Luxury beliefs explain Mamdani's rise (11-06-2025--Hour2)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. On the text line, I got a message from Carol who says, please explain to me how a man who has never had a job got the mayorship of New York City. Shouldn't there be some qualification that you have to have to run a city, especially like New York City. No, apparently not. There's no qualification. It's just did you win enough votes? So that's it. So, but this is gonna this is going to allow me to segue into this next topic, which is related to Mam Donnie's victory. If you look at the exit polling, and I've seen some of the data, went over some of it last night on a live stream. But the the the exit polling shows you which groups of voters broke for which candidates, and the massive ones were young women. There's a massive gender divide between male and female. Now, part of that could be attributable to you know, Andrew Cuomo with his sexual harassment scandal, sure, but that's part of it. Ben Shapiro was on Fox News and he was talking about how you know, mom, Donnie just kept saying affordability, affordability, affordability, affordability, and just kept saying the word, but offers up no actual real solutions that could work. It's just you know, socialism. And what he says, like that is apparently irrelevant. The solutions don't matter. The only thing that matters is this this hammering of the word affordability. And when he said that, I started thinking, well, you know, that does make a bit of sense when you look at the demographics of the support around Mamdani, which was younger, female, college educated, affluent. Right, this is an over production of elite's problem where people go to college. They're told you go to college, you get to be part of the quote elite category with this college degree, and you'll be successful. You'll have all of the American dream at your fingertips because you went to college. And then these kids come out of college and they realize and by the way, this is not just on the left, this is on the right. This is an entire generation. They've been told this. I was told this, right. The boomers, the Baby Boom generation, have been telling us this for fifty years. Go to college and then you'll have a more successful career. Right, you'll make more money, you'll be able to afford more things and go on the trips and better lifestyle and all of that. Well, that was true, and it's now not so much. And that's the problem that the younger generations are running up against, from the millennials to the Gen zs, they're running into this where they're not making a lot of money, they're saddled with a ton of college debt, they can't afford any of the housing, and they're looking around and saying, if this is the capitalist system, it has failed me, and so why would I be a capitalist? Right? I understand this argument, and it all falls under this category of affordability. So here comes this you know, photogenic, telligenic, slick, young guy comes from a life of privilege, but acts like he's a third worlder, and he promises you that he'll get somebody else to pay for all your stuff. Now, keep in mind also that the more affluent female younger voters that supported Mom Donnie, they are affluent, they come from money, so they have a personal experience with this kind of lifestyle which they themselves now cannot afford. And there are many reasons for that. I've gone over these reasons over the years. One is that you know, you're used to living in a five thousand square foot house because that's what your mom and your dad, you know, being married and having jobs and working for a couple decades, that's what now they're able to afford. They've built up this way health You grew up in that wealth, and you think that's the norm. And so when you go looking for your house, you're not looking at a nine hundred square foot home in a you know, kind of blighty part of town. You don't want to live there, as that's what I bought when I bought my first house, very small, run down, bad neighborhood. But that's what you do when you start out. You don't but a lot of people don't want to do that. They don't want to start out like that. Their expectation is too high for their skills and abilities, right, so, and that is part of it as well, But it is also an affordability issue, to be sure. So Shapiro says, you just keep saying affordability, affordability, but you don't offer any kind of real solutions. And I hear that, and I see the exit polling, and I say, well, that kind of makes sense. Then why this message just hammering away one word, one you know, one slogan. Why that might resonate more so with a young female audience. And this has to do with the thesis that I've talked about for years also on the show, which is the men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Men and women communicate differently, and anybody in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex has encountered a discussion of some kind that turns into an argument for no reason, no discernible reason, which is the you know, wife comes home from work wants to talk about, you know, some jerk at work. And. Husband's like, well, you know what, this is what you do to solve that problem? And the wife keeps talking about it. Husband says, well, to how you solve the problem? Wife keeps talking about it. Now they start getting frustrated because she is in the conversation for support and he is in the conversation for solutions. Men and women are different. Not all women in all conversations do this, and not all men in all conversations do it, but generally speaking like this tends to be the case. Right, Women want to talk about the issue, talk about the problem. They know the solution that they are going to employ, but they get satisfaction by talking it out. Guys do not. Guys want Okay, here's the problem, here's