* The higher up you go, the blurrier things get in terms of rules, customs, etc. At a wage job, you and everyone else knows you’re making $17.25 an hour or whatever. In white-collar roles, pay is a moving target—and you're expected to negotiate, which quietly screens for social fluency. And others generally don’t know how much you’re making.

* Do powerful people still crave proximity to fame?

* Rough-and-tumble play is how kids learn about strength, speed, and boundaries. When you remove it, you also remove early lessons about the size of physical sex differences.

* By the age of three, boys can throw objects farther, faster, and with greater accuracy than girls. No other physical activity in early childhood shows such a large gap between the sexes.

* Discussing Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through The American Status System

* Why poor people pretend to be richer than they really are, and rich people pretend to be poorer than they really are

* The more physically dangerous a job, the more likely it is to be coded as lower on the class ladder. This is one reason why schoolteachers are considered middle class while HVAC technicians are considered working class, even though their earnings are comparable

* People often confuse economic class with social class. But wealth alone doesn’t buy your way in—habits, tastes, and cultural fluency matter just as much, if not more. Redistribution doesn’t fix social gatekeeping.

* People from elite circles often parrot egalitarian language while enforcing unspoken norms about taste, accent, dress, and behavior. It's a way of keeping the gates shut while appearing inclusive.

* Crossing class lines often brings discomfort. Even capable, ambitious young people sometimes retreat to familiar territory because the new world feels alien.

* I draw a loose analogy to the fact that during the era of mass European migration to the U.S., 1-in-3 immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries returned to their home country

* Your kids, not you, are the ones most likely to move up a social rung—if that’s something you’re even trying to optimize for. For most people, full class mobility is a two-generation project.

* Explaining the intricacies of the personality trait of openness

* Why 77% of young Americans today don’t qualify for military service, mostly due to obesity, but also substance abuse, mental and physical health issues, and other reasons

* Explaining the finding that military recruits are mostly from middle-class families.

* Thoughts on reading. Why it is that fiction fans re-read the same type of story in different forms, while nonfiction readers generally do not like to read the same type of book twice.

* The decline in marriage is largely responsible for the decline in fertility rates. If you’ve never seen a healthy relationship in real life or on TV, why would marriage seem like a goal worth pursuing?

* The cultural template for a stable family life has vanished in many communities—and money alone won’t restore that lost script. You can’t aspire to what you’ve never seen.

* Thoughts on ozempic

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Unstated Rules Preserve Hierarchy

Rob Henderson's Office Hours (private feed for [email protected])

Unstated Rules Preserve Hierarchy