For the Comfortably Uncomfortable



Personal Time
Bandits
Corporate America was built by war heroes then rebuilt by greedy hippies. No wonder Silicon Valley went from white collar to brownshirt so fast.

For most of our history, professions were heritable in the form of tools, land, and
know-how. All the changed when Horace the tinsmith and Zebulon the wheelwright skittered toward the factories the skittered home to teach little Jeb and Marla “work ethic” rather than, you know, skills....


We Help You....

Keep score (w/ peer data).
Win your next dinner party.
Make the best of a good situation.


Join 120,000 semi-rich, totally exhausted people (like you) figuring out WTF happenened....
 




Vanity Metrics
Good taste use to be a good business. Now, it’s an obstacle for big businesses looking to scale ad revenue. It’s why you’ll be reading more and more about cruises and less and less about Umbria.

Targeting data makes culture into a diagnostic rather than project, driving down – in a very real financial sense – the value of the sort of curation most lifestyle publishers were created to do.



Europe, California
As the American frontier closed, violence became entwined with ambition. Why would it be any different in the NIMBY-filled suburbs?

Sometime around 1880, Mark Twain leaned back in a Morris chair or a stupor or both and quipped: “Buy land. They’re not making any more of it.” That quote is now regurgitated birdlike by every visiting drunkle with a BA in economics. But Twain wasn’t talking about investments.







Rabbi-Curious
Yids and Micks locked out of elite industries built the modern media then used the modern media to rebuild the elite. Guess who ain’t so happy about it? The Mayflower Mafia.

Just beneath reactionary caterwauling about liberal media bias lies a Protestant cultural anxiety about the intellectual ascendance of non-Protestants in America. The real objection is to a religious – yes, religious – preference for shared truth over individual truth.





Prep Effects  ➺ Semiconfabulators ➺ Caddyshackles ➺ Effable Studs ➺ Polo Bearishness ➺ Socialized Headline ➺ Passive Regression ➺ Oolong Tea Party ➺ Horace Mayonnaise ➺ Weaponized Ambiance ➺ Loyalty Programmed ➺ Resting Rich Face ➺ Desktoplessness ➺ Fractal Snobbery ➺ Excessive Thrift ➺ Gen Executor ➺ Engineered Elites ➺ Leveraged Despair ➺ Professional Chicken ➺ Empirical Violence ➺ Rich Friend Gaps ➺ High-Stakes Bullshit

The Cheatsheet

Friday - August 15, 2025   (WE’RE ON VACATION. BACK IN SEPT.)
A thrice-weekly pre-dinner briefing for busy professionals who want to know just enough to seem like they know everything, Upper Middle’s “Cheatsheet” is the antidote to asp-y Axios apocrypha – a social briefing for people who care about status, taste, money, and how they co-mingle.

Status

Sur La Communal Table

What sociologists call “autonomy,” psychologists call “independence,” and your 6v6 soccer coach called “self-esteem” has long been understood to be a byproduct of privilege. But a new replication study out of France and England finds that “individuals from higher social classes seem more oriented towards both themselves and others.” In other words, entitled people are more compassionate. No tradeoff.

These findings don’t mean elites were never selfish. More likely, they adapted. Back in the mid-aughts, anthropologist Sherry Ortner argued that elites maintain status through “the cultivation of particular kinds of selves”—selves formed in contrast to non-elites. So if the working class were to... say... embrace a borderline psychotic form of rugged individualism, Ivy grads would line up at food co-ups to buy $12.50 bags of carbon-offset granola. Sounds about right.
Taste

Omakasapocalypto

The fall of “affordable luxury”— banquette joints like Red Lobster and TGI Fridays —set the stage for the fall of Big Omakase. Once a restrained indulgence for families pulling mid–six figures, $250-a-seat chef’s choice fish joints proliferated post-pandemic, becoming a collective Cheesecake Factory for the corporate VPs. Even with Raya-using finance bros trawling for tail at the counter, reservations are now an easy get.

Price sensitivity is trickling up and consumers are trundling down. Olive Garden faltered because strip-mall diners could get decent vongole elsewhere; omakase is contracting because chains like SUGARFISH and KazuNori deliver adequate raw bars for dads splurging on kiddie menu toro. Do they provide an experience? Not really. But when Soy Boys want an experience, we go $400 prix fixe. A pricey counter offers the worst of both worlds: too cheap to feel rare, too expensive to feel raw.
Money


Suburban Submersibles

According to new data from automotive pricing service Edmund’s, 26.6% of Q2 trade-ins were “underwater,” meaning the car was worth less than the balance of the loan taken out to purchase it. The average gap was $6,754 and the average underwater car was… pretty nice. Higher end brands like Land Rover, Ram, and Tesla are most prone to equity shocks with EVs sinking fastest, depreciating the moment new tech rolls out. This has been true since the ‘90s: Suburban faves double as financial liabilities.

What’s striking is how little this risk dents demand.. The latest figures show Americans loving the Ford F‑Series, RAV4s (hideos), and Chevy Silverado – all sturdy enough to hold their value – but the Ram 1500 and Tesla Model Y still crack the top ten.
Brands retain their value even when the cars produced by those brands don’t.



STATUS REPORTS

Upper Middle’s “Status Reports” use survey data to decode how social, cultural, and financial capital shape both our choices and our sense of self. Each report draws on correlations to expose impulse-driving biases and the subtle ways we’ve been socialized—for better and for worse. In understanding people like us, we understand ourselves.

EASE MAXXING

The Upper Middle “Self-Presentation Survey” examined how we present ourselves in social settings – particularly among perceived peers. Specifically, it dove deep on soft signaling.
764—39/23 
Doc—45456



RARIFIED WILDS

The Upper Middle “Outdoorsy Survey” examined how we engage with, conceptualize, and fetishize nature. The survey data suggests that Nalgene-carrying weekend trippers clustered in metroplexes valorize “pure” nature, but can’t necessarily afford it.
764—39/23
Doc—45456



ANTSY NEIGHBORS

Our “Where Next Survey” explored how we think about moving: not just where we might go, but how we consider what those choices say about our class position, taste, and willingness to compromise. The results indicate that we’re house-proud and restless,
764—39/23
Doc—45456



Zero-Martini Lunches 
UPGRADE TO JOIN
A live conversation series with authors and scholars on the forces shaping this privileged American life, “Zero-Martini Lunches” are Chatham House Rules forums where big ideas get batted around while everyone eats sad desk salads. The one Zoom meeting you’ll actually look forward to attending.

 
Ruth Braunstein
AndreaCampbell
Eunji Kim
Megan Greenwell
Michael Grynbaum
Leigh Clare La Berge
Augustine Sedgwick
Michelle Jackson
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The Editor

An award-winning & losing journalist, Andrew Burmon has served as the Editor of Inverse, Fatherly, and SPY. He is the co-author of Fatherhood (Harper Horizon) and the product of elite schools, New England ennui, psychopharmacology, Catholic/ Jewish guilt, too many books, smart women, and his own bad decisions. As an infant, he pulled the silver spoon from his mouth, stuck it in his eye, and cried.





                   




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