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Statistics have shown, again and again, that whites have higher per-capita levels of alcohol consumption than any other race — even the notoriously drunken Injuns.
A persistent stereotype claims that drinking is a vice indulged in by the despicable lower classes far more than the unassailably righteous upper crust. Compared to their social betters, impoverished whites are a hopeless lot of bums, winos, and Skid Row Joes.
But is that true?
In his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England, rich-kid communist pioneer Friedrich Engels noted how the “bourgeois”—as if he and most communist thinkers who followed in his path weren’t solidly bourgeois themselves—looked down with palpable disgust at how the proles were hopeless lushes:
Drunkenness, sexual irregularities, brutality, and disregard for the rights of property are the chief points with which the bourgeois charges the workers. That they drink heavily is to be expected. . . . On Saturday evenings, especially when wages are paid and work stops somewhat earlier than usual, when the whole working class pours from its own poor quarters into the main thoroughfares, intemperance may be seen in all its brutality. I have rarely come out of Manchester on such an evening without meeting numbers of people staggering and seeing others lying in the gutter.
A common English expression during the 1800s—“drink is the curse of the working class”—expressed pervasive upper-echelon disgust at how the sweaty, smelly, and clearly inferior British working class frittered away their chances of advancing in life by pickling themselves with booze.
Oscar Wilde took that expression and inverted it, charging the aristocracy with the sin of projection:
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes” is a quote famously uttered by Irish playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde. It is a humorous twist on the old saying “drink is the curse of the working class,” which was typically uttered by the upper classes to explain why the poor failed to climb up the socio-economic ladder. This quote captures a common sentiment that British aristocrats held about the working class, which was that they failed to improve their lot because they indulged too much. Ironically, Wilde believed that the rich were the ones doing the indulging and that their looking down their noses at the lower classes was awfully self-righteous. As Wilde saw it, work was a nuisance that seemed to be getting in the way of aristocrats’ regular drinking habit.
Was the foppish Irish playwright correct? Were the British snobs projecting their own drunkenness on the British slobs?
Unless things have flip-flopped since the 1800s, Wilde was right on the button, right on the nose. Every study I’ve seen shows that alcohol consumption is more prevalent among the well-to-do than it is among the down-and-out.
“Drinking Highest Among Educated, Upper-Income Americans,” reads the 2015 headline from Gallup:
Upper-income and highly educated Americans are more likely than other Americans to say they drink alcohol. Whereas eight in 10 adults in these socio-economic status groups say they drink, only about half of lower-income Americans and those with a high school diploma or less say they drink. . . .
Gallup has consistently found large differences in alcohol consumption among education and income subgroups over time. The income and education differences in drinking are typically larger than those seen by gender, age, race, region and religion. . . .
Data from various government and academic studies confirm the relationship between income and alcohol consumption. . . . Most Americans say they drink alcohol on occasion, but drinking is far more common among upper-income Americans and those with a more formal education. Not only are higher socio-economic status Americans more likely to drink alcohol, but those who drink do so more often than lower socio-economic status Americans.
You can buy Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! here.
The Gallup poll found that 78% of Americans who made $75K or more a year said they drank, whereas among those who made less than $30K per annum — you know, the drunken and slovenly working classes — only 45% said they drank.
“Who in Europe drinks the most? The rich,” says a 2017 Science Daily article based on a meta-study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology:
Terje Andreas Eikemo, a professor of sociology . . . says that the European Social Survey confirms what scientists have known about social status and alcohol use: people who are well off drink the most.
According to a 2017 article in Healthline:
Recent research shows people with more money tend to consume more alcohol, yet don’t suffer the health consequences of people with lower incomes. . . . The researchers concluded that people with more money drink more than people with less money. . . . “As income and education go up, the percentage of people drinking goes up,” Aaron White, PhD, senior scientific advisor to the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Trusted Source, told Healthline. “People that make more money are more likely to drink more, and more of them binge drink — or cross the four to five drink threshold — than people at lower incomes.”