the solution. Boom boom, done so, and then you start talking past each other. Each one feels like they're not being heard because they're just having a different conversation. Basically, So that might actually be something that Republican candidates should start doing. Seriously, Like if you don't have to offer solutions and you just get to say stuff, just hammer away at a word, and people who are complaining about affordability and they hear you say affordability, like that might actually resonate with half of the voters, the female voter, or a lot of the particularly the younger female voters. Right, that might work. This also gets to a thing that Rob Henderson writes about Rob Henderson. He is with the I think it's the Manhattan Institute, I want to say, but he has a website, Robkhenderson dot com. And this was actually he made these comments at a speech that he recently delivered, called luxury beliefs are status symbols. Right, So keep in mind the demographic that I mentioned that went for Mom Donnie, because the working class people, they voted for Cuomo, the people that Mom Donnie like highlights and says, these are the people that we care about. These are the people that are going to get all of this help, right, the taxi drivers and the bicyclists that are delivering food and stuff. Right though, those folks they did not vote for him because they usually have a good BS detector. But these are luxury beliefs, and in particular the defund the police. This is a sort of classic example of luxury beliefs. And he says that luxury beliefs have to a large extent replaced luxury goods. Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. Right, they get status by saying these things for themselves because they don't pay the price. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video. 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That's that that is actually my fear is that that this is just the first of many electoral victories. Mamdannie will secure working his way up. Now he can't be president, but you know, he can run for all of these other offices. You know, I think he'll probably make a run for governor if he has you know, if he makes it eight years, as mayor, Dana says in his defense, in his defense, Trump does the same thing. He has consistently said he has a plan for health care, but no inclination to the slightest no, I think he said he had a concept of a plan. He doesn't even have a plan. But yeah, this is and this is why Ben Sapiro was talking about the use of affordability. Affordability but no actual solutions, no plans that get implement it. And he says, that's why you're seeing these swings right to left, right to left, because people come along with populist rhetoric but don't actually have any way to get the things done. And I think he's I think he's largely correct on that. And yeah, Trump is on the right. He harnessed the populism on the right make America great Again, which is a recognition that you aren't where you should be, right, that things are sacked against you, and we can make it better. Right. So it's an acknowledgment of your pain. So yeah, absolutely, like this is why, honestly, I think like the next versions of MAGA, if there are going to be any if the movement doesn't just completely implode, it's going to be somebody who can strike a populist chord but also knows how to get stuff done. This was asked of us at the News and Bruce event, and I said it at News and Bruce, which is that's why I like Ron DeSantis, because the guy I keeps racking up wins in Florida that are things that conservatives and populists like. So eight oh three Numbers says, it's not so much about the college degree that'll give you success, it's about the kind of degree. During the last forty years I worked, I saw that these degrees people were getting did not prepare them for the jobs that they could get that pay the most money. Right. Yes, obviously, if you are getting a degree in some of the hard sciences and such, those are more likely to pay off. I'm talking about the quote unquote elites. This is this is framed in this way under the heading of an overproduction of elites. I call them foe elites. Of course they're not actually elite, right, But they take these college classes, they get these degrees that are in you know, political science or something, and they think that this is going to you know, put them on the path to get them into the governing class, and then they'll be in control. They'll be in power. They'll have a high flying job as a single twenty four year old in New York City working for a marketing firm or something, and they've been sold a lie. It. It's actually very difficult because there are so many people getting all of those degrees that that and so the market will pay you less because there's an overproduction of the supply. Do do do? That's a very lengthy text. I will get back to that. So well, yeah, let me get Ralph on first. Hello, Ralph, welcome to the show. Well, you know, Pete, I think the Republicans candidate can relate more if they would speak to the ladies and the ladies telling them what they need in the In the real world, they can say I feel your pain and then, like Chuck Schumer, either make a fake constituent or either a fake situation to help soothe her and win her vote. Like Bill Clinton, did I feel your pain? Yeah, Like that's why they say those things. That's yeah, I mean, it's just it's messaging. Ralph, I appreciate the call. It's finding out what is motivating voters and then saying that thing. And you don't even need The point of that is not that men and women are different in the message has to cater to a woman or a man or whatever. It's that you don't need a plan. You could just say the thing and that oh he really connects with me. Oh he really understands my pain. That's it. So in eighteen ninety nine, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen