Straight Dope Message Board

[msmith537]

In another thread, it was asked what the difference between middle and upper class was with respect to tax brackets and income levels. Rather than hijack that thread, I am started a new one to discuss the following questions:

-What defines what "class" a person belongs to?
-How do you identify a persons class when you meet them?
-How easy/difficult is it to move between classes?
-What are some of the barriers to moving between classes?
-Is it even relevant in American society? In other words, is there so much blending between classes and income brackets that it is essentially as irrelevant as the color of the shirt I put on this morning?



I have my own thoughts on the matter but I would like to see how people respond first.

I also hope BrainGlutton chooses to post his excerpt from Class: A Guide to the American Status System, by Paul Fussell again. 1

[Ravenman]

The same Paul Fussell says that you can identify the classes by the types of hats they wear. I don't wear hats, which puts me sqarely in the middle class, right above the "proles" (in Fussell's terminology). 2

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Ravenman

The same Paul Fussell says that you can identify the classes by the types of hats they wear. I don't wear hats, which puts me sqarely in the middle class, right above the "proles" (in Fussell's terminology).

Fussell also seemed to fail to realize that the Official Preppy Handbook is supposed to be satirical (I least I hope so..it's pretty silly). 3

[eponymous]

Good question - Fussell's book is definitely a fun read...

Originally Posted by msmith537

What defines what "class" a person belongs to?

I think this one is both easy and difficult at the same time. Easy in the sense that I think many people have a general idea of what distinguishes one class from another. In the US at least, money/wealth seems to be the set criteria most people use in differentiating one class from another. Difficult in the sense that (in the US) as one examines the issue more closely, it appears that money/wealth isn't always a reliable indicator. So in understanding class more clearly one needs to incorporate other variables.

-How do you identify a persons class when you meet them?

I don't think it's a matter of making a judgement based on initial impressions (although it's not to say that people don't do so). See below

-How easy/difficult is it to move between classes?

Depends on a given society. In the US, class movement is relatively easy compared to other societies (comtemporary and historical). However, I believe Fussell makes a good point in his book that it is difficult to erase all elements of the class one is born and rasied in. In other words, if I was raised in a lower middle-class background and suddenly found myself the winner of the Powerball Lottery, my financial status would push me into the higher classes (economically). However, I would still probably continue (for a while at least) to keep many of the values/beliefs/attitudes of the lower middle class.

This is relevant because I think many people base their impressions on whether someone is of their class or not by the values/beliefs/attitudes they share (or don't share). I may have hit the lottery, but if I start "acting differently" then 1) those in my class - lower middle class - may accuse me of "putting on airs" and 2) those in the upper classes may deride me as "nouveau riche".

-What are some of the barriers to moving between classes?

See above comments. In the US, class movement is relatively easy, but due to the values/beliefs/attitudes one has been raised in often times makes it difficult for people to be accepted into the other class. This can be overcome somewhat (but not entirely) as long as one gives the appearance of belonging. Which might help explain the popularity of President Bush with portions of the electorate (versus why Kerry might not be popular with certain portions of the electorate).

-Is it even relevant in American society? In other words, is there so much blending between classes and income brackets that it is essentially as irrelevant as the color of the shirt I put on this morning?

Still relevant, although I think less so than in the past (from a historical perspective). However, this trend is only relevant if the US maintains a fairly large middle class with the general trend of society geared towards the middle class (that is, the values/belifs/attitudes of the middle class). If there is a noticeable shift away from the values/belifs/attitudes of the middle-class, then I think class distinctions will become more prominent. 4

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by msmith537

I also hope BrainGlutton chooses to post his excerpt from Class: A Guide to the American Status System, by Paul Fussell again.

Glad to oblige. Fussell's book is more humor than social science, but still insightful -- I think. Judge for yourself.

The following is from Class: A Guide to the American Status System, by Paul Fussell (New York: Summit Books, 1983), pp. 27-50:

My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows:

Top out-of-sight
Upper
Upper middle
------------------------
Middle
High proletarian
Mid-proletarian
Low proletarian
------------------------
Destitute
Bottom out-of-sight

One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it's not riches alone that define these clases. . . . "Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor," says George Orwell, "but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but -- this is the essential point -- generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born." When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, "The guy has no class," he was not talking about money.
* * * *
Not that the three classes at the top don't have money. The point is that money alone doesn't define them, for the way they have their money is largely what matters. . . . The main thing distinguishing the top three classes from each other is the amount of money inherited in relation to the amount currently earned. The top-out-of-sight class (Rockefellers, Pres, DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Vanderbilts) lives on inherited capital entirely. . . .

"When I think of a really rich man," says a Boston blue-collar, "I think of one of those estates where you can't see the house from the road." Hence the name of the top class, which could just as well be called "the class in hiding." Their houses are never seen from the street or road. They like to hide away deep in the hills or way off on Greek or Caribbean islands (which they tend to own), safe, for the moment, from envy and its ultimate attendants, confiscatory taxation and finally expropriation. . . .
* * * *
The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight, work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed. It's likely to make its money by controlling banks and the more historic corporations, think tanks, and foundations, and to busy itself with things like the older universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the like, together with the executive branch of the federal government, and often the Senate. . . . And secondly, unlike the top-out-of-sights, the upper class is visible, often ostentatiously so. . . . When you pass a house with a would-be impressive facade visible from the street or highway, you know it's occupied by a member of the upper class. . . .

* * * *
We now come to the upper-middle class. It may possess virtually as much as the two classes above it. The difference is that it has earned most of it, in law, medicine, oil, shipping, real estate, or even the more honorific kinds of trade, like buying and selling works of art. Although they may enjoy some inherited money and use inherited "things" (silver, Oriental rugs), the upper-middles suffer from a bourgeois sense of shame, a conviction that to live on the earnings of others, even forebears, is not nice.

Caste marks of the upper-middles would include living in a house with more rooms than you need, except perhaps when a lot of "overnight guests" are present to help you imitate upper-class style. . . . This class is also the most "role-reversed" of all: men think nothing of cooking and doing housework, women of working out of the house in journalism, theater, or real estate. (If the wife stays home all the time, the family's middle-class only.) Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you'll have inferred already, that it's in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others' Official Preppy Handbook, that significantly popular artifact of 1980.
* * * *
. . . The middle class is distinguishable more by its earnestness and psychic insecurity than by its middle income. I have known some very rich people who remain stubbornly middle-class, which is to say they remain terrified at what others think of them, and to avoid criticism are obsessed with doing everything right. . . .

"Status panic": that's the affliction of the middle class, according to C. Wright Mills, author of White Collar (1951) and The Power Elite (1956). Hence the middles' need to accumulate credit cards and take in The New Yorker, which it imagines registers upper-middle taste. . . .

If the audience for that sort of thing used to seem the most deeply rooted in time and place, today it seems the class that's the most rootless. Members of the middle class are not only the sort of people who buy their own heirlooms, silver, etc. They're also the people who do most of the moving long-distance (generally to very unstylish places), commanded every few years to pull up stakes by the corporations they're in bondage to. They are the geologist employed by the oil company, the computer programmer, the aeronautical engineer, the salesman assigned to a new territory, and the "marketing" (formerly sales) manager deputed to keep an eye on him. . . . IBM and DuPont hire these people from second-rate colleges and teach them that they are nothing if not members of the team. Virtually no latitude is permitted to individuality or the milder forms of eccentricity, and these employees soon learn to avoid all ideological statements. . . . Terrified of losing their jobs, these people grow passive, their humanity diminished as they perceive themselves mere parts of an infinitely larger structure. Interchangeable parts, too. "The training makes our men interchangeable," an IBM executive was once heard to say.
* * * *
. . . Oddity, introversion, and love of privacy are the big enemies, a total reversal of the values of the secure upper orders. Among the middles there's a convention that erecting a fence or even a tall hedge is an affront. And there's also a convention that you may drop in on neighbors and friends without a telephone inquiry first. . . .
* * * *
. . . Proceeding downward, we would normally expect to meet next the lower-middle class. But it doesn't exist as such any longer, having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class. What's the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect. Our former lower-middle class, the new high proles, now head "the masses," and even if they are positioned at the top of the proletarian classes, still they are identifiable as people things are done to. They are in bondage -- to monetary policy, rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast food, consumer schlock. Back in the 1940s there was still a real lower-middle class in this country, whose solid high-school education and addiction to "saving" and "planning" maintained it in a position -- often precarious, to be sure -- above the working class. . . . These former low-white-collar people are now simply working machines, and the wife usually works as well as the husband.