This pattern is not only shown in adults; it extends down into the teens. A 2010 study titled “Are adolescents with high socioeconomic status more likely to engage in alcohol and illicit drug use in early adulthood?” answers its own question with an emphatic “yes” — and it may be for no other reason than the fact that they have more money to buy booze and illegal drugs:
Higher parental education is associated with higher rates of binge drinking, marijuana and cocaine use in early adulthood. . . . There is evidence that substance use in adults, particularly alcohol use, may be sensitive to price, as some studies have shown that consumption decreases as price increases. For adolescents with higher SES [socioeconomic status], having greater financial resources may indicate that the relative cost of substance use, that is the opportunity cost of substance use relative to other consumption, may be lower than for adolescents with lower SES.
A cross-examination of a 2018 report on “America’s Drunkest States” scrutinized alongside Wikipedia’s list of states ranked by poverty rate replicates everyone else’s findings: West Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama all rank among the bottom five states regarding rates of “adults drinking excessively,” while they fall among the top ten in poverty rates.
A saying that used to make the rounds in the 1980s was “cocaine is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money.” According to statistics, you might as well swap out “cocaine” for “alcohol.”
The powers that be, slimy and soulless cunts that they are, have devised endless ways to keep white people at each other’s throats: men v. women, young v. old, left v. right, Christian v. non-Christian, and, as I recently noted to much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and comically seething denial, rich v. poor.
If, in this climate of rabid anti-whiteness, whites have a hope of getting their shit together, getting their act together, and, well, just getting together, they need to bridge these divides. Regardless of your gender, age, political and religious beliefs, or economic class, non-whites still see you as white and have been brainwashed since birth to hate you.
Oscar Wilde was right: Rich whites blaming poor whites for drinking too much is clearly guilt-projection. These haughty hypocrites need to fess up, sober up, and realize we’re in a war — not between us, but against us.
* * *
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22 comments
Great piece, Jim.
When I read this article, I was initially surprised, but upon second thought, it made sense.
The predominantly working class guys I play baseball with always drink a couple beers after games, however, they seem to smoke weed as a way to relax, otherwise.
And they drink Coors, Bud, Kokanee, Labatt’s, i.e., common, relatively cheap domestic beers.
When I went to college, almost everyone I met was an avid drinker and they didn’t just drink beer. No. They loved the hard stuff: Tequila, vodka and whiskey, and if they drank beer, it came from little hipster breweries. An expensive habit to say the least. Even more so here in Canada, since alcohol is heavily taxed.
Getting shitfaced at the nearby pub on Friday after class was routine for many.
And they were all middle class or richer. Sure, some didn’t have much of their own money, but Mommy and Daddy were paying their way.
The Injun fact is also interesting.
I wonder if it carries over to our Injuns? I’ve encountered some who were drunk on mouthwash. In the Great White North, alcohol seems to kill them, opioids seem to kill whites and smoking meth is a venture both races partake in.
Either way, interesting information you’ve brought to my attention.
Everything seems to have gotten worse in Canada, of course. I’ve always been interested in the varieties of alcohol regulation. Ontario, when I was there as an American student in the early 70s, had bizarre-seeming regulations: there were “pubs” which had separate sides for men only (bar, tables, sawdust on the floor) and women and families (more like a restaurant). Curtains on the windows so passers-by wouldn’t be tempted or faint. Beer sold only in big box stores (called “Beer Stores”) on the outskirts and wine & liquor sold in Liquor Control Board stores run like pharmacies: fine wines dispensed like prescription meds. All designed I suppose to discourage consumption. (Since you had to drive out to the Beer Store people simple bought 24-packs, called “suitcases” anyway; you can see them stacked up in the background of the Bob & Doug Mackenzie skits on SCTV). Ironically, in Michigan you had to be 21 to drink, while across the river in Windsor it was only 18; plus I could buy liquor duty free at the border crossing store. Odd.
