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A comment on The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge. Parent comment

Re:The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge by ska on Friday November 04, 2016 @02:04PM (#12874566)
McMansions aren't bought by the rich. Mansions are.

McMansions are an exercise in echoing certain features of the latter on the cheap, but they are primarily an embodiment of social positioning within the upper middle class.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge by briandear on Friday November 04, 2016 @02:53PM (#12874944)
Exactly correct. McMansions are expressions of middle-class "success" yet are often just "normal" cheap houses built on a bigger scale -- same contractor-grade fittings and finishes.

For example, I bet you'd rarely see actual Venetian plaster in a McMansion, but you'd see a "faux finish" version of it. McMansions are movie sets and the owners are playing a "role" of a "successful" person/family.

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Re:The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge by differentman on Friday November 04, 2016 @03:08PM (#12875073)
> McMansions are movie sets and the owners are playing a "role" of a "successful" person/family.

Ah, I love that. Applies to so many people I know. Well, at least, it DID apply to them before they lost their McMansion and, in some cases, went bankrupt.

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Re:The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge by hexane360 on Friday November 04, 2016 @02:38PM (#12874837)
Someone who can afford a McMansion is definitely rich, even by American standards.

As I posted elsewhere: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/16/are-you-in-t...

$80,000 USD / 4 people in America is the lower bound of high income.

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Re:The Mega Rich Have Found an Unlikely New Refuge by ska on Friday November 04, 2016 @02:55PM (#12874961)
You are comparing apples and oranges.

That pew study is income relative to worldwide range, which is fairly pointless in this context. Nobody is talking about upper/middle class boundaries in these terms, and McMansions are largely a US (North American?) phenomena.

Any family in the US with a very low six figure household income (or even a very high five figure) can choose to finance a McMansion. They are not rich by US standards.

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