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A Quiz Asks: How Insulated Are You?

A small blog post on the NY Times looked at a PBS quiz based on Charles Murray's latest book, Coming Apart.  Below is a comment I posted:

Looking over the scores, I was reminded of an idea I had when considering income inequality, that although I deplore the state of the country - I have been blogging about income inequality since 2003, when I discovered how large and negative the correlations were - I am glad to not be in the suffering lower classes. I deplore the suffering, but do not want to suffer myself.

This is no different. I want to enjoy a better, more affluent lifestyle. I like being among the educated and affluent. I look down my nose at all sorts of media consumed by the middle-classes, but not because of the people that watch it; I find much of it to be useless, critical, unintellectual garbage.

My score was 23, or 17 (depends on interpretation of some questions). Yes, first-generation upper-middle class.

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