household name, I'm sure he published a book called The Theory of the Leisure Class, drawing on observations about social class in the late nineteenth century. Veblin's key idea is that because we can't be certain about the financial status of other people, that a good way to size up their wealth is to see whether they can afford expensive goods and leisurely activities. We used to say keeping up with the Joneses, Right, the neighbor they got a new car. It's an outward display of wealth. But now like they're like people have nice cars all over the place, right, Like a new nice car. Used to be something in like my neighborhood. If somebody came home with a new car, like all the neighbors would gather around, like, oh, look at this new car and all that. But people, I don't think people do that anymore, unless it's like a like a hot rod or something. But he says, this is why status symbols are so difficult to obtain and costly to purchase. That's the key, right, It's an hour or display that I have the means and also as important, I have the leisure time to just fritter away because I just have nothing to do. I have all this extra time to do these activities. In Veblen's day, people exhibited their status with delicate and restrictive clothing like tuxedos, top hats, and evening gowns, or by partaking in time consuming activities like beagling. I don't know what that is. I think it has to do with dogs or activities like golf, But now anybody can play golf. I mean, look, George, he just came right off the links over here. Here's a great idea. 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It's just a display of opulence, and that's what characterizes the affluent class. In fact, he's the one who coined the term cultural capital. Animals do it as well. He cites another study about African gazelles and how the strong, healthy ones jump up in the air when they see a lion, and they don't do it to warn the other gazelles. They do it to show the lion that I'm strong. Go get somebody else. So humans and animals adopt costly means of expressing themselves in order to obtain distinction from the masses. Right, I want to show everybody that I'm not like them. Affluent humans often do this economically and culturally with their status symbols. A difference, though, between animals and humans is that the human signals often trickle out into the rest of society, which weakens the power of the signal. And once a signal is adopted by the masses, the affluent abandon it. They no longer care about this thing. Used to be they dressed nice, and then when a lot of people could afford suits and such, then the affluent do what. Now They're gonna dress like swabs. You notice nobody wears a tie anymore. There are other historical examples of this. He talks about spices that they used to be a sign of wealth and affluents, but then when Europeans colonized India and the Americas, the cost of spices dropped, and now the masses were able to get their hands on some oregano, and they were like the French actually banned spices. They were like, no more spices. Louis the fourteenth the court chefs banned sugar and spice from all their meals except for desserts, because they're not, you know, monsters dueling. That's another one. They would duel. And then when the masses got their hands on guns and they could duel too, then the affluent we're like, well, we're not doing that anymore. The yearning for distinction is the key motive, right, and in order to convert economic capital into cultural capital, it has to be publicly visible. But distinction encompasses not just clothing or food or rituals. It also extends to ideas and beliefs and causes. In the past, people displayed their membership in the upper class with their material accouterment. But today material goods have become cheaper, right more accessible. So the affluent have decoupled social status from goods, and they've reattached it to beliefs. The upper class craves distinction. High status people desire wealth and status more than anybody else, according to studies. So what do top hats have in common with defunding the police? Well, who were the most ardent supporters of the fashionable at the time defund the police? Cause of Five years ago, a survey from Yuga found Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police because they can afford to hold that position because they already live in safe, oftentimes gated communities. They can afford to hire private security. Right, it doesn't affect them now, it's really going to affect the masses. Expressing a luxury belief is a manifestation of cultural capital, a signal of one's fortunate economic circumstances. He says. There are other examples of luxury beliefs as well. Another one would be the downplaying of individual agency in shaping life outcomes. In other words, you're being held back. The affluent will tell people this, this is woke, that there is a they that's out there. In fact, here this is James Lindsay talking about it on the Winston Marshall podcast. When we understand, well, why isn't that playing that's so odd. Once again, it's not let's see here, plug that in there. Let's see maybe this will play. Now when we understand woke this way as having woken up to a structure of the world where they control everything. There's some they. Who are they? That's abstract at this point. It doesn't matter who they are. There is a they. They control everything, and they've controlled everything such that you're not allowed to say or think certain things, so that you're kept in a false consciousness about how the world really is. And this is why Tucker Carlson, in my opinion, is woke, right. And then he goes on to Tucker Carlson stuff. But the key there is woke. This is a luxury belief because at the core of it is that you are repressed by some they that's out there. A twenty nineteen study led by Joseph