More convinced that "social classes are sticky / fuzzy cultural adaptations to economic positions" is basically right, having seen people switch economic positions and develop new cultural norms similar to other groups in their economic position, even if the groups don't interact
Not surface-level culture like tastes in food or music or clothes etc, those things change all the time and don't mean much, but norms and attitudes which may not be explicitly acknowledged- like attitudes to work, interests, money, status, relationships etc
Taiwan has pretty generous visa and tax arrangements for people who are relatively high NW and willing to move, so in Taipei you meet international people who made enough cash in bigcorps to not *need* to work anymore, and who are adjusting to that new economic position
Basically they've reached the FIRE point. A lot of people in FIRE culture see work as something intrinsically awful which you do only out of financial necessity, and their goal is to earn enough to eliminate it from their lives. But then what do you do? Just sit around?
Families whose kids will be in a position where just sitting around would be financially feasible seem to go to massive efforts and spend lots of cash trying to prevent their offspring from doing this- hence boarding school prospectuses emphasising "character building" etc
Family fortunes can maybe survive one generation of layaboutism but not two, so intrinsic rather extrinsic motivation is really emphasised because those kids will be able to stave off most extrinsic factors for years by spending down the money if they choose to
Post-FIRE people and generational money eventually seem to settle on the same set of helpful norms for this position in life: develop your interests, don't spend for status, do work you are intrinsically motivated by, work on long-shot high upside projects etc
If you aren't dependent on your job for survival or status, you can invest time in fitting things around your interests or take some risk on ideas that might not pay off because the downside is cushioned, rather than avoid working altogether
But it takes a long time to psychologically move from "work is something I must tolerate only until I have enough money not to" to "work is just how I direct my effort and there's a whole world of possibilities open to me"
That might partly also explain why some people find retirement so massively difficult and others don't- if you always worked for necessity and then suddenly you don't have to because your pension kicked in, it's a massive psychological adjustment
If you've always just directed your time and effort at things you found rewarding, then retirement can be a more gradual process as perhaps your tastes get a little less adventurous and you add more downtime to your diary
Seems like a big advantage to be mentally prepared for this situation from childhood vs always having been forced by necessity to work and then suddenly finding you don't need to anymore- one more way the class system replicates
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