Ten Luxury Beliefs to Consider

Rob Henderson’s Concept of Luxury Beliefs Is Bound to Nudge Political Perspectives

In his book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, Rob Henderson describes “luxury beliefs” as “ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class at very little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. The upper class includes (but is not necessarily limited to) anyone who attends or graduates from an elite college and has at least one parent who is a college graduate..”¹

Here are ten luxury beliefs to consider.

1. Advocating to defund the police while residing in an affluent, gate-guarded community patrolled by private security.²

2. Advocating to ban automotive combustion engines and coal-powered power plants while driving an expensive electric vehicle charged by fancy, home solar panels.³

3. Advocating for busing programs in which low-income Black and Hispanic students are bused an hour across the city to predominantly white middle-class public schools while your children attend private schools or public schools outside the busing program.⁴

4. Espousing the idea that Israel is a white colonialist state when in fact Israeli Jews are majority Mizrachim Jews that were evicted from North Africa, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran and are “typically less optimistic than their Ashkenazi counterparts about the possibility of resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict and less willing to take what seem to them foolish, hopeless risks for a peace they do not believe can be had."⁵

5. Espousing anti-Second Amendment beliefs such as prohibitions on the rights of others to defend themselves with firearms while you reside in a gate-guarded community and pay for full-time bodyguards to protect you and your family.⁶

6. Advocating for a months-long, stay-at-home order (shutting down most workplaces of the lower-classes) while continuing to rake in six or seven figures via virtual meetings and emails. Or similarly, advocating for public-school closures while your kids receive in-person private tutoring and in-person private schooling.

7. Preventing fellow Americans from freely hiring foreign-born people while you benefit from illegal immigrants’ cheap labor for your home landscape maintenance, home cleaning services and while dining at your favorite restaurants.

8. Advocating to legalize extremely addictive drugs for adults 21 and over, while you easily afford expensive drug rehab for members of your stable, two-parent family.

9. Advocating for federal hurricane disaster recovery funds for Florida’s affluent beach communities—more subsidies for the rich, paid for by lower classes in all 50 states—thus increasing the likelihood of moral hazard.

10. Advocating for federal tax breaks for Ivy League’s athletics, housing and dining hall revenue streams while similar non-university businesses (offering comparable products) and for-profit colleges are forced to pay taxes on their revenue streams⁷

What other luxury beliefs can you think of?

What links can you recommend for further reading on these topics?

1. In his article “Luxury Beliefs are Status Symbols” Rob Henderson writes:

The chief purpose of luxury beliefs is to indicate evidence of the believer’s social class and education.

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.

Advocating for defunding the police or promoting the belief we are not responsible for our actions are good ways of advertising membership of the elite.

Why are affluent people more susceptible to luxury beliefs? They can afford it. And they care the most about status.

In short, luxury beliefs are the new status symbols.  

They are honest indicators of one’s social position, one’s level of wealth, where one was educated, and how much leisure time they have to adopt these fashionable beliefs.

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. However costly these beliefs are for the rich, they often inflict even greater costs on everyone else.

2. Who Pays When the Police Go Away?

3. My best resources for learning about climate change are:

Podcasts

1. John Christy and Kerry Emanuel on Climate Change

2. Matt Ridley on Climate Change

3. Robert Pindyck on Averting and Adapting to Climate Change

4. Judith Curry on Climate Change

5. Freeman Dyson on Heresy, Climate Change, and Science

6. Bjorn Lomborg on the Costs and Benefits of Attacking Climate Change

Books

1. The Whole Story of Climate: What Science Reveals About the Nature of Endless Change

2. The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

3. The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World s Top Climate Scientists

4. Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor

5. The Role of the Sun in Climate Change

6. Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines

Articles and Blog Posts

1. “What is Wrong with Global Warming Anyway?”

2. “A Climate Falsehood You Can Check for Yourself”

3. Michael Chricton: “Environmentalism is a Religion”

4. For more on busing programs check-out my post Busing Programs and Luxury Beliefs and this excellent article and video recommended by a commenter “Busing in Seattle: A Well-Intentioned Failure” and Larry Elder Debunks Michelle Obama on White Flight and Racism.

5. To learn about the purpose and history of Israel check out Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn and Our Perspectives Differ Because We Have Different Facts.

6. Read this excerpt in which MLK Jr. Denied Carry Permit

7. See Richard Vedder’s book Restoring the Promise: Higher Education in America and my related post Who Owns America's Universities?