The New York Times' Paul Krugman wonders where people with tattoos work

tattoo
(Image credit: iStock)

Economist Paul Krugman published a blog post in The New York Times that consisted primarily of him wondering where, exactly, people with tattoos work, a musing that came about while he "crowd-watched" at a few concerts in Brooklyn.

I'm perfectly OK with topknots and tattoos, but obviously a lot of employers won't be. So where do all these people work? They can't all be baristas …But that, surely, is part of the point. Probably not an original observation, but surely one main goal of personal styling is to make it clear that the person so styled is not, in fact, part of the workaday bourgeois world, that he or she doesn't work at a 9-5 office job during the week and put on trendy attire for the weekend. It has to be a cultural version of [economist Thorstein] Veblen's conspicuous consumption, where the point is not to display your wealth but instead to display your indie cred.Again, I'm fine with it — and the scene is producing a lot of music I really like, so it's all good. [The New York Times]

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.