Another mixed message was the university student center had its own pub, where I purchased by first (of many) glasses of beer: 35 cents, which the internet says is $2 today, plus a 20% discount for my American dollars.
Good times.
Liquor laws have loosened considerably in Ontario since your time here. The old, sterile LCBOs are now brightly lit, nicely appointed – not to mention huge – stores that are almost as ubiquitous as the Tim Horton’s found on every corner. Beer, “radlers” and wine are now sold in grocery stores and there is a push for them to be sold in variety stores as well. However, the weed shops are being regulated almost as bad as the liquor stores used to be. Covered windows, ID just to get into the place, all product is behind the counter or locked up.
Oscar Wilde added a caveat to work being the bane of the drinking class. He ended it by saying education is the curse of the acting classes.
The Irish wit had some great ones in regarding drinking.
There can be nothing more frequent than the occasional drink.
Moderation can be fatal. Nothing succeeds like excess
I occasionally take an alcoholiday .
I know you’ve chosen to take the sober route Jim, but you have to admit that Wilde was not without his charm.
The Engels text is an excerpt from this book:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England
I’m pretty sure the title “Work Is the Curse of the Drinking Classes” was picked by the editor of Lapham’s Quarterly in reference to Wilde and is not originally from Engels.
Thanks.
When I searched both terms—”drink is the curse of the working class” and “work is the curse of the drinking class,” because I’d heard both over the years—I was taken to the Wilde quote and to the Lapham’s Quarterly link.
Even searching for the text string of that passage from Engels, minus the “headline” that Lapham’s irresponsibly tacked onto it, did not lead to the original source. Nothing online actually led to the Engels book, but with the article now amended, at least one source will.
Fixed.
When I started out as a union apprentice in an all-White trade, I used to get sent out at exactly 10AM to get the beer. This is back in the 90s. We drank from morning to night and worked hard on construction sites. Those old timers knew how to drink. Most were Vietnam War vets and among the toughest guts I ever knew. It was pot that changed all that. The marijuana generation was just weaker. The young guys smoke weed the way we used to smoke cigarettes, all day long. I’d say drink is better than drugs. By a long shot.
I’m surprised some see this as a wedge issue. I’m curious how some of the state data would look when you eliminate all the binge drinking from large state universities. There are health benefits to moderate wine (all those 95 year old Mediterraneans), but its easy to get too much of a good thing.
William Hogarth did a hilarious bit of propaganda in the 18th century, contrasting the success and pleasure of Beer Street, versus the nightmarish pandemonium of Gin Lane.
Indeed. I took a business class train a few months ago (paid for my employer), and it was filled with a bunch of upper class hacks returning from a political convention. And they all drank profusely of the complementary alcohol, requesting creative drinks and cocktails I had never even heard of before in my life.
The people I’ve met who say they don’t drink have never been upper class. I don’t know if any conclusions should be taken from the fact, but it’s certainly interesting in that it is the opposite of what one would expect.
White poor and white working class males are the least likely to gain any further education in the UK and are out performed by every other demographic. They really are the bottom the pile. But even these statistics don’t stop the racist brigade of informing them of their collective white privilege.
This young lads are sneered at from every angle in society especially from the middle to upper whites who abhor them in the main. There are some exceptions and I’ve seen them first hand, but as alluded to in Jim’s excellent piece some of the worst self righteous indignation is dealt out by so called morally superior whites to working class whites trying to make a living.
As for the drinking – fuck ’em, fuck ’em twice. I drink loads and I love it. You come into my local village pub and you will see multi-millionaires and the poorest farm worker drinking together. The common denominator? No “slimy and soulless cunts”.
Many years ago I used to frequent a bar in Ojai, CA called The Deer Lodge. It was just like the village pub you describe: suited and booted businessmen and lawyer types to dirty landscape workers but everyone got on well and is my favourite of many, many bars I have drunk beers at across many states.
