“Mo money, mo problems,” a philosopher once said. Or, to be more precise, moving up the socioeconomic ladder creates (or uncovers) problems that are more sophisticated.
I recently came across a relatively minor but telling example of this phenomenon. Towards the beginning of this year my wife began developing digestive complaints; after some doctor appointments and research, she decided to make some specific dietary changes. These included buying “sensitive recipe” pasta sauce made without onion or garlic, which can be hard on the small intestine.
One evening I was tasked with going to Schnucks* and picking up a couple jars of this sauce. There happen to be two Schnuckses in our general vicinity, which I’ll respectively call Working Class Schnucks (WCS) and Middle Class Schnucks (MCS) based on the following data pulled from the 2017 American Community Survey:
WCS zip code median household income: $32,851
MCS zip code median household income: $52,224