Interrogating Luxury Beliefs

I can't put down Rob Henderson's book 'Troubled'

I’ve come across the term “Luxury beliefs” on social media kind of a lot. It refers to beliefs that the wealthy and powerful hold that are fashionable for them and don’t affect them, but adopting those beliefs hurts less-privileged people.

It’s stuff like “all drugs should be legalized” or “defund the police” which will disproportionately affect poorer people when seen to its logical end. It’s also stuff like “It’s just luck that led me to be successful” or “Marriage is outdated”. These beliefs are mostly held by people who work their ass off to get to where they are, and are raised by married parents, and plan to get married before having kids. When they are internalized by those with worse life circumstances, though, they tend to keep people stuck or lead to worse outcomes for their kids. Another one is “college isn’t important” by Silicon Valley CEOs who then go on to only hire those from Ivies. So anyone taking their advice seriously ends up much, much worse off.

Turns out, that …