Rich or poor, drinking is a retched habit, along with smoking. It really depends on the region too. America cannot hold a candle to Europeans when it comes to alcoholism. In fact, there are laws that restrict public drinking that simply don’t exist in Europe. I’m a point in my life where I see all these vices as a major weakness that people are not afraid to show off. People who can’t handle life are constantly puffing on something or downing something. I don’t mean to sound like a Jonas brother, but reality is the ultimate high. It’s much more exhilarating being sober and experiencing certain emotions without any analeptic.
Good God, I think this just made me retch in my own mouth.
The Dissident Right definitely has a drinking problem. I used to be a drunkard in denial but quit (Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Control Alcohol if anyone is interested). Much happier now. The National Socialist communities which I favour more these days are all about clean living. It’s interesting that there is a divide.
“People who can’t handle life are constantly puffing on something or downing something.”
Or performing some action with their private parts.
I could not possibly agree more; drink, drugs and sex combined are the 3 great slave drivers of human reason. In our modern world, it requires considerable strength of character to avoid succumbing to any of them and an even more heroic effort to return oneself to decency and lucidity.
The 1960s revolutionaries were completely, utterly and delusionally wrong to label their movement as one of liberation; sobriety, decency and self-regulation follow naturally from genuine intellect and creative will, a very revealing fact when it comes to that motley assemblage.
I’ve been around the movement for nearly two decades now and some underlying class conflict between the rich and poor never jumped up to me as existing. At least not in the way Goad describes it. Sure, there is plenty of conflict between the grug types and the more intellectual types; which you could ascribe to class differences if there weren’t a lot of working class people like Morgoth and Alex MacNabb decidedly falling into the thinking man category.
Honestly, I don’t really see where he’s coming from with this. If I may be so bold, it looks to me that he’s simply projecting his own frustrations into what he perceives to be the dynamics of a movement he doesn’t consider himself a part of, and he’s not all that intimately acquainted with.
Sure, you could neetpick certain conflicts between unfortunately prominent members of our sphere as examples for what he’s talking about — Spencer v. Hemibach — but on the rank and file level the tension barely seems to be there.
Granted, I’m only familiar with the US part of WN through the internet and I may very well be wrong.
I think one of the chief problems of “The Movement” is that “Movement” people make everything about “The Movement” and, in so doing, ghettoize themselves. And they go even further than that—they split off into “grug” types and “intellectual” types.
How about just keeping it white?
The only “movement” I’d like to see is an erasure of divisions among whites—this goes for gender, ideology, social class, and, I guess it has to be pointed out, the unspoken fact that members of “The Movement” have a tendency to view themselves as a distinct group from whites in general. Thus, all the disdainful talk about “normies.”
I’m talking about a pervasive stereotype regarding drinking and social class—one that, as I mentioned in the article, goes back to the 1800s, long before there was a “movement.” Since whites drink more than any other racial group in America, that’s the article’s focus. Even I was surprised through researching it to discover that richer whites drink more than poorer whites do.
I agree.
It’s real hard to have much sympathy for the proverbial worms under the boot that Kant talked about, though. Especially when they’re carrying water for those who actively destroy them and throw stones at us like brainwashed chimps — these are basically truisms.
We should see eachother as normal people, as the norm, and act like it. After all, this is what we are, and “love thy neighbour” religions like Christianity didn’t win their popularity for nothing.
Great article and very interesting. I agree with many points and maybe some other implications not so much.
I was somewhat surprised that the statistics for Injun binge-drinking was lower that for Whites. I guess it is important to remember that this cohort is not any more monolithic than anybody else. Injuns in Montana (No. 4 drunkest) might be very different alcoholics than Injuns in New Mexico (No. 45).
I agree with the premise that the higher the cash-flow the more booze consumed. Alcohol is not cheap, after all. Or at least the good stuff.
When I worked in a convenience store in Idaho, the hard liquor had to be sold in a government dispensary, so it was just beer and lighter wines. But practically the entire complement of working class guys that stopped in after work or to get a radio part for their Peterbilt came for a case of Budweiser swill water and a pack of Marlboro Reds. There was a radio parts store in the same venue and I usually closed up both.