The kind of work performed and the sort of anxiety that besets one as a result of work are ways to divide the working class into its three strata. The high proles are the skilled workers, crafstmen, like printers. The mid-proles are operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor, like longshoremen. The special anxiety of high proles is fear about loss or reduction of status: you're proud to be a master carpenter, and you want the world to understand clearly the difference between you and a laborer. The special anxiety of the mid-proles is fear of losing the job. And of the low proles, the gnawing perception that you're probably never going to make enough or earn enough freedom to have and do the things you want.
* * * *
But high proles are quite smart, or at least shrewd. Because often their work is not closely supervised, they have pride and a conviction of independence, and they feel some contempt for those who have not made it as far as they have. The are, as the sociologist E. E. LeMasters calls them and titles his book, Blue-Collar Aristocrats (1975), and their disdain for the middle class is like the aristocrat's from the other direction. . . . Like other aristocrats, says LeMasters, these "have gone to the top of their social world and need not expend time or energy on 'social climbing.'" . . .

Since they're not consumed with worry about choosing the correct status emblems, these people can be remarkably relaxed and unself-conscious. They can do, say, wear, and look like pretty much anything they want without undue feelings of shame, which belong to their betters, the middle class, shame being largely a bourgeois feeling. . . .
* * * *
High proles are nice. It's down among the mid- and low proles that features some might find offensive begin to show themselves. These are people who feel bitter about their work, often because they are closely supervised and regulated and generally treated like wayward children. . . . Andrew Levinson, author of The Working-Class Majority (1974), invites us to imagine what it would be like to be under the constant eye of a foreman, "a figure who has absolutely no counterpart in middle-class society. Salaried professionals often do have people above them, but it is impossible to imagine professors or executives being required to bring a doctor's note if they are absent a day or having to justify the number of trips they take to the bathroom." . . .

The degree of supervision, indeed, is often a more eloquent class indicator than mere income, which suggests that the whole class system is more a recognition of the value of freedom than a proclamation of the value of sheer cash. . . . One is a mid- or low prole if one's servitude is constantly emphasized. Occupational class depends largely on doing work for which the consquences of error or failure are distant or remote, or better, invisible, rather than immediately apparent to a superior and thus instantly humiliating to the performer.

Constantly demeaned at work, the lower sorts of proles suffer from poor morale. As one woman worker says, "Most of us . . . have jobs that are too small for our spirits."
* * * *
At the bottom of the working class, the low prole is identifiable by the gross uncertainty of his employment. This class would include illegal aliens like Mexican fruit pickers as well as other migrant workers. Social isolation is the norm here, and what Hoggart says of the lower working class in Britain applies elsewhere as well: "Socially . . . each day and each week is almost unplanned. There is no diary, no book of engagements, and few letters are sent or received." Remoteness and isolation, as in the valleys of Appalachia, are characteristics, and down here we find people who, trained for nothing, are likely out of sheer despair to join the Army.

Still, they're better off than the destitute, who never have even seasonal work and who live wholly on welfare. They differ from the bottom-out-of-sights less because they're much better off than because they're more visible, in the form of Bowery bums, bag ladies, people who stand in public places lecturing and delivering harangues about their grievances, people who drink out of paper bags, people whose need for some recognition impels them to "act" in front of audiences in the street. When delinquency and distress grow desperate, you sink into the bottom-out-of-sight class, staying all day in your welfare room or contriving to get taken into an institution, whether charitable or correctional doesn't matter much.

In the last chapter, Fussell identifies a tenth class, a "Class X" of declassed intellectuals and bohemians.

Even this fine-grained analysis might be too simplistic. For one thing, it ignores divisions between ethnic groups. A working-class black and a working-class white might work in similar occupations for similar incomes; but they grow up in different social environments, speak different dialects, attend different churches, listen to different music, socialize with circles of friends almost entirely of their own color, and almost certainly will marry (or, at any rate, reproduce) within their own race. The divisions are much less sharp than they were 20 years ago. (I know white kids who listen to rap and hip-hop, and who call each other "nigger" and "dog" as terms of affection, and whose closest friends and romantic interests are as likely to be black as white.) But they're still there. Are the white prole and the black prole in the same "class"? In 10 or 20 years, maybe; today, no, IMO. They both occupy the same horizontal layer of the social pyramid but there is a vertical line of separation between them.

Perhaps a better question to ask is whether Fussell's analysis is dated. In noting the death of the American lower middle class due to economic forces in the 1960s and '70s, Fussell acknowledged a society's class structure can change significantly in a short period of time. And his book dates from 1983. How well does it describe the America of 2004? 5

[BrainGlutton]

Another insightful analysis -- albeit one limited to the upper strata -- is provided by Michael Lind in The Next American Nation (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 141-145:

Understanding the white overclass requires revising the most common misconceptions about class. The discussion of social class has been confused for generations by Marxist thinkers, who made the mistake of completely identifying class with economic function. Like the Marxists, old-fashioned American liberal pluralists tend to misunderstand class. What they refer to as class is typically not a social class at all, but a mere occupational or income category, such as service-sector workers or millionaires. Meanwhile, the New Left which came to prominence in the sixties has tended to drop the idea of class altogether, in favor of race and gender. . . . In recent years, conservative ideologues have added further confusion by defining political factions and lifestyle subcultures as classes. . . .

In order to think about class in twenty-first century America, we must first clear our minds of these Marxist, liberal, New Left, and conservative definitions of class, and return to the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu.

A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class -- the group of similar families -- has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. . . . Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. Those who talk about "the political class" or, with C. Wright Mills, about "the power elite," are confusing two very different things. Every modern society, even the most perfectly egalitarian, will have an institutional elite -- top civilian politicians, military officers, judges, diplomats, financial and industrial executives, publishers, editors and leading intellectuals, clerical leaders, and so on. The subject of class is raised only when you examine the social origins of the particular individuals who hold office in the institutional elite or elites. Learning the organization of judicial offices in a country tells you nothing about class. However, if you find out that most of the judges tend to come from old-money families in a particular region of that country, and that most attended one of half a dozen schools, then you have learned something important about that country's class system.

The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the American institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. To put it another way, the labor pool from which most elite positions are filled is the white overclass. The overlap is not complete. Though most members of the institutional elite belong to the white overclass, most members of the white overclass are not part of the institutional elite (since the overclass greatly outnumbers the elite); and -- though this is uncommon -- a person can become a high-ranking politician, military officer, judge, CEO, foundation president, or university president in the United States without having been born into the white overclass. It is possible to imagine a United States in which most members of the institutional elite did not have similar class origins. But that is not the country in which we live.

. . . The white overclass is the child of the former Northeastern Protestant establishment, produced by marriage (not only figurative but literal) with the upwardly mobile descendants of turn-of-the-century European immigrants and white Southerners and Westerners. Unlike the Northeastern establishment . . . this relatively new and still evolving political and social oligarchy is not identified with any particular region of the country (though it is concentrated in East and West Coast metropolitan regions). Nor does the white overclass dominate other sections through local, surrogate establishments, as the Northeastern establishment once did. Rather, overclass Americans are found in the higher suburbs of every major metropolitan area, North and South, coastal and inland. Unlike the sectional elites of the past, members of the white overclass are not even identified with the regions in which they happen (temporarily) to live. The white overclass, homogeneous and nomadic, is the first truly national upper class in American history.

