The old money aesthetic thing is 1% propaganda to keep people aspiring to that and romanticizing instead of coming together to unionize, demand better from our governments etc.

I would add another possible side effect to growing up around very wealthy people (in my experience): THINKING YOU ARE POORER OR WORSE OFF THAN YOU ARE! We are 4 kids in my family and all grew up around wealth, my 3 older siblings (in their 30s and 40s) to THIS DAY talk about themselves like they were poor despite having gone to top private schools, private language schools, private swimming lessons, horse riding (owning their own horse), paying $hundreds to trim half a cm of their hair every month, eating out in nice restaurants frequently, studying abroad and having memberships of several countryside leisure centres....

"Money doesn't buy happiness" is something they only tell to poor people

The affordable housing lottery really does sound like Housing Hunger Games. Wow.

If money doesn’t buy happiness, then why do they work so hard to hold onto it?

“Gay Fran Drescher.” Intended to be an insult but a really the highest of compliments, so joke’s on them.

I went to a very exclusive private school for girls, on a special scholarship because of my “gifted child” status and my test results. The girls were very polite to me, but I wish the management hadn’t told everyone that I was a “charity student”. It created a distance that otherwise I don’t think would have been there. The girls meant well, I believe, but I was still inadvertently excluded from really being one of the group. I resented the teachers, especially, calling me that every time they saw me. What children most want at school is to feel that they belong. I should have, my grandfather, a building contractor, built that school in the 1930s.

As someone who grew up in Harlem I completely agree. It is sad to become an adult and not be able to afford the place you were raised. And the people who move to New York because it’s a novel experience, but don’t get to know their community or participate in local business…spot on.

I gasped when he was talking about his experience with applying for afforable housing, wow

I felt this. I was born and raised in LES manhattan, chinese, and its just sad coming back year after year (to visit) and seeing my community slowly dying out. Now 25 years later, im somewhat back. Living in queens now. Sad its just really not affordable for us regular people anymore. My mom used to work in some textile factory.

I am a born and raised San Franciscan and can relate to everything in this conversation! Especially the part about seeing the city as a community vs. a playground for your 20s and 30s, and public schools. I know most of my neighbors will move as soon as they want kids. True city diversity has so much to offer and I wouldn't give up my childhood in the city for anything!

I loved what Dutch said about people moving to neighborhoods but not being a part of the actual community or realizing a community exists. Everything he said about people moving to NYC and treating it as an adult playground is spot on.

38:34

I studied abroad in Italy, and we had a few students from a private university that was old money town in New England. And it so bizarre how so disconnected they were from the rest of us who were on scholarships and having to take out loans or GoFundMe to be there. Along with how they kept to themselves and were cliquey about interacting outside their bubble and could tell they were just there to check off a place on their list to say they've been to.

I just don’t want the stress that comes with not having enough money! When things are really tight money-wise, the stress never lets up, it’s soul-eroding. My regular grocery order was $89 in March, now it’s $140 for the exact same list! I hate having to exclude the healthy foods I love most, like fish, pre-washed salad greens (the washing is painful and hard with my back trouble), blueberries and almonds because they’re too expensive! Poverty is bad for health in so many ways besides the obvious medical expenses. If I have to go to a special clinic in the city nearby, it’s $30 extra for parking and tolls.

9:26

A big part of the fascination with the Old Money Aesthetic is to due with this modern Gilded Age that we are living through. The gap is so huge right now that it makes these lifestyles more otherworldly and fascinating and we have social media to give us a glance behind the curtain.

I love Dutch's content. I used to be a residential property manager at a partially low-income tax credit housing community and I quit and took a MASSIVE pay cut (50% of my income) to leave the industry. My company was very much giving the low income homes worse apartments, finding loopholes to renovate everything else first while they wait for the 30 year requirement to have the tax credit units to be up.

I was born and raised in the lower east side, and due to cost-of-living kept getting pushed farther and farther outward. Before I bought my apartment in the Bronx, I looked at affordable housing. I never qualified because I made too much for the poor bracket, and too little for the wealthier bracket. The few apartments that I qualified for were in neighborhoods, that were not very nice, and the rent was higher than what I was paying at my current location of the time I always hated the CB preference because I was no longer living in the district that I grew up in and felt that I was cheated. The only reason why I own an apartment is because my father gave me money for a down payment and I live in the very cheapest place you can afford in the Bronx. There is nothing around me and I have very few peers so it’s very lonely.

I fully admit I was always glad I grew up working class/lower middle class in a small town filled with people in the same income bracket. It made you feel less odd one out. I already felt left out for other reasons. The class difference would have made that worse.