Daniels at Marquette University was published in the Journal of Applied Economics Letters. They found that individuals with higher income or higher social status were most likely to say that success results from luck and connections rather than hard work, while low income individuals were more likely to say success comes from hard work and individual effort, believing that you are responsible for your life's direction rather than external forces appears to be beneficial, right. The studies show this. If you take responsibility for yourself and you work hard right, you improve yourself, you will be better off rather than going down the path of a victimhood mindset. But what do the affluent actually tell their kids? All Right? If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself, check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right, so back to this Rob Henderson piece, and again you can read the entire speech. I'm just giving you the highlights. It's very lengthy. Robkahenderson dot com is the website, and he's talking about these luxury beliefs and expressing a luxury belief like defunding the police. It's a signal that you are more wealthy than somebody else because it doesn't affect you. You can say this stuff and it has no impact on you. These are luxury beliefs. You can you can deal with their not being cops outside of your nice neighborhood with you know, with all your security that you're able to hire yourself. Then there was this idea of you know, work hard and you know, take control and responsibility of over your own decisions and your life, and that's the path to success. But the luxury belief tells you no, it's actually luck and connections. Right, So again there's somebody else preventing you from getting ahead. This is a luxury belief that the affluent tell other people. But get this, they don't tell their own children that. So while the surveys show that the more affluent people talk about luck and connections to other people, that's what they say is a greater determining factor in success than hard work, and lower income people say, no, it's hard work. Stanford psychology professor Albert Bendura his research showed that belief in personal agency has powerful positive effects on life's outcomes. But it's he says, you see what affluent people tell their kids, and what seems to happen is that the affluent people often broadcast how they owe their success to luck, but then they tell their own children about the importance of hard work and individual effort. And then there's the vocabulary. He says, when I was growing up in foster homes, or making minimum wage as a dishwasher, or serving in the military, I never heard words like cultural appropriation or gendered or heteronormative. Working class people could not tell you what these terms mean. But if you visit an elite university, you'll find plenty of affluent people who will eagerly explain them to you. When people express unusual beliefs that are at odds with conventional opinion, like defunding the police, downplaying hard work, or using odd vocabulary, often what they are really saying they are communicating their signaling. I was educated at a top university. I have the means and time to acquire these esoteric ideas. I can explain to you why a man can give birth. Only the affluent can learn these things, because ordinary people have real problems to worry about. The chief purpose, he says, of luxury beliefs, is to indicate evidence of the believers social class and education. It's signaling. Members of the luxury belief class promote these ideas because it advances their social standing, and because they know that the adoption of these policies or beliefs will cost them less than others. It doesn't matter to them, right. This is why what was her name? Robin DiAngelo can write the book White Fragility and then go out and post pictures of her fancy mountain estate with her You know, thirty people in attendance, and every single one of them are white. She pays no cost. Right, she injects this stuff into the general public as a signal. Why are affluent people more susceptible to luxury beliefs? Well, because they can afford it, and they care the most about status. They care the most about it. In short, luxury beliefs are the new status symbols. This is why you see a lot of a lot of the ranks of the quote woke. The people that have these luxury beliefs and are constantly advancing this stuff. They're not usually like the billionaires. I mean, there are some, to be sure, but it's usually the people that are just below that economic tier. You're talking upper middle class, right, they would be considered rich, I guess yes, But they're not like the uber uber rich. There's this educated class. They go to the finest schools, right, they get the credentials, and then they're going to come up with all these theories because I have taken the time, I have the ability to take the time to study all of this stuff and then in jail into the mainstream. And just as many luxury goods often start with the rich but eventually become available to everyone, so it is with luxury beliefs, but Unlike luxury goods, luxury beliefs can have long term detrimental effects for the poor and working class. This is the Murphy Brown syndrome. Remember I don't need a man to have the baby. And Vice President Dan Quayle called this out like CBS should be ashamed of putting this show on TV and sending this signal. And then the signal goes out like you can just be a single mom and you get a donor and have a baby and do it all yourself and all that. Yeah, that's a luxury belief because that's really really hard to do if you are just a regular person. However costly these beliefs are for the rich, they often inflict greater costs on everybody else. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecalanarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.