The white overclass is the product, not merely of the amalgamation of Anglo- and Euro-Americans, but of the fusion of the rentier and managerial-professional classes. This blurring of the upper and upper-middle strata is a relatively new development in the United States. In earlier generations, there were distinct landowning and rentier classes, with their own lifestyles and institutions -- cotillions, seasons spent in the country, and the like. The elaborate rituals that governed upper-class life, such as dressing for dinner, were designed to conspicuously display wealth, including a wealth of leisure time. That was a long time ago. There is a class, or rather a category, of the clebrity rich, and there are still pockets of old-fashioned rentiers in the U.S. -- in Virginia, there are still planters who do not work and who hunt foxes with hounds -- but these subcultures are detached from the summits of power. Members of the upper class who want to make a mark in the world tend to adopt the style of life and dress and speech of the managerial-professional elite. Even though they do not have to, most members of the small hereditary upper class go to college and get executive or professional jobs, and work, or at least pretend to. Instead of serving as a model for well-to-do executives and lawyers and investment bankers, the hereditary segment of the American overclass conforms to the segment immediately below it, the credentialed upper middle class.

. . . The composition of student bodies at Ivy League schools is a good surrogate for the composition of the white overclass. If you factor out black and Hispanic students admitted under affirmative action programs, you ar lef with a student body that is disproportionately of British or German-Scandinavian Protestant and European Jewish descent. There are relatively few evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the overclass, despite their significant numbers in the general population. If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive. If you are Methodist, Baptist or Catholic, have a B.A. from a state university, work in or for a small business or for a career government service, watch the Nashville Network on cable, and are saving for a vacation in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Branson, Missouri, or Orlando, Florida (Disneyworld), you are probably not a member of the white overclass -- no matter how much money you make.

Although there are residual religious and ethnic differences among members of the white overclass, these are minor compared to what they have in common. There is, for example, a common white overclass accent, which is more or less identical in corporate boardrooms from one end of the continent to another -- the "NBC standard," which is the equivalent of BBC English or Britain's Received Pronunciation (RP). As formerly distinct local elites have fused into a single national ruling class equally at home in New York and Texas and California, this accent has become the badge of elite status. In order to advance in overclass circles in America, a white American has to suppress any regional or ethnic dialect, whether it be a Southern drawl or a Boston honk or Brooklynese, and learn to speak this flat, clipped, rather nasal version of English. . . .

. . . The overclass eats pate and imported cheeses; the middle class eats peanut butter and Velveeta. The overclass sips wine; the middle class drinks beer. The overclass plays squash and tennis; the middle class plays pool and bowls (both golf, but the middle class does so at second-tier country clubs and public courses). The overclass jogs; the middle class does not. . . . These are cliches, but they are a better guide to the real class structure in the United States than income categories in the census or pseudoscientific sociological measures like the SES (socioeconomic survey).

All of the above is about the white overclass. In Lind's analysis there is also a black overclass and a Hispanic overclass, but they are socially separate and distinct groups, with only limited intermarriage with the white overclass. They lack the white overclass's financial independence, and mostly work in civil service jobs and corporate middle management. In fact they are salaried dependents of the white overclass. (Think Clarence Thomas.) 6

[XT]

What defines what "class" a person belongs to?

Socio-economics I'd guess...that and perhaps education and upbringing.

How do you identify a persons class when you meet them?

Probably by subconscious cue's. The way they are dressed, speech and mannerisms, attitudes and positions on things, etc. It pigeonholes people into a 'slot' that I suppose could be broadly defined as 'class'.

How easy/difficult is it to move between classes?

In the US? I think it’s pretty easy to move between the 'classes', especially if we define them more broadly than just economic. Even economic it’s pretty easy to move between classes in the US. It varies in other countries of course. It was damn hard to move between the more ridged 'class' structure in Mexico for my family (and still is for the family I still have living there)...it wasn't impossible, just more difficult.

Is it even relevant in American society? In other words, is there so much blending between classes and income brackets that it is essentially as irrelevant as the color of the shirt I put on this morning?

Its mostly irrelevant in the US today...at least as I define 'class'...because the term 'class' is basically meaningless. Class meant something in earlier cultures when you had a rigid caste system in place, or when movement between classes was severely restricted (or even completely restricted). When education wasn't available at all for the lower 'classes' there was a huge gap. Now, there is certainly a monetary gap...but a poor Hispanic can get essentially the same education as a rich white. He can learn the same things about economics, politics, language, engineering, etc.

Just look at people of the same economic level...they differ radically within their own 'class' level. A Hispanic on the west coast has radically different attitudes than a black making the same amount on the east coast...or a white making the same amount in the south. Hell, two Hispanic’s making the same amount differ if one lives in the South West and one lives in the North East.

'Class', as far as in America, is IMO basically a meaningless term...just like 'race' is. It’s a hold over (in the US) from earlier times. There ARE no real 'races'...and in the US there really isn't a homogenous 'class'. Wealthy people on the East Coast are a hell of a lot different in their attitudes, politics, priorities, etc, than a wealthy person in the South West, the North West, the West Coast, etc. Hell, even on the East Coast you have wealthy liberals and wealthy conservatives...and they are pretty radically different in more ways than just their politics.

-XT 7

[pravnik]

The easiest way to determine an individual's social class is by rolling 2d10:

01-10 Lower Lower Class
11-20 Middle Lower Class
21-30 Upper Lower Class
31-45 Lower Middle Class
46-70 Middle Middle Class
71-85 Upper Middle Class
86-95 Lower Upper Class
96-99 Middle Upper Class
00 Upper Upper Class

Piece of cake! 8

[John Mace]

If it wasn't for low class,
I wouldn't have no class
at all...

I just look at the type of vehicle the person drives. That tells me everything I need to know. 9

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by xtisme

Now, there is certainly a monetary gap...but a poor Hispanic can get essentially the same education as a rich white.

No, he can't, x, not without getting a whole lot of rare lucky breaks. And if he does get the same education, he still can't do all the same things with it a rich white can. Connections and the "old boy network" still count for a lot,

And white skin privilege still exists. A white hillbilly who gets a good education, works hard, gets rich, and moves into an expensive condo complex is accepted by his new neighbors as one of them. A black from the projects who does the same is still just a nigger in a Jaguar. That's how it is. For now. 10

[Tamerlane]

Originally Posted by John Mace

I just look at the type of vehicle the person drives. That tells me everything I need to know.

2000 Nissan Maxima SE.

I await judgement with trepidation .

- Tamerlane 11

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by Tamerlane

2000 Nissan Maxima SE.

I await judgement with trepidation .

- Tamerlane

I have to actually see it, both the exterior and interior, to make the decision. This is a science, not just some snap judgement! 12

[Kimstu]

msmith: -How easy/difficult is it to move between classes?
-What are some of the barriers to moving between classes?

xt: Even economic it’s pretty easy to move between classes in the US.

Insofar as "class" means "income level" (and other people have done a good job of pointing out some of the differences between those categories), the answer seems to be that it's easier to move between classes in the US than in many other places, but it's harder than it used to be.

An article in Business Week in 2003 discussed some of the issues of America's declining income mobility:

[...] Many middle-income and high-skilled employees face fewer opportunities, too, as companies shift work to subcontractors and temp agencies and move white-collar jobs to China and India.

The result has been an erosion of one of America's most cherished values: giving its people the ability to move up the economic ladder over their lifetimes. Historically, most Americans, even low-skilled ones, were able to find poorly paid janitorial or factory jobs, then gradually climb into the middle class as they gained experience and moved up the wage curve. But the number of workers progressing upward began to slip in the 1970s, when the post-World War II productivity boom ran out of steam. Upward mobility diminished even more in the 1980s as globalization and technology slammed blue-collar wages.

