was growing up just to show off that their kids were in college or that they were going to an elite one. I don't know if people still do that. Minnesotans never did that, people would think that it was a crass way of showing off.
Minnesota has a sort of quasi-social democratic political culture, the name of the state Democratic Party - the Democratic-Farmer Labor Party (DFL) reflects that.
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  #9  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 6:35 PM
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I'm not entirely sure that I understand the criteria here for measuring elitism... but I don't think the Northeast is more elitist than anywhere else. I would say that New York is actually less elitist than Detroit. There is far more intermingling of the classes here in NY than Detroit. My social network here ranges from multi-millionaires to construction workers. NYC also does upward mobility far better than Metro Detroit, which means the ranks of the upper classes get refreshed on a regular basis.
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  #10  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 7:55 PM
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I would classify "elitism" and "(in)egalitarianism" as being how exclusionary/inclusive the public realm is. Upward mobility is part of it, but part of it also just whether or democratic decision making or public services or quality of life things apply to everyone or just a few.

New York City proper, meaning the 5 boroughs except maybe Staten Island, I can get behind the idea that it's actually egalitarian in that it offers upward mobility and there's a lot of public goods available to all social classes whether its the subway, the city parks, magnet schools, whatever.

But the East Coast in general? Nah. Connecticut and New Jersey have lots of poor people concentrated in the hollywood-stereotype "inner city hood" and then the rich people live in sort of pretend-rural villages (with third-rail powered commuter trains) in big houses on 10 acres and their kids go to prep school and play Lacrosse. Look at New Haven. It has Yale. That's cool. Down the street is never-ending generational poverty in bleak looking housing, etc. One of the highest-taxed states in the US with some of the richest people, but you always hear stories about towns being too broke to field enough ambulances. Fuck that shit.

But maybe that's just my stereotype I have in my head coming from Texas, which has its own flavor of toxic bullshit we can criticize in another thread.
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  #11  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 10:33 PM
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Economic inequality can of course be measured by things like the Gini.

The 10 most unequal states:

NY 0.5149
CT 0.5024
LA 0.4978
MS 0.4896
CA 0.4866
FL 0.4808
MA 0.4803
IL 0.4800
GA 0.4795
NJ 0.4782

The top 10 least unequal states:

UT 0.4268
ID 0.4337
WY 0.4345
SD 0.4360
WI 0.4391
HI 0.4397
NE 0.4400
NH 0.4406
IA 0.4422
MN 0.4434
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  #12  
Old Posted Dec 10, 2023, 11:09 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I'm not entirely sure that I understand the criteria here for measuring elitism... but I don't think the Northeast is more elitist than anywhere else. I would say that New York is actually less elitist than Detroit. There is far more intermingling of the classes here in NY than Detroit. My social network here ranges from multi-millionaires to construction workers. NYC also does upward mobility far better than Metro Detroit, which means the ranks of the upper classes get refreshed on a regular basis.
I see what you're saying, but the regions have different cultural currency, and I can see the Northeastern currency viewed as "elitist" from a Midwestern lens. Where you attended college matters more, and upbringing, knowledge and social mores have weight. Nothing like in the UK or in class-based societies, but it still matters. In Michigan, this would generally be considered very frou-frou, elitist and weird. Even the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor is kind of a bizarre island in Michigan.

In my first job after college, at a bulge bracket bank, a majority of the sales/trading hires were from Ivies, and mostly played sports, and very frequently played lacrosse, squash or crew. This was even true for women and nonwhites (add in field hockey for the women, football for blacks and fencing and tennis for Asians). That's way too specific hiring to assume anything other than endlessly regenerating legacy-based hierarchies.

This was 20 years ago, and things have likely changed a bit, but I'm comfortable asserting that if you want to work for an investment bank out of college, the best path is to attend a highly selective name university and if you want sales/trading, also play an intercollegiate sport.

Last edited by Crawford; Dec 10, 2023 at 11:20 PM.
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  #13  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 1:37 AM
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I only really have experience in academia, but of the three universities I have experience with (as a student or as a researcher), UChicago feels the most elitist, Stanford felt the least, and
MIT is somewhere in the middle. But I think that's partially because humanities-heavy schools (like UChicago) feel more elitist for some reason, partially outweighing the regional factor (i.e. Harvard/Yale/Princeton are probably much more elitist feeling than UChicago?). Maybe it's my physical-sciences bias speaking though.

