There is a popular distinction between Old Money and New Money.
Old Money is what everyone is familiar with. It’s what you have when you’re a prince or an aristocrat. It’s when you grow up learning how to manage an estate, rather than learning skills to trade for a wage. Old Money is when you have a pedigree. Most of your ancestors did well and most of your family are doing well. There are monuments/parks/buildings/roads named after your relations.
New Money is what you have when your parents escaped from the working class. Maybe one started a business and got rich, maybe one became a sports star, maybe one won the lottery. Maybe your parents are old enough that they could escape the working class by studying and working hard. Probably the rest of your family is poor, and you might have a lot of criminal cousins.
A behavioural difference is apparent. New Money is much flashier and ostentatious than Old Money. This is a function of New Money’s underlying insecurity – the inescapable suspicion that they achieved their position through luck, and that it won’t last. Being insecure, New Money is more likely to bully. It lacks grace, dignity, gravitas and the other qualities associated with good breeding.
Old Money is secure. Old Money knows that if it fucks up, some uncle or great-aunt will be there to provide a cushy job for a quick rebound. Even in cases where help from close relatives isn’t enough, it can usually rely on the reputation of the family name to seal a good deal. And if that doesn’t work, Old Money can always rely on the qualities of their breeding to see them through.
When the economy expands, the central struggle is Old Money vs. New Money. This occurs when the descending aristocracy, on the way down, meets the ascending merchantry. This is the same as what George Orwell called the High vs. the Middle. It’s a natural historical division that most people know about.
When the economy contracts, however, you have Old Poverty vs. New Poverty.
For example, I’m Old Poverty. I’m used to being poor. I was raised by a single mother on welfare, and although my grandparents were great people they were always broke. These grandparents brought me up on stories about the Great Depression, and how they learned to “make do”. Many of the stories began with “we didn’t have a…”
Old Poverty makes it easy to live on a Student Allowance or other benefit, as it usually isn’t much less money than you grew up on anyway. You naturally know how to make do when you’ve been raised by grandparents who were also poor. Poverty doesn’t cause as much anxiety when it’s the natural state, so is not resented as much. Actually having money, on the other hand, is seen as a bonus and is not taken for granted.
In coming years, we will see a lot more of a phenomenon that has hitherto been rare: New Poverty. This has never previously existed in any large number because the economy has kept expanding. But in coming decades, as we hit the limits of growth, we will have economic contractions.
New Poverty is when your parents were able to buy a house and raise a family on their wages – and you can’t. It’s when your parents keep asking you when you’re going to give them grandchildren, and you have to keep explaining that the maths doesn’t add up. It’s when you hit 40 and still haven’t paid off your student loan. It’s when you’re constantly asking yourself how things turned out so bad.
New Poverty is different to someone born into money who crashes out through their own bad decisions. New Poverty is when you do everything (or almost everything) right and still end up renting. You study hard, you don’t get a criminal record, you don’t do Class As, and you still find yourself making $60,000 a year and needing a $900,000 mortgage.
It remains to be seen how Western society deals with the phenomenon of widespread New Poverty.
One of the features of New Poverty is that it’s likely to lead to a massive increase in dissent. Not having expected to become poor, many of those falling from the middle class into New Poverty will become resentful about their miserable station. Already there is a widespread incel movement in the West comprised of men who demand the very best.
In the past, the coming of New Poverty portended revolution. Old Poverty can handle being poor, but New Poverty tends to become bitter. So in times when middle-class or upper-middle-class people are cast down into the working class, we can expect them to fight to get back to their original position. Here it’s worth recalling that many revolutionaries started out in the minor aristocracy.
If we don’t get revolution, we might get what Aldous Huxley predicted – a world where everyone is zombified by pharmaceuticals. Maybe the vast masses will be paralysed by a matrix of screen propaganda, prescription pills and long working hours, lacking the energy to revolt against the technologically-empowered ruling class.
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