Many experts expected the trend to reverse as productivity rebounded during the heated economy of the 1990s. Certainly, there were plenty of gains. [...] But new research suggests that, surprisingly, the best economy in 30 years did little to get America's vaunted upward mobility back on track. [...] conventional companies were cutting the middle out of career ladders, leaving fewer people able to better their economic position over the decade.

During the 1990s, relative mobility -- that is, the share of Americans changing income quintiles in any direction, up or down -- slipped by two percentage points [...] While two points may not sound like much, it's bad news given how much progress might have been made amid explosive growth. Essentially, says University of Chicago economics professor and Nobel laureate James J. Heckman, "the big finding in recent years is that the notion of America being a highly mobile society isn't as true as it used to be." [...]

For mobility to increase in relative terms, which is the standard way economists measure it, someone has to move down the pecking order to make room for another to move up. But the Boston Fed study found less movement in both directions. Some 40% of families didn't change income brackets over the decade, vs. 37% in the 1980s and 36% in the 1970s, according to the authors' analysis of annual longitudinal surveys by the University of Michigan.

The changing dynamic of the U.S. economy clearly has the most impact on those at the bottom. Some 49% of families who started the 1970s in poverty were still stuck there at the end of that decade, the Boston Fed study found. During the 1990s, the figure had jumped to 53%, even after accounting for two-earner families. A key reason lies with the creation of millions of jobs that pay less than a poverty-line wage of $8.70 an hour [...]

If income mobility barriers continue to grow more rigid, we can probably expect to see other types of "class distinctions" tighten up too. One of the things that keeps class distinctions loose is high intergenerational class mobility: if your grandfather lived in a small house in a poor quarter of town and you visited him there a lot and hung out at the corner store with him and his friends, then even if you grow up to be a limo-riding CEO, you probably will remain comfortable with lower-class environments. If, on the other hand, everybody in your family was in the limo-riding CEO class, you'll have a harder time understanding how the other half lives. 13

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive.

Whew! For awhile I thought I was just common upper-middle class!




I would say that the most visible differences in class can be seen in higher education. For one, it is the oldest point in most peoples life where they have not been forced to make their own way in the world yet, so they are still very much defined by how they were raised. Secondly, education itself somewhat defines a persons "class". Thirdly, for many people, it is the first time they have been forced to mingle with people of different backgrounds.

One thing I noticed in college was how quickly people who grew up in the same class identified each other, even though on the surface, there is very little outward difference in appearance (in all fairness, my school was rather homogenius anyway with most of the student body ranging from middle class to wealthy). "Oh we went to the same summer camp in Massachusettes", "You went to Choate? Yeah we played you in lacross.", "Your family has a house in Spring Lake? Sorry East Hampton."

Probably the biggest barrier between classes is attitude toward wealth and prosperity. Lower classes will wear shirts with a giant POLO logo in 6 inch letters across the back like a NASCAR sponser while upper classes wear the more subdued classic horse logo on the breast pocket.

My girlfriend went to college a few miles away from my school. While similar, her school was definitely skewed more to the Middle Class. The student body, while coming from families with similar incomes, tended to travel shorter distances to go to school there and tended to stay closer upon graduating. They viewed people from my school as a bunch of rich arrogant alchoholic druggies like characters out of a Bret Easton Ellis book or something. Of course we had a lot of them too. On the other hand, my school was not in the same class as the Harvards and Princetons of the world.

As for how much class matters, probably not that much. My girlfriends family runs the entire specrum of the socioecomic latter. Her parents aren't very wealthy and live in a rural area while her cousin is part owner of a Major League baseball team. And she has aunts and uncles and cousins all in between -lawyers, high school soccer coaches, what have you.

Anyhow I have to go eat. More thoughts later 14

[Rashak Mani]

hhmmm... lets go to the nitty gritty of class discrimination:

1st - Check out the shoes. Bad shoes are a give away.
2nd - Overall clothes check. Good quality and good taste ? Belts especially.
3rd - Wrist watch... a good and fancy watch might mean some economic power. Too flashy might mean a "noveau riche".

4th - Teeth. More money means better dentist work and getting teeth fixed.
5th - Overall demeanor and posture.

6th Now depending on the country you'd check out skin color... and during conversation cultural references and general culture, and age.

I'm not going to be politically correct about this topic. We all "measure" people all the time. Even if I don't want to label someone... I see the give away details that mark someone as lower middle class in Brazil quite easily for example. I also figure out when someone is rich... but they weren't born so.

Education and culture also determine "class" a lot. You'd be surprised how people determine "class" during conversation. The higher the class... the more educated you might have to be... and the interests might be different too. I've never played golf... so I doubt I'd be able to mingle with the CEO crowd for example. I couldn't keep up with a much younger group either talking about computer games. Music tastes too point out class.

University education in Brazil isn't as widespread as in the US for example... and interest in politics isn't that common outside of these circles. Getting a higher education in Brazil means being in the 3-4% group. 15

[Waccoe]

To answer the question in a market research context, there is a standard socio-economic classification system, also known as social grade.

In Britain, the standard classification system is A, B, C1, C2, D, E - all a bit Brave New World. Essentially, an individual is graded according to his/ her income band and profession (or the houshold's income and main breadwinner's profession). As a bishop, or bishop's spouse, you get A status even if you have no or little income. I don't know if the system is exactly the same in the US. However, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic often look at data analysed by education level and pure income group as well as this socio-economic dimension.

Another system used by marketers is entirely based on neighbourhood. These systems were developed because the six-way social grade system was felt to be too crude, and because they are suited to direct mail campaigns. All the neighbourhoods in a country are classified into clusters - 36 in the system I have seen. One example of a cluster might be inner city/ high density housing/ middle income/ small households/ high proportion of retired people.

However, the distinction between old money and new money is normally overlooked in these systems. 16

[ralph124c]

I find class differences to be a fascinating subject: here in NE, we have a very entrenched class of "Old Mone" people. These folks have been rich so long that they have no need to display their affluence. They live in drafty old houses, which are usually decaying. They also dress conservatively, and drive older american cars (no $300,000- Maybach sedans for them). They send their kids to prep schools, and prefer tastless, mushy kinds of food (like brown bread and baked beans).
And, they are exceedingly cheap..one old Bostonian family lady was once complemented on her choice of hats..she was asked where she bought them. To this she replied: "we don't buy them, we have them"! 17

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

I find class differences to be a fascinating subject: here in NE, we have a very entrenched class of "Old Mone" people. These folks have been rich so long that they have no need to display their affluence. They live in drafty old houses, which are usually decaying. They also dress conservatively, and drive older american cars (no $300,000- Maybach sedans for them). They send their kids to prep schools, and prefer tastless, mushy kinds of food (like brown bread and baked beans).
And, they are exceedingly cheap..one old Bostonian family lady was once complemented on her choice of hats..she was asked where she bought them. To this she replied: "we don't buy them, we have them"!

I'm glad you brought this up. Fussell discusses this very aspect, describing how the members of the "top-out-of-sight" class drive 20-year-old beater Plymouths and Chevrolets. Again, however, this betrays a strong Northeastern provincialism; you would definitely not see the same sort of people driving the same sort of cars in L.A. Though it's also arguable that you couldn't really find the same sort of people in L.A. by definition. Be that as it may, I love Fussell's book and have read my copy to pieces. (Interestingly, for those familiar with the book, if you don't know what Dr. Fussell looks like...he looks very much llike his own classic "prole", if you look at the side-by-side drawing of a coarse-looking prole next to an equally exaggeratedly effete "aristocrat".) 18

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

And, they are exceedingly cheap..one old Bostonian family lady was once complemented on her choice of hats..she was asked where she bought them. To this she replied: "we don't buy them, we have them"!

