Boomer weasel words: 'high net worth individuals' as euphemism for 'rich people'

(Source)

For some time, I have been noticing that rich people and the people who sell services to them don't use the phrase "rich people" any more.  Instead, they say "high net worth individuals".  When did this happen and why?

(You might compare this to my previous post regarding "Baby on Board" signs.)

The following graphs are from Google Ngram Viewer, which show relative frequency of word phrases in American English books up to the year 2008. Notice that the phrase "high net worth individuals" appears first around 1980.

(click to enlarge)

Baby Boomer on Board! -- a data-based exploration

Kindergarten graduations.  Play dates. First names like Zaiden (boy) and Bristol (girl). Driving kids to and from school in SUVs and minivans when they live in walking distance (e.g. 2 blocks).

And those "Baby on Board!" signs.

What "Baby on Board!" really signifies.

How did we get here?

This post is a data-based exploration into the origins of these cultural patterns in the White middle and upper-middle classes in the US.

(warning: long post, but with many charts and pictures)

Let’s Shake Up the Social Sciences

Given that I'm a student in the first-ever Department of Computational Social Science, I strongly agree with Nicholas Christakis in his New York Times article "Let’s Shake Up the Social Sciences".  I especially like the points he makes regarding teaching social science students to do experiments early in their education process.

Lecture: Exploring Possibility Space of Ideological Change

Here's a nice academic lecture at University of Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation (WICI) by Matto Mildenburger, PhD Candidate at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University.


Exploring the Possibility Space of Ideological Change from Waterloo Institute for Complexit on Vimeo.

His use of the term "possibility space" is similar to my view, meaning a space of possible states of a system along with dimensions or topological relations that give shape to the space.  At 27:04 he discusses the nature of dimensions and their validity in studying the space of ideologies.  At 1:02:19 he answers a question about process of change in ideologies and how change is interpreted spatially.

Q: What marks the "Heartland"? A: Attitudes toward pantyhose substitutes

NC State has a very interesting interactive site called Dialect Survey Maps, based on data from the 122-question survey conducted by Bert Vaux, Department of Linguistics, University of Cambridge. The web interface was coded with Shiny and deployed using the hosting service provided by RStudio.

Maps for most questions show regional differences in terminology and idioms -- e.g. in most of the US, "tennis shoes" is generic name for soft/athletic shoes, except in New England where the term "sneakers" is preferred.

But the map that caught my eye was for this statement:

• 56. "Pantyhose are so expensive anymore that I just try to get a good suntan and forget about it."

Here's the map.  What I like is that agreeing with this statement is marks "The Heartland"  (excluding the Old South), a.k.a. "North-Middle America".  (Color code:  Blue is "acceptable" and red is "unacceptable".  Click to see larger version in a new window.)

It's interesting to see how this separates Iowa from Minnesota, Wisconsin from Illinois, North Dakota from South Dakota, and New York from Pennsylvania.