Or maybe it's the architecture... strangely, St. Louis gave me the impression of feeling quite elitist, with WUSTL seeming like it's oozing a sense of superiority... but maybe it's the disney gothic architecture speaking.
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  #14  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 1:45 AM
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I would expect HYP feel much more "elitist." I never really associated Chicago with old-line ruling classes, legacies etc. (especially pre-1960; obviously this has changed a lot with the shift to the Ivy-based "meritocratic elite). It was known to be very much a life of the mind or dare I say "nerdy" type of place. In reading about quotas on Jewish faculty and students, I've never looked into Chicago; was it more open?

As for MIT, Noam Chomsky felt he thrived at MIT over say Harvard because he felt it was more open, even if the faculty may have been somewhat or nominally more conservative on average than at the Ivies.

Last edited by Docere; Dec 11, 2023 at 2:09 AM.
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Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 2:42 AM
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
I would expect HYP feel much more "elitist." I never really associated Chicago with old-line ruling classes, legacies etc. (especially pre-1960; obviously this has changed a lot with the shift to the Ivy-based "meritocratic elite). It was known to be very much a life of the mind or dare I say "nerdy" type of place. In reading about quotas on Jewish faculty and students, I've never looked into Chicago; was it more open?

As for MIT, Noam Chomsky felt he thrived at MIT over say Harvard because he felt it was more open, even if the faculty may have been somewhat or nominally more conservative on average than at the Ivies.
UChicago didn't set quotas on Jews, but the University administration is sort of traditionalist in other ways. UChicago is a very intellectual place, but not really nerdy in the same way as MIT or even Stanford...
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  #16  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 2:54 AM
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Robert Hutchins is one of the most interesting figures in the history of American higher education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maynard_Hutchins
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  #17  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 2:55 AM
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[double-post]
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  #18  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 8:55 AM
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This is a very interesting question because it touches on what I think is the biggest determinant of the US's low quality-of-life standings relative to the developed world.

On national level comparisons, I think that GINI and i-HDI (inequality-adjusted human development index) are the most accurate gauge of how developed a country is, rather than GDP/capita or regular HDI, which itself relies heavily on GDP/capita.
By this measure, the US drops from 20th on regular HDI (somewhere btw Korea and Austria) to 25th on i-HDI (somewhere between Cyprus and Poland). Based on the relatively undeveloped status of our public transit infra, life expectancy, and poverty rate, the latter company of Cyprus and Poland seem more apt.

If i-HDI were applied to cities, I'd expect a similar result, and I wish someone out there crunched numbers for US states and cities. In my opinion, extreme inequality is why American cities, despite their high average income and wealth, never place very high on any of the numerous livability rankings. Regardless of how much stock you place on them, the consistency with which even the wealthiest American cities are excluded from top of these rankings has its own merit, and I tend to agree with the lists based on my personal experience with for example the SF Bay area vs Zurich. They have virtually identical average income levels, but one is definitely not like the other.

Last edited by CalUrbanist; Dec 11, 2023 at 9:10 AM.
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  #19  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 3:02 PM
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Originally Posted by SIGSEGV View Post
I only really have experience in academia, but of the three universities I have experience with (as a student or as a researcher), UChicago feels the most elitist, Stanford felt the least, and
MIT is somewhere in the middle. But I think that's partially because humanities-heavy schools (like UChicago) feel more elitist for some reason, partially outweighing the regional factor (i.e. Harvard/Yale/Princeton are probably much more elitist feeling than UChicago?). Maybe it's my physical-sciences bias speaking though.

Or maybe it's the architecture... strangely, St. Louis gave me the impression of feeling quite elitist, with WUSTL seeming like it's oozing a sense of superiority... but maybe it's the disney gothic architecture speaking.
Yes, you are correct about St. Louis. Keep in mind that St. Louis was like the 4th largest city in the country during the Gilded Age Era and I believe that culture still heavily influences regional politics. It's definitely a city of very stark wealth disparities. You can literally be in a neighborhood full of million dollar mansions, drive a few blocks and you're literally in the closest thing America has to an urban slum.
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  #20  
Old Posted Dec 11, 2023, 3:17 PM
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Originally Posted by SIGSEGV View Post
UChicago didn't set quotas on Jews, but the University administration is sort of traditionalist in other ways. UChicago is a very intellectual place, but not really nerdy in the same way as MIT or even Stanford...
There may have been "gentlemen's agreements". Many schools had informal practices limiting non-WASPs. UC likely didn't have the Jewish enrollment pressures of the Eastern schools, as WASPs in the mid-Atlantic were outnumbered pretty early.

Re. the main topic, I agree that, for whatever reason, liberal arts-leaning institutions tend to have more formal cultural hierarchy and social prestige. MIT & Caltech would likely be one extreme with HYP on the other. This matters a lot for traditional elite employment like white shoe law firms or Wall Street, but is likely close to irrelevant in tech.
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