I've heard of a classic NE proverb: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!" 19

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Kimstu

If income mobility barriers continue to grow more rigid, we can probably expect to see other types of "class distinctions" tighten up too. One of the things that keeps class distinctions loose is high intergenerational class mobility: if your grandfather lived in a small house in a poor quarter of town and you visited him there a lot and hung out at the corner store with him and his friends, then even if you grow up to be a limo-riding CEO, you probably will remain comfortable with lower-class environments. If, on the other hand, everybody in your family was in the limo-riding CEO class, you'll have a harder time understanding how the other half lives.

One point Lind made was that the feminist revolution has had the unexpected effect of making social mobility between generations more difficult. In the '50s, a male doctor might marry his nurse, a male lawyer might marry his secretary -- who might well be a woman of humbler social origin than himself. Nowadays we have "assortative mating" -- a male doctor is likelier to marry a female doctor, a male lawyer a female lawyer, etc. In terms of gender equity this is a good thing, but it tends to freeze class lines. 20

[XT]

Originally Posted by Me

Now, there is certainly a monetary gap...but a poor Hispanic can get essentially the same education as a rich white.

Originally Posted by BG

No, he can't, x, not without getting a whole lot of rare lucky breaks. And if he does get the same education, he still can't do all the same things with it a rich white can. Connections and the "old boy network" still count for a lot,

I was a poor hispanic BG...tell me what education was available to a rich white that I didn't get. I don't consider it a 'rare lucky break' but me MAKING my own breaks through hard work. I know you didn't mean to offend, but I'm a bit offended anyway...it smacks of me (and people like me) being helpless unless I get lucky or unless someone GIVES me something.

Originally Posted by BG

And white skin privilege still exists. A white hillbilly who gets a good education, works hard, gets rich, and moves into an expensive condo complex is accepted by his new neighbors as one of them. A black from the projects who does the same is still just a nigger in a Jaguar. That's how it is. For now.

I'm accepted by my neighbors...who are mostly white btw. I haven't had a cross burned on my lawn since I lived in the South...and that was 30 years ago when I was a kid. I have a white wife. I own my own company. I think simply having white skin no longer conveys the 'privilege's you think it does. Having brown or black skin CAN convey certain 'privilege's today in fact.

My company is an 8A...thats a small business minority owned. We get special contracts from the government (until my company 'graduates' at least). My education was payed for by 3 Hispanic American grants (non-government...which I've donated too myself now so MORE hispanics can get a good educations), as well as a government veterans education benifit from my time in service...and some student loans (yes, white bankers WILL grant loans to poor hispanics).

Not to say that the field is completely level today, or that prejudice has completely been eliminated (of course, that works on all sides)...but I think you are living in the past. We've moved on mostly from that kind of attitude. If someone wants it, be they black, brown, yellow red OR white...its there for them to take, if the person is willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices to do it. Its no longer the case where I, as an immigrant hispanic need to sit hat in hand waiting for the great white masters to provide.

Sorry for the speech...this subject obviously burns me up a bit. Also, my anger isn't directed at YOU necessarily BG.

-XT 21

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Spectre of Pithecanthropus

I'm glad you brought this up. Fussell discusses this very aspect, describing how the members of the "top-out-of-sight" class drive 20-year-old beater Plymouths and Chevrolets. Again, however, this betrays a strong Northeastern provincialism; you would definitely not see the same sort of people driving the same sort of cars in L.A.

It's interesting to compare the lifetyles of the Kenedy's vs the Rockefellers vs the Hiltons vs Bill Gates or Donald Trump. All billionares but very different lifestyles. An Old (or is it Olde?) Money New England family might be relatively reclusive and not even seem wealthy except for where their kids went to school and their huge weathered Newport or Marthas Vinyard mansion (or even crappy houses that cost $2 M). Wealthy New Yorkers might be much more concerned with the 'right' this and that - the right parties, the right Park Avenue address, the right summer house. It's been said in LA, that talent dresses like homeless people with Porshes (ie Brad Pitt) while power (studio execs and agents) wear Armani. A wealthy midwestern or texan might appear just another stupid hick except for his 10,000 head of cattle on 40,000 acres. Wealth manifests iteself differently in different parts of the country.

If I were a billionare, I would probably use $50,000 BMWs like toilet paper, basically just leaving them wherever and grabbing one when I need it.


I think that one of the trappings of class is that you try to emulate how you think the upper classes SHOULD dress and act. At my girlfriends "middle class" college, girls would get up an hour early to put on makeup and do their hair before class. At my more elite school, girls and boys just show up wearing the same sweatpants they wore to bed and a ratty baseball cap.

It seems a persons class is also defined by the expectations set on them. A Harvard grad might be stressed about his grades because his families expectations of becoming a lawyer or bankers. Or he might not care since his family has money so he's just going to go study some BS major and go to Europe for the summer because he knows his dad will get him a job at Merryl anyway. A middle class college student might feel the same pressures but for different reasons.

We used to joke about the wealthy fraternity next door to us during parents weekend. "Dear Hunter, your new mom and I are having a great time in Aspen. Sorry we couldn't make your little school thing. Here's $5000 to tide you over."

People's class tends to cross wealth barriers because 1) most of us want to "fit in", not stand out like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons or the poor kid from some OC or 90210 type show and 2) we take on the mannerisms of the class we are predominantly exposed to so outsiders soon see us that way. Example, if I were wealthy and lived in a small town, I would not want to stand out as the town millionare. I would live comfortibly but not oestantatiously. On the other hand, I would probably live in Manhattan where such wealth is not a big deal. 22

[Kimstu]

BG: One point Lind made was that the feminist revolution has had the unexpected effect of making social mobility between generations more difficult. [...] In terms of gender equity this is a good thing, but it tends to freeze class lines.

It's also helped obscure the full impact of reduced economic mobility. Poor and low-income families would be even worse off than they are if they didn't have so many two-job (or three- or four-job) couples. We tend to focus on the positive aspects of having more women in the workforce (women's liberation, autonomy, gender equity and so forth) and to gloss over the less-positive fact that without working wives, most lower-income men would no longer be able to support their families.

xt: If someone wants it, be they black, brown, yellow red OR white...its there for them to take, if the person is willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices to do it.

I see what you're saying, and I completely applaud your determination to improve your situation, and your success at it. However, we need to consider not just what's possible for the occasional unusually talented or dedicated individual, but what's possible for most of the members of a certain class.

It's not enough just to say that anybody can accomplish what you did if they make up their minds to it and work hard enough. We also have to ask, is the system set up so that most people can accomplish what you did? And I think the evidence, particularly the data on declining social mobility, makes it clear that the answer is "no". Our economy is fundamentally dependent on the assumption that lots of people are going to work hard but still stay poor. That's how we get our cheap fruits and vegetables and clothing and services: because we are counting on most of the working poor, even if they're competent and industrious, not to do better for themselves, so they will still need our low wages.

It's kind of like when they say that "anybody can win the lottery." It's absolutely true that anybody (who buys a ticket) can win the lottery. But it's equally true that the whole lottery system is structurally dependent on the statistical certainty that most people won't win the lottery. Any random individual can be a winner, but the success of the system depends on having many more losers than winners. 23

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by msmith537

It's interesting to compare the lifetyles of the Kenedy's vs the Rockefellers vs the Hiltons vs Bill Gates or Donald Trump. All billionares but very different lifestyles.

True. Apart from the question of how long a family has had money, I think region plays a big role. That's why I said you probably couldn't find the same kind of people among the L.A. rich that you do among the Boston elite. A Boston-bred heir who takes his money and relocates to California would presumably be motivated by a desire to get away from what Boston, in that regard, represents. So almost by definition they are different from those who are similarly situated and remain behind.

I think that one of the trappings of class is that you try to emulate how you think the upper classes SHOULD dress and act. At my girlfriends "middle class" college, girls would get up an hour early to put on makeup and do their hair before class. At my more elite school, girls and boys just show up wearing the same sweatpants they wore to bed and a ratty baseball cap.

