![]() The pursuit of wealth is leading more people to work longer hours as they seek to pay their mortgages and climb the social ladder. Researchers have found that owning a fast car, a large home and having a good job may only make you happy if those around you are less well off. According to the London Telegraph:ĭespite the vast improvements in general standards of living in the past 40 years across Britain, ‘keeping up with the Joneses' is still our biggest aspiration, the findings suggest. confirms what many of us have already learned: Money only makes you happy if you have more than those around you. Waving Good-Bye to the JonesesĪ study out of the U.K. ![]() He spent the latter part of his life working as a portrait painter in New York City, but his lasting contribution to American society was coining the term “keeping up with the Joneses”. (Again, this is part of the new Get Rich Slowly file vault.) If, like me, you are both a money nerd and a comics nerd, you might enjoy browsing this public domain collection of “Keeping Up with the Joneses” strips from 1920. And, for a time, a few of the gags were adapted into short animated films like this one. ![]() At one point, more than 150 newspapers around the U.S. While “Keeping Up with the Joneses” never became as popular as, say, “Gasoline Alley” or “Bringing Up Father”, it did achieve some measure of success. Regardless, it was his work that made the phrase a part of the American vernacular. Some argue that the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” was already in use when Mormand started drawing his comic strip. Mormand claimed that he originally wanted to call the strip “Keeping Up with the Smiths” but it didn't have the same ring to it as “Keeping Up with the Joneses”. There, he used his experience as source material. Mormand claimed his family lived “far beyond our means in our endeavor to keep up with the well-to-do class”.Įventually, Mormand and his family gave up. He and his wife lived for a time in Cedarhurst, New York, a relatively wealthy community on Long Island. The title and central conceit of a family struggling to “keep up” with the neighbors resonated with its audience, to the point that the phrase keeping up with the Joneses became a common catchphrase.Īccording to interviews with Mormand, “Keeping Up with the Joneses” was based on his own life. The strip was later picked up by Joseph Pulitzer's The New York World, and was subsequently syndicated in many other papers by Associated Newspapers. Various strips feature the McGinis family attempting to match the lifestyle of their neighbors, the Joneses, who are often mentioned but never seen. The strip is a domestic comedy following a family of social climbers, the McGinises: parents Aloysius and Clarice, their daughter Julie, and the family's maid Bella Donna. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia's brief history of the strip: debuted on Main The New York Globe. (I should re-read the book and write it up, shouldn't I?) This is worth an entire article of its own. (You can download this book for free from the new Get Rich Slowly file vault.) People at all levels of life, Veblen says, buy things “as an evidence of wealth”, to signal financial “prowess”. This concept was introduced by Thorstein Veblen, a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist, in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class. The term conspicuous consumption was itself relatively new in 1913. This comic strip (which was very typical for its time) parodied American domestic life, especially the increasing drive toward conspicuous consumption. (Note: For some strips in this post, you can click on the image to open a larger version in a new window.)Īrthur Mormand created “Keeping Up with the Joneses” in 1913. As a comics nerd, one who especially loves comic strips, this makes me happy. That's right: “Keeping Up with the Joneses” started out as a newspaper comic strip. Today, for instance, I learned that the term “keeping up with the Joneses” - a popular phrase in the realm of personal finance - actually originated in the funny pages. It's always fun when disparate worlds of geekdom collide. ![]()
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