The more-salaried nuclear engineers didn’t normally stop in for the beer and cigarettes purpose ─ lots of Mormons and some Jewish physicists in that bunch. We did have plenty of winos who tried to shoplift the two-dollar Ripple. And we even had a notorious serial killer visit regularly to browse the dirty magazines since he lived right around the corner. He wasn’t interested in buying a bipolar junction transistor to fix his two-way radio.
I found the link about binge-drinking and drunk-driving rankings for all fifty states that Mr. Goad provided to be extremely informative.
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/03/07/americas-drunkest-states/12/
For example, states like Alaska (No. 3) and North Dakota (No. 1) rank pretty high on the drinking scale, and also on the drunk-driving scale. Oddly, these two metrics ─ bingeing and DUI deaths ─ did not correlate as closely as I would have expected.
What are some things that these two states, AK (3) and ND (1) have in common?
They have a lot of sparsely-populated territory. Lots of open highway with not much in between. Lots of itinerant and Nïgger-rich oil and resource-extraction workers too. And lots of Natives.
I noted that Hawaii (No. 8) scored pretty high on the drinking and drunk driving metrics (5th highest). It would be interesting to see a breakdown here by Brown vs. “Howlie.” I don’t recall “Asian and Pacific Islanders” being known as alcoholics compared to those living on the Res ─ who we are reminded kicked Custer’s ass ─ but I don’t know.
I would like to point out some of the cultural and not necessarily income-related factors to boozing in the USA.
For one thing, it was no surprise that Utah ranked almost last, i.e., almost the least drunken state (No. 48). Utah is over 50 percent LDS but Salt Lake City is the most drunk with only 40 percent Mormon ─ which it should be noted, only about half of these LDS are Active in the Faith. And half of the “Inactives” are either Gay, milquetoast anti-Trumpers like Mitt Romney, or outright oven-worthy Shitlibs.
I was also surprised that Idaho at No. 41 with a lot of Active LDS did not rank lower on the drunkenness scale than it does. And they were fairly high as the 23rd highest for drunk-driving. New Mexico, which is also not a stranger to open highways and Injuns and Mexicans, actually scored more soberly than Idaho in both the boozing and DUI categories.
Well, the LDS mainly only settled Southern and Eastern Idaho ─ the highest proportion of Anglo ancestry left in the entire country. The Northern panhandle, however, has always been Democrat and takes after Spokane or Seattle more than Salt Lake City. No surprise that the big drinkers in that state are from Coeur d’Alene in the far panhandle. Furthermore, Californians are relocating in locust-like proportions to the capital Boise (pronounced boy-see not boy-zee). Word of advice to Californians: get your new Idaho license plates as soon as feasible.
Catholic Democrats, especially in the North, have always been more “Wet” than Southern Democrats, Southern Republicans, and Southern Protestants. No judgements here! This is just a cultural thing. Demon Rum for Mormons or Bible Belt Protestants is literally a mere sacrament for Catholics.
Guess who supported Prohibition? Well, the 18th Amendment was supported by women newly getting the vote, first locally and then nationally with the 19th Amendment. But it was also the Protestants from the Southern Bible Belt, and the Mormons in the Intermountain West ─ and some of these states and pioneer towns still have their own blue laws on the books.
I’ve never lived in Utah for an extended time as an adult, and I rarely drink, but when Mitt Romney (LDS) was a commissar for the 2002 Olympics, which was hosted in Salt Lake City, he pushed an effort to ease up on the liquor laws and make the libations more friendly to outsiders. (This effort was especially popular with Spirits merchants.)
Before the Mittster, if you ordered a Margarita in a family restaurant like Red Lobster in Utah, you actually got a “virgin” version with NO alcohol. And in a fancy restaurant (called a “drinking club” under state law) that did serve alcohol, the wait staff brought the drink to you sans any ethanol, which you then had to add yourself from a 50 milliliter mini-bottle that came along with the order. If you wanted a double shot, you had to order two virgin mixed drinks, and then add the alcohol to one of them yourself from the two mini-bottles that accompanied the double order. You are pouring your own damnation, buddy.