Did you mean to say one of the "traps" of class consciousness is the urge to emulate the upper classes? If so, Fussell agrees with you, and says that especially in the middle class, emulation of the upper classes is endemic. This drives such behaviors as being painfully attentive to the 'correct' details of laying a table, issuing thank-you notes for forgettable parties, and bestrewing your abode with periodicals and books that you imagine are aimed at the upper class.

Note, however, he identifies this behavior as being characteristic of the true middle-middle class. Upper middles are more carefree and casual.
[/quote]

It seems a persons class is also defined by the expectations set on them. A Harvard grad might be stressed about his grades because his families expectations of becoming a lawyer or bankers. Or he might not care since his family has money so he's just going to go study some BS major and go to Europe for the summer because he knows his dad will get him a job at Merryl anyway. A middle class college student might feel the same pressures but for different reasons.

My parents were a good example of this. My mother and father were first- and second-generation college graduates; my maternal grandfather never went to high school but was successful enough as a corporate salesman to provide his family with a comfortable life, even through the Depression. My father is a retired doctor, as his father was before him, but his grandfather was a Kansas farmer. Not that he was particularly poor, but still a farmer. So when my older brother decided not to finish college, my parents were livid! I see where a lot of that comes from now. They perceived us as being a "college educated family", something which in their view was the distinguising feature of being upper middle class. By not finishing, my brother was in violation of the Upper Middle Code.

We were never pressured to take "practical" majors, though. 24

[duality72]

Originally Posted by pravnik

The easiest way to determine an individual's social class is by rolling 2d10:

<geeky nitpick>That's d100. 2d10 would give you a value between 2 and 20.</geeky nitpick> 25

[ralph124c]

Another anecdote: Jackie Kennedy's grandparents (the Auchinloss family) were OLDE NE money. They would unplug their refridgerator at the first frost in the fall, and move their perishables to the front porch! This probably saved them a few dollars in electricity!
I have also attended class reunions at Harvard..some of those old geezers were wearing their GRANDFATHER's clothes! 26

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by xtisme

I was a poor hispanic BG...tell me what education was available to a rich white that I didn't get. I don't consider it a 'rare lucky break' but me MAKING my own breaks through hard work. I know you didn't mean to offend, but I'm a bit offended anyway...it smacks of me (and people like me) being helpless unless I get lucky or unless someone GIVES me something.

Look, x, what about your old friends and neighbors from the barrio? Where are they now? My guess would be, still in the barrio, most of them. Now compare them with an equal number of white kids who were living in a prosperous suburb 20 years ago. Where are they now? In an equally or more prosperous suburb, most of them. Get the picture? And how are we to account for this? Are the suburban white kids just more naturally intelligent, ambitious and hardworking than those dumb lazy Latinos? Or maybe, just maybe, our society gave a head start to one group that it denied to the other?

And I'm not saying I want our poor citizens and our nonwhites to be "given" things by their white masters. Quite the contrary. I want them to earn higher social status and prosperity -- not by admirable individual effort alone, as you have done, but also by collective efforts, and by using the power of the vote and the power of organizing! I want them to take the things to which they are entitled as Americans! 27

[BrainGlutton]

Relevant to the above, here's another quote from Lind's Next American Nation:

The chief danger confronting the twenty-first century United States is not Balkanization [fragmentation of society along ethnic lines] but what might be called Brazilianization. By Brazilianization I mean not the separation of cultures by race, but the separation of races by class. As in Brazil, a common American culture could be indefinitely compatible with a blurry, informal caste system in which most of those at the top of the social hierarchy are white, and most brown and black Americans are on the bottom -- forever. Behind all the boosterish talk about the wonders of the new American rainbow is the reality of enduring racial division by class, something that multicultural education initiatives and racial preference policies do not begin to address.

In the absence of sustained popular pressure from below or concern about America's international status, the white overclass has no incentive to combat Brazilianization in the United States. For one thing, any serious effort to reduce racial separation by class would inevitably mean higher taxes on the affluent -- not just the rich, but the politically powerful upper-middle class. What is more, the dominance of the white oligarchy in American politics is strengthened by the emergent dynamics of a polarized society. In a more homogeneous society, the increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top might produce a populist reaction by the majority. But in a society like that of present-day America where a small, homogeneous oligarchy confronts a diverse population that shares a common national culture but remains divided along racial lines, the position of the outnumbered elite can be very secure. This is because the resentments caused by economic decline are likely to be expressed as hostility between the groups at the bottom, rather than as a rebellion against the top. In the Los Angeles riot, black, Hispanic, and white rioters turned on Korean middlemen, rather than march on Beverly Hills.

But, in Lind's view, the solution to this is not a program of affirmative action based on "racial preferences." It is, rather, an even more vigorous program of what might be termed color-blind, race-neutral, affirmative action based on class:

Five hundred years of racial preference will not integrate the United States. At most, it will enlarge new black and Hispanic overclasses, dependent on government patronage and wite overclass paternalism, while doing little or nothing for most black and Hispanic Americans. The social mobility of black and Hispanic Americans is impeded by three quite different kinds of obstacles -- active racism, barriers to entry in the economy and politics, and acquired disabilities. No single strategy is appropriate for all three obstacles. Active racism against individuals must be neutralized by rigorous enforcement of antidiscrimination law. Barriers to entry in the economy and politics have to be dismantled by sweeping legislative reforms of how business is done and how elections are carried out in the United States. Acquired disabilities -- by which I mean the very real culture of poverty that equips many children of the ghetto and barrio with attitudes making them unfit for the mainstream, workaday community -- are the most difficulte, because the most subtle, of all obstacles. Nothing less than a program to liberate denizens of the ghettos and barrios from those environments, family by family, is likely to succeed.

To the solution of all these problems, racial preference is irrelevant. Indeed it is dangerous, to the extent that the proliferation of racial preference programs lulls white liberals into the comforting belief that, after all, something serious is being done to alleviate the enduring separation of race by class. Most white conservatives simply do not care.

A serious attempt to integrate American society, then, would consist of coordinated efforts in different spheres -- the judicial (antidiscrimination law), the political (legislative reform of education, the professions, electoral methods, and government structures) and the economic (targeted programs to liberate the hereditary poor, as well as broader programs like universal health care and public education benefiting all wage-earning Americans).

Is that something to which you would have any objection, xtisme?

BTW: By "liberating the hereditary poor," Lind means liberating them, one family at a time, from poor neighborhoods, getting them out of that socially dysfunctional environment. That could boil the blood of a lot of black and Latino Americans, who might see it as an effort to destroy their community and culture. I say, so fucking what? The best model, the best success story, for beneficial integration of an ethnocultural minority into American society, is the Jews. There was a time when there were de facto Jewish ghettos and Jewish crime gangs in America (Dutch Schultz, Meyer Lansky, etc.), but that's all in the past. Today, the Jews are mostly prosperous, well-educated, and entirely assets to our society and economy. And you'll find Jews everywhere you go. But the "Jewish-American community" is now a very vague and attenuated thing, like the Irish-American community and the Italian-American community. Outside a few major cities, how many Jewish neighborhoods are left in America? They still have their own religion and some attenuated aspects of their Old World Ashkenazi culture, they still marry predominantly among themselves, but other than that, they're completely culturally assimilated. That's the goal our black and Latino citizens, and all white people who give a shit about them, should be striving for: A future America where there are plenty of black and Latino people everywhere, and practically no black or Latino neighborhoods anywhere! (And no poor white neighborhoods, either!)

You may now commence screaming about "cultural genocide." 28

[Hyperelastic]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

Another insightful analysis -- albeit one limited to the upper strata -- is provided by Michael Lind in The Next American Nation (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 141-145:

.....


All of the above is about the white overclass. In Lind's analysis there is also a black overclass and a Hispanic overclass, but they are socially separate and distinct groups, with only limited intermarriage with the white overclass. They lack the white overclass's financial independence, and mostly work in civil service jobs and corporate middle management. In fact they are salaried dependents of the white overclass. (Think Clarence Thomas.)

