ABSTRACT
These four quotations – from a talk show host, a spirit medium, a former American president and an Arizona Sikh commune leader – may ring hollow today to someone who has recently been downsized, restructured or even made homeless as a result of the worst economic recession in the United States since the Great Depression. Living in a period some have called the new Gilded Age, Americans today face the greatest economic disparities between the rich and poor since such things began to be reliably recorded. Hearing that your social class is completely the result of your own smarts, your own choices, your ability to think positively and even your moral state – in Weberian fashion, these things spiritually congratulate the elite and comfortable. And such notions may even provide those less comfortable with some hope that they can change things through pure will. At the very least, such assertions hearten those biblical capitalists in Wisconsin seen in 2011 holding signs declaring that ‘God Hates Taxes’ and claiming that unions and the minimum wage were Satanic (Montgomery, 2011). But the ideas underlying the quotes above ignore the force and power of the social world to push and propel individuals into lives that are not of their own choosing.
