We are all Slave now.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

This is happening with everything. I just heard Springsteen on Broadway tickets are going for $8k at orchestra level.

If you've been to any big name classic rock concert in the past seven or eight years, it's pretty obvious most of the best seats are bought with corporate money.

US Open (tennis)? First rows are mostly corporate.

This obviously distorts prices.

Then you get into something else that's a bit creepy: Paying to jump the line. Don't want to wait with the poors at Disney? Get that $200 pass that allows you to jump the lines. Same goes for the airport. Why wait with everyone else when for a few bucks they can't spare, you can jump the line and have your own lounge? (I understand this for business travel, but it feels a bit icky using it for a common ski trip.)

In the race to find revenue streams in our service economy, we're developing into a two tiered society. If you work for a big corporation or are a client of one, you've got a chance to get to the front row hear David Gilmour sing "Money" to you ("Dogs" would provide the best irony, but he hated Animals.) If you're a professional with the modest cash on hand to join an airline's "exclusive" lounge program, you don't ever have to hang with the proles during a layover.

These things have always existed, of course, but they take some of the charm out of the experiences. They also cut away at the idea that we're all in this together on some level. I'm not giving any of these things up, of course, because comfort is comfort. But I don't want to eat a gourmet cheesesteak on a truffle-oiled bun at the baseball game. A gross, boiled hot dog is preferred. It's part of the real experience. (I also don't want to see the pitcher hit a line drive home run, as I did a few years back at a World Series game, because the fences have been brought so far, to allow for more home runs to make the games more dramatic and exciting, but that's another story.)

The Stones are playing again this summer, and if you've seen them, you know the only way to see them is up close, because from a distance, the sound gets muddy real fast. I heard tickets close to the stage are going for $2-4k. I won't spend that kind of money on any ticket, but more importantly, I don't need to go to a concert to hang out with corporate ciphers and rich douches. I have to do that for a living already.

In our neck of the woods, it's housing. During the boom years of the recession, O&G was giving insane housing allowances to the square state recent grads, driving up rents all over the city. Totally changed the housing market. The price of oil nose dive in 14-16 didn't seem to have much of an effect once those prices went up. And now they're more or less recovered, so it's getting even more insane.