White overclass? Is this guy living in 1955? Look at the marriage section of the Sunday New York Times. You'll find that whites, or at least "WASPs", are clinging to a bare majority, if that. The rest of the overclass consists of Asian-Americans, Jews and the foreign-born. We may not be talking landed gentry here, but anyone who has spent any time as a professional knows that the professional elites have a nonwhite/nonnative percentage much higher than the general population. Yesterday I sat around a conference table with an Iranian, an Indian, and two Taiwanese, with me the lone white. It's been this way ever since I finished my undergraduate degree. 29

[ralph124c]

In his classic treatise on consumer behaviour (THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS), economist Thorstein Veblen analyzed the consuming behavior of vatious claases of people. Even though the book was written in the 1890's it is still valid today. Take the rich people's preoccupation with expensive activities like polo, yachting, affairs with beautiful women, etc. all of thse activities demonstrate "I am better than you are" because they:
-are expensive
-involve special kinds of clothes
-demand lots of leisure time
Hence, these activities cannot be indulged in by the lower classes. THAT is the main reason that the rich like them.
Now, if you are an old money guy (Lowell Cabot Winthrop XII), you don't give a hoot about all this..heck, you might even eat hot dogs and drink with the help! :wally 30

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Hyperelastic

White overclass? Is this guy living in 1955? Look at the marriage section of the Sunday New York Times. You'll find that whites, or at least "WASPs", are clinging to a bare majority, if that. The rest of the overclass consists of Asian-Americans, Jews and the foreign-born. We may not be talking landed gentry here, but anyone who has spent any time as a professional knows that the professional elites have a nonwhite/nonnative percentage much higher than the general population. Yesterday I sat around a conference table with an Iranian, an Indian, and two Taiwanese, with me the lone white. It's been this way ever since I finished my undergraduate degree.

The "professional elites" are not the Upper Class. They're Upper Middle. There's several layers above you that you (indeed, most of us) just don't see or interact with.

My wife, a nice Upper Middle Jewish girl from Manhattan, went to college at Smith. It was quite an eye-opening experience to interact on a day-to-day basis with the children of the old money East Coast establishment. Yes, they're not as WASPy as they were 50 years ago -- they've allowed a trickle of Jews and Irish Catholics into the club. But they're still far more white bread than the country as a whole. 31

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Tamerlane

2000 Nissan Maxima SE.

Middle-middle.

If you've tricked it out in any way, High Prole. 32

[Yeticus Rex]

Originally Posted by duality72

<geeky nitpick>That's d100. 2d10 would give you a value between 2 and 20.</geeky nitpick>

</old geeky nitpick>
Naw, Pravnik must be old school (when d100 were not in existence yet), we used 2d10's (either different colors, or the digits were different colors) and one d10 always represented the tens, and the other d10 was the units.....therefore 01-00(100) was the range.
</old geeky nitpick> 33

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Pochacco

The "professional elites" are not the Upper Class. They're Upper Middle. There's several layers above you that you (indeed, most of us) just don't see or interact with.

Depends what profession. Partners and principles in prestigeous law, advertising or consulting firms (Mckinsey, Bain or Boston Consulting Group, not Steve's IT Consulting, Inc.), managing directors of banks or VC firms, Fortune 500 CEOs and officers. These guys are pretty much Upper Class by any standard. Multiple six-figure incomes, own multiple property, businesses, etc. Country Clubs, best schools. That kind of stuff.

I consider upper-middle to be basically the people who work in those professions and have achieved a certain level of success. Own their nice house in the right neighborhood. Owned or leased Volvos and BMWs and whatnot. Lawyers, some doctors who don't make as much, professors, sr mangers in large companies. Maybe income in the $70-200k range depending on where you live. Usually pretty good to top schooling. Right clothes with the right labels. Just enough money to be a little arrogant.

Middle class, I consider school teachers, nurses, well paid tradesmen like plumbers or electricians. $45k jobs. Basically nth tier or state schools. Beater cars or sensible Saturns Joe sixpacks and soccer moms. Generic sub-division living. Generic or non-label versions of UMC affectations. Generally likeable but lacking a certain worldliness.

Lower middle class - Low level corporate jobs - call center operators or admins. Struggle to make ends meet. State schools or community college. Over inflated sense of the worth of money ($10k is considered a LOT of money).

Working class - Basically working poor. People in low level jobs like fast food, sanitation, non-transient restaurant workers (IOW, waiters who are not students home for the summer). Basically living paycheck to paycheck.

Destitute poor - Basically the poorest of the poor.



Now upper middle class and above is where it starts to get interesting. It's kind of like being a partner in a law firm. Yeah all the partners make the big money compared to the scrubs billing 100 hour weeks, but there are all kinds of levels within levels.

Basically the UMCs, work for the UCs. If they work hard, they might be UCs themselves. He's your boss with the $2M home in Greenwich, CT while you are busting your ass pulling all-nighters. He's a pretty wealthy guy by any stretch of the imagination but he's griping because he only makes $400k a year. 28 year old kids on Wall Street are making that (actually quote by one of the partners at my old MC firm). Like Gorden Gecko says, he doesn't want to be "comfortible like some guy making $400k a year and flying first class", he wants to be "liquid". So wealthy he doesn't have to work again.

So he makes some wise investments, becomes a senior partner, now he's worth about $5-10 M. That's pretty good money, but that doesn't make him a player in the really big leagues. Can't buy a Gulfstream jet with that kind of money. You aren't going to be dealing with the Trumps of the world for $5-10M. And none of them means anything to someone who has inherreted their millions already and have been living with it from birth.

Anyhow you get the picture. Show me someone with $500 M and I'll show you a frustrated billionare.

The whole idea of "high society" is fascinating for all its ridiculousness. My fraternity had some chapters in the South where social standing was a big deal. You had to come from the right families and it was all very elitist with corney regalias and balls and box-socials with carriages and flowers and fuck-knows what else. Give it up! You aren't on freakin Tara, Scarlett! Franky we don't give a damn! (Then again, we also had chapters that were borderline Klan and branded their letters on their arm so go figure)


The whole purpose of making a shitload of money is so you can do what the fuck you want! Not to do what some throwbacks to the turn of the century tell you you should do! If you have that kind of money, you SHOULD be like the Trumps or Rupert Murdochs and just make gaudy 40 story gold plated buildings and crazy TV networks to piss off old money types! 34

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Hyperelastic

White overclass? Is this guy living in 1955? Look at the marriage section of the Sunday New York Times. You'll find that whites, or at least "WASPs", are clinging to a bare majority, if that. The rest of the overclass consists of Asian-Americans, Jews and the foreign-born. We may not be talking landed gentry here, but anyone who has spent any time as a professional knows that the professional elites have a nonwhite/nonnative percentage much higher than the general population. Yesterday I sat around a conference table with an Iranian, an Indian, and two Taiwanese, with me the lone white. It's been this way ever since I finished my undergraduate degree.

He's talking about the social group the disproportionately provides our "institutional elite." Look at Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the senior federal bureaucrats, the boards and top execs of major corporations, the administrators of big-money foundations, the deans and senior professors of elite universities -- how many nonwhite faces do you see? Some, but it's nothing near nonwhites' proportion in the general population, or even in the professional labor forces. 35

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Originally Posted by msmith537

Middle class, I consider school teachers, nurses, well paid tradesmen like plumbers or electricians. $45k jobs. Basically nth tier or state schools. !

Can one really lump 'state schools' together in the nth tier? What about places like UCLA or Berkeley? Of course, the University of California schools do carry more prestige, and are more selective, than the California State schools, which constitute a completely different institution. 36

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Spectre of Pithecanthropus

Can one really lump 'state schools' together in the nth tier? What about places like UCLA or Berkeley? Of course, the University of California schools do carry more prestige, and are more selective, than the California State schools, which constitute a completely different institution.