Anyway, if the premise is that the South drinks less because they are poorer, well maybe. I don’t dispute that.
But let’s not overlook some cultural factors like religion.
The least drunk region in the United States is the Bible Belt (Protestant) but also the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). One part of the country is overwhelmingly White (with a few migrant farmers like Pedro) while the other region has “lots of Blacks.”
And some of the heavier drinkers are Catholics. It was not too surprising that Massachusetts (No. 13) with its Catholic Democrats like the Kennedys ranks fairly high on the drinking scale ─ if not so bad on the DUIs (10th lowest). Joe Kennedy actually made a big business (along with a few Jews) running “sacramental” rotgut out of Canada during Prohibition.
Wisconsin (No. 2) probably has a lot of German Catholic Democrats. I once knew a Hildebrandt, whose family hailed from Milwaukee and who did not touch alcohol, but then he was LDS.
I am not a “Movement” guy but I have been around a long time and have been something like a White Nationalist for fifty years and have contributed my share of mites to various Rechtsextreme parties along the way. I do want to make a brief comment about “Optics.”
Like it or not, Optics is part of any propaganda campaign. I am not endorsing or rehashing any specific “optics debate” here ─ but the topic will always remain important.
I am hardly a prude or a snob, but I do take a dim view of excessive drinking or drug use and addiction. I know all about Oxycontin and fentanyl as an accident patient, and I don’t really understand addiction. I tried my first good martini at age 50. I don’t care if people smoke their weed from time to time or enjoy their cold suds and hooch. But just after the Covid lockdown I travelled extensively around the Intermountain West by car and was surprised at how much things had changed in towns that I knew well.
Some towns in Colorado, for example, which were pretty seedy even when my Dad was a boy, and were no less so when I visited relatives as a boy, have now Gentrified and accommodate rich White tourists and rapey Colored ballplayers like Kobe Bryant.
Some of these old company towns are still seedy and have remained poor long after the mines have shut down for good ─ and the local farm workers remain highly “Spanish” as if the conquistadors were still looking for mythical cities of gold.
If you blow into towns like this, even medium-sized ones, you can tell by the “optics” whether it is in the seedy camp or the touristy one.
When a semi-retired White lady at the big grocery store in Durango is too weeded out to ring up my order, I do wonder about all this decriminalization stuff. Why do they have to surround the motel near Pikes Peak with razor-tipped concertina wire like it was the DMZ? I didn’t see a lot of Blacks in Colorado Springs, but I haven’t had to guard my undies to make sure that they don’t get stolen at the laundry since I was in the Army in Georgia forty years ago.
Similarly, a lot of hipsters and ski bums are getting a rude surprise when Keggering through Idaho ─ which unlike neighboring states like Washington has not (yet) legalized weed.
I don’t think I am being a snob when I state that I have never been too impressed by the “Skinhead” optics ─ meaning two-fisted suds swilling, shaved heads, and you know the potbellied “Biker” look. I hope the style has passed because it was never a wholesome look that White Nationalists should cultivate.
If I am an uptight snob, at least I’m not a rich one.
🙂
[1588 words]
more intelligent people tend to drink more, abuse drugs, etc.
https://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/rgp2010.pdf
Evolutionarily novel. More intelligent people tend to have more education, higher incomes. (Kanazawa also argues that more intelligent people tend to hold liberal political views; evolutionarily novel)
From the “trying new things” angle, I suppose; those who score high on Openness for the “Big Five” are perceived as more intelligent. But until very recently, the intelligent and educated classes of society did not engage in an unusually high amount of such behaviour. And the behaviour is largely limited to sampling: many intelligent people have engaged in novel activities related to recreational drugs of some sort, but very few evolve a dependency.
Hey, don’t go blaming the 1960s for alcoholism.
Americans are drinking as much alcohol now as in Civil War days
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