Rob Henderson – The Cost of Luxury Beliefs

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0:00 What makes an “elite”?

4:37 Rob’s very rough early childhood

7:39 Rob’s experience with foster care and adoption

12:35 Why Rob joined the Air Force

17:23 The uses of military discipline

22:15 A 25-year-old military vet freshman at Yale

24:55 Luxury beliefs and cultural capital

29:56 Who bears the cost of defunding the police?

35:43 Two-parent households for me but not for thee

40:59 Revealed preferences and implicit understanding

46:57 Interclass resentment as a political weapon

52:45 How Rob became both the “token liberal” and the “token conservative”

58:02 Rob: Poverty doesn’t necessarily generate social dysfunction

Recorded February 19, 2024

Links and Readings

Rob’s memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class

Rob’s Substack

Rob’s Boston Globe op-ed, “The SAT is pathway to more college diversity, not less”

Rob’s WSJ piece, “‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford”

Robert Putnam’s book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

Charles Murray’s book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

Thorstein Veblen’s book, The Theory of the Leisure Class

Pierre Bourdieu’s book, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste

Michael Knox Beran’s book, Wasps: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy

Rob’s NYT op-ed, “Why Being a Foster Child Made Me a Conservative"

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