No, I was thinking more along the lines of schools like Southern Connecticut State University which are borderline community colleges. 37

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by Pochacco

My wife, a nice Upper Middle Jewish girl from Manhattan, went to college at Smith. It was quite an eye-opening experience to interact on a day-to-day basis with the children of the old money East Coast establishment. Yes, they're not as WASPy as they were 50 years ago -- they've allowed a trickle of Jews and Irish Catholics into the club. But they're still far more white bread than the country as a whole.

How are they any different from Italians from Qeens or Hispanics from the Bronx? These WASPs are just another ethnic enclave, members of a minority group who like to hang out together. The only dfference is in their pretensions. 38

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Alessan

How are they any different from Italians from Qeens or Hispanics from the Bronx? These WASPs are just another ethnic enclave, members of a minority group who like to hang out together. The only dfference is in their pretensions.

And their power. 39

[Triskadecamus]

The class recognizes you, not the other way around.

You dress, drive, read, and speak in a collection of ways that is acceptable to a statistical group, and together, you and that group become a class. If you need lots of money to dress, drive, read and speak like that, it’s a prestigious class, with a membership limited by means. If you can dress, drive, read and speak like that with means available to you on your own, it becomes part of the middle class. If you don't have to have money, then the matter of dress, ride, speech become very important, and highly mutable, so as to identify the true members of the class, and exclude pretenders.

It's a statistical thing, mostly, viewed from the outside. From within, it is a matter of identity, and social turf.

Tris
---------------------------
"In my opinion, there's nothing in this world, Beats a '52 Vincent, and a red headed girl." ~ Richard Thompson ~ 40

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

And their power.

So I hear, although I haven't seen much evidence of it myself. But what do I know? The only place I've ever lived in America was New York, and in five years I don't think I met a single white Protestant. 41

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Alessan

How are they any different from Italians from Qeens or Hispanics from the Bronx? These WASPs are just another ethnic enclave, members of a minority group who like to hang out together. The only dfference is in their pretensions.

I think your misuderstand pretense.

Trying to mimic the tastes of a different class than your own -- that's pretense. And it applies both up and down the ladder.

Actually living within your class isn't -- although it may appear that way to outsiders ... .

The Upper Classes may be clanny and snooty, but they're not pretensious ... . 42

[The Hamster King]

"pretentious" ... sigh 43

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by Alessan

So I hear, although I haven't seen much evidence of it myself. But what do I know? The only place I've ever lived in America was New York, and in five years I don't think I met a single white Protestant.

Did you spend much time on the Upper East Side? Ever get out to Princeton? Or Westchester County? Connecticut?

They're there ... .

Seriously, if you're not a native, you're going to have a hard time picking up on the markers ... . 44

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Alessan

So I hear, although I haven't seen much evidence of it myself. But what do I know? The only place I've ever lived in America was New York, and in five years I don't think I met a single white Protestant.

You would have, if you had worked on Wall Street, or in some job that would bring you into contact with the HQ execs of Fortune 500 companies. 45

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

You would have, if you had worked on Wall Street, or in some job that would bring you into contact with the HQ execs of Fortune 500 companies.

LOL ... after she went to Smith and before she decided to go to graduate school, my wife supported herself for a year or so as a Manhattan office temp. This was a very bad thing, class-wise, because the typical Manhattan secretary is a mid- to high- prole girl from the Bronx and they could all tell my wife smelled wrong. Just as bad were the upper middle and upper execs who had grown accustomed to having subordinates from a different social class and were very unnerved to having a temp who dressed and talked like one of them. She got dumped on from both ends ... .

One of the great things about the movie Working Girl is how well it illuminates these class distinctions. Melanie Griffith's mid prole vs. Sigourney Weaver's upper mid. In the end Melanie Griffith winds up leaping into the middle class, but the final shot of her unpacking her stuff in her new cubicle is surprisingly bleak ... . 46

[Alessan]

Originally Posted by Pochacco

I think your misuderstand pretense.

Trying to mimic the tastes of a different class than your own -- that's pretense. And it applies both up and down the ladder.

Actually living within your class isn't -- although it may appear that way to outsiders ... .

The Upper Classes may be clanny and snooty, but they're not pretensious ... .

As I seen, pretension means attributing greater importance to yourself or to your beliefs than they deserve, which certainly applies to them.



The two years I lived in New York as an adult I worked in advertising, and everyone I met through business was either Irish, Italian, Jewish, black or Latino - in other words, basic Americans. I didn't have much to do with CEOs, though, so you may be right, there. As for the Upper East Side, I assume you don't mean where I lived on 63rd & 3rd; you probably mean east of Lex. Well, everyone I personally knew with a view of the park was Jewish, but since they were mostly friends of my parents I can't tell you how representitive they were. 47

[XT]

Originally Posted by BG

Look, x, what about your old friends and neighbors from the barrio? Where are they now? My guess would be, still in the barrio, most of them. Now compare them with an equal number of white kids who were living in a prosperous suburb 20 years ago. Where are they now? In an equally or more prosperous suburb, most of them. Get the picture? And how are we to account for this? Are the suburban white kids just more naturally intelligent, ambitious and hardworking than those dumb lazy Latinos? Or maybe, just maybe, our society gave a head start to one group that it denied to the other?

Sure, some of my friends (and family for that matter) still live in the barrio...but there IS movement out of it. Many of my friends still there are there for good reasons also...mostly they have to do with culture, some with language and the stuborn refusal to learn english...and some because its what they know, its where their friends and family are. They are still my friends and my family, but I am not going to give them a categoric excuse for them staying in the barrio...in many cases a lot of my 'mano's in the barrio were frigging born IN America...I wasn't.

Look, I understand (probably better than you do) what an advantage it is to be affluent, to be able to give your kids a leg up. I also understand the inertia of the barrio and whats comfortable and familiar...and 'safe'. MY kids, for example, go to better grade schools than I did and have more oppurtunities than I did...we live in the suburbs of a large city, in a very nice section of town with good public schools. And I do a lot of volunteer work at Charter Schools (i.e. poor Hispanic and Native American schools) throughout New Mexico so I see first hand what the poor kids of today have and don't have as far as oppurtunities goes in education. They have more than you think they do...and more than the majority of them take advantage of unfortunately.

My kids are definitely starting off from a much higher point, with more resources behind them...so, at least in theory, their futures SHOULD be brighter than mine. But what you don't understand is what its like in another country...like Mexico. You probably understand in your mind...but you don't REALLY get it in your gut. Hell, I'm practically a fanatic about America because of the things its done for me and my family.

My POINT though, was just because you are poor doesn't mean you have to stay at the bottom...in America at least. Just because you are poor doesn't mean you CAN'T get a good education...ESPECIALLY if you are a minority. The fact that not everyone (hell, not many) people take the government and the various private ethnic organizations and grants up on it...well, I'm not going to say its all their fault, but I'm not going to categorically excuse them either...as you seem to be doing. I was there. The programs were there for those who were willing to take advantage of them...and I did. There is NOTHING preventing others from doing exactly what I did. It wasn't 'luck' as you said...it was me being willing to put in the effort to DO it, to find out whats out there and take advantage.

Anyway, I feel like I'm ranting at this point and hijacking this thread. My appologies to everyone...I get worked up abut this stuff and should stay out of the 'class' threads in the future.

-XT 48

[CBCD]

I'm a solidly credentialed haute-WASP. I'm an Eastern Seaboard Episcopalian, christened in The National Cathedral in Washington. My family first lived in New York when it was still New Amsterdam back in 1665. I drive an Oldsmobile. Blah, blah, blah.

I will revel the secret of how we tell who is 'one of us.' We listen to the person's diction and grammar, and we observe the person's manners. Good diction and grammar, and good manners are the secret handshake. Pass it on. 49

[The Hamster King]

Originally Posted by CBCD

I'm a solidly credentialed haute-WASP ...

Location: The Jersey Shore

Rumson? 50