My wife and I make okay money in a middle class area, but, due to a combination of good luck, and contrived to circumstances, we recently got to watch a college football game in the stadium’s super executive corporate sponsor level suite. It was awesome. Open bar, amazing catered food, and people networking all around me who are clearly in the c-suite of their respective companies. I had a list of crazy things I was going to say if someone asked me what I did, but it never came up.
One of the events that comes to mind was a “open” conference at a university that “actively encouraged” “low class” participation. (They didn’t say this).
What I mean by that is that it happened during normal work hours and you had to send an email to sign up, but they did allow you to come.
Over the course of the event it became clear that it was a joint PR thing for the sponsors and the university to appear to be “doing something about [issue]”, so they had 2 talks, an audience participation thing, where it was very clear that the thing needed most was more funding for people and work material and tools (think PPE, it wasn’t that or that critical). …and a panel discussion between [company] and [5 politicians] that in absolutely no way addressed the issues that were brought up in the audience participation part.
There was very nice, expensive catering.
Pretty surreal experience and something that solidified my belief that some very important parts of our society are utterly broken beyond repair.