Where New Money is Becoming Old

Although the article I got inspiration for this post from isnt really written about specifically old and new money, but it does have a few similarities to The Great Gatsby. 'You Can't Go Home Again' is about the weakening of the conservative and republican stronghold, Orange County. Johnathan Durnham describes a typical scene in the O.C. where high school girls carry lattes and credit cards, and high end restaurants filled with high end people. This famous western county was born during the post-WWII boom of government funded defense projects and then the prosperity of California's hollywood and computer booms. Since then the O.C. has been considered new money, but how long can new money last? Eventually it is no longer 'new', and becomes part of the ranks of 'Old' Money. The O.C. is changing with new immigrants from the all around, attracted to such a famous social society. But  inevitably the social class will change as well, and either whether the scene changes to 'old' money or loses its affluent will depend on how things play out. But it got me to thinking about if the society depicted in The Great Gatsby still remains, if it ever did, on 'East and West Egg' and how the money and society came to be in the first place.

A Shift in the Job Market

With today's economic situation, every aspect of the economy is changing, including the face of a typical worker. The face of a typical American worker has never remained constant for very long, in the beginning there were farmers who's main difference was what they grew. Then emerged small business and craftsmen such as newspaper's, some of these small businesses dramatically transformed into huge corporations which ushered in the era of assembly lines and sweatshops. One could argue that this was when the worker transformed from a unique individual who took pride in each of his works into simply a number on the assembly line who's only purpose was to tighten that one bolt or cut that one piece of metal. This was the time when a businessman's goal turned from quality to quantity, and not just about the end product. Individual workers were turned into a simple huge number. It's easy to get that feeling these days with all these huge numbers being thrown around, you lose some of the effect after hearing over and over again "GM to cut 30,000 jobs" or "Stimulus package worth $1 trillion". Workers are bundled together so much that they have been turned into a labor force, as if they were one thing thrown around, like the cattle or pigs of the stockyards. No one takes notice when they hear "we slaughter 50,000 pigs" but the most hardened men cringe when they hear the scream of one single pig being slaughtered. I found the similarity while reading a local article about a family diner going out of business and 5 people losing their jobs and having to sell their house with their future in jeopardy. Those 5 people losing their jobs and well being is a tragedy, "GM cuts 30,000 jobs" is only a statistic. Im not very sure why we react so differently, but it might be linked to the time period we are studying in AS, proving that the dehumanization of the masses of factory workers still lingers in little places to this day.