Bobos in Paradise

Perhaps George Will was the first to call attention to the phenomenon. In 1997, he observed the peculiar market strategy of selling upscale products to Baby Boomers by appealing not only to material benefits, but to spiritual ones. Expensive Patek Phillipe watches, for example, are marketed on the basis of their inter-generational endurance. They were selling not only watches, but also heirlooms. In Will's words:

"Get it? Spending more than $8000 for a flashy watch ... may be a pleasure, but certainly not a tacky pleasure, or only a pleasure. It is also an act of altruism, of responsible stewardship regarding tradition. In short, it is ... family values."

This marketing strategy has found its way into car sales. Recently, there was an ad for the new Volkswagen Beetle that suggested that if you "sold your soul" in the 1980s you could "buy it back" in the 1990s. Right now, Volvo is marketing a luxury car featuring a radiator that converts ground-level ozone to oxygen. The ad campaign suggests that a little hedonism is alright for the socially conscious.

To some, the children of the 1960s have sold out to the temptations of the 1980s and the pleasures of a commercial society. In his new book, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, David Brooks argues that perhaps those for whom both social consciousness and the commercial have saliency, who both employ spiritual advisors and financial planners, have not so much sold out, as sold up.

Brooks coins the term "Bobo" from the combination of "Bohemian" and "bourgeois". In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, Bohemians rejected the sterility, spiritual shallowness, and mediocrity of the middle class, of the shopkeepers. Some even suggested that the hatred of the bourgeois is "the beginning of all virtue." Bohemians rejected authority and hierarchical structures.

By contrast, the bourgeois embraced the American virtues codified by Benjamin Franklin, of honesty, hard work, thrift, dependability, and punctuality. Work hard, don't ask too many questions and you will be rewarded at least with material success.

The ethos of the new Bobos is the reconciliation of these cultures. Bobos enjoy the advantages of the elite, while shunning the appearance of elitism. They reconcile altruism with finding the money to send their children to Ivy League colleges. They reconcile two-career couples with the demands of parenting. They reconcile liberality of attitude with stock market discipline. Whether they are really reconciling or actually rationalizing the avoidance of difficult choices determines whether we ought to embrace or reject this new ethos.

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