I’m sure the stats are right, but 100K doesn’t seem upper class to me. Furthermore, the difference between middle and upper class is only 25 large, which isn’t going to be a huge lifestyle differnce; something I think is needed for a class change.
I wouldn’t calls guys earning a 100k tripping pipe all day on a drilling rig upper class. They probably have a new truck, a nice motorcycle and maybe a speed boat; party whenever they want, and live well, but I just don’t see that as upper class.
OK, I admit I was being a little pompous. :eek: :o
But over here we certainly have people without much money who nevertheless have a title and would definitely be considered Upper Class.
“It’s in the breeding, you know”.
These people (who I do not like personally) would look down upon a wealthy American, perhaps descibing them as ‘Nouveau Riche’.
So as usual, it depends on your definition. Here’s the Cambridge one:
‘a social group consisting of the people who have the highest social rank and who are usually rich:
The upper classes usually send their children to expensive private schools.’
In the early 20th century there was a huge spate of British nobility marrying the daughters of Nouveau Riche American - the peers were poor and needed the cash, the American families desired the connection to the breeding.
The Astors immediately come to mind and there were many others.
I’m going to consider myself middle class until I don’t have to work anymore. I don’t care if I have enough money to travel to Europe, pay cash for cars, drink good wine, and eat good food.
Am I on a golf course at 10:30 AM Monday through Friday? No? I’m not rich.
I was going to make the point that throughout history there have been periods where people with nobility have been financially badly off. Wealth and nobility don’t always go hand in hand (in the European model of class, that is).
I really think that whatever your definitions, if you have a job such that if you didn’t have it your standard of living would change, then you are most definitely not upper anything. Middle class people work for a reasonable life style, working class people work for a modest lifestyle, upper class people don’t work (although they may have a hobby that provides an income.)
I’m not sure where my family fits. I’m pretty bad with money, preferring to live for today rather than saving for tomorrow, so I don’t have a house but I also don’t have any debts and can save for a house deposit quite easily. Two years ago when we had our first child we had to save money prior to the birth to carry us through the time when my wife wasn’t working. Now that we’ve had our second child we can easily get by on my income alone and can comfortably afford to put our 2 year old in day-care twice a week to give my wife some sanity time. I certainly have to work, if I didn’t work we’d be fucked so I’m definitely somewhere in the middle. On the other hand I’m in the 4th bracket and very soon to be in the 5th bracket as quoted by Sampiro. According to Wiki I’m probably in the service sector rather than blue or white collar.
To sum up for the OP, I’m in the middle, not poor or rich and not lower or upper.
Edit: I remember when earning about $25000 kiwi/year thinking that if I was earning $50000 or $100000 but kept my living costs the same all of that extra money would be disposable income, I’d be able to do anything I liked, hmmm I might buy a new guitar this week! Unfortunately it doesn’t quite pan out that way.
I think the problem with dividing the American population by income quintiles is that the top quintile has such an enormous range. Even if a person making $100K a year is in the top fifth of the population, there are other people making thousands of times that amount. How can these be in the same category?
I have always considered myself to be in the upper middle class. My parents were able to retire when they were in their fifties, and have been living comfortable, but not lavishly, on their investments ever since (for the past 20+ years). I hope to do the same thing in another five or ten years.
My husband and I are in the 5th quintile according to either scale presented here, and we live in a state that has one of the lowest median incomes. Our house is paid for, we own two nice cars that are less than a year old, and we can afford to take nice vacations multiple times a year, but we still have to work for it. If we could do all this and not work, then I would think we’re rich.
On the other hand, neither we nor our kids went to private schools and we don’t have a title, so we couldn’t possibly be upper class. Just on the upper end of middle class.
No kidding. We have a household income of over 100k and are certainly not upper class. Hell, we had to shop around for months to even find an acceptable condo in our price range. 100k just doesn’t go that far in LA, now if we still living in Ohio we’d be doing quite well for ourselves.
As a sociologist, I spend a lot of time thinking about class and have said on innumerable occasions that all Americans think they are middle class. However, when I’ve said it, it’s always been with the intention of pointing out how Americans tend not to recognize how well off they are. That is, there are a lot more people that should be considered “upper” class than are willing to admit that they are upper class.
The problem with discussions of self-perceptions of class is that the people we know are from our schools, neighborhoods, and work places. They tend to be people more or less like us. We don’t see the full range of income or wealth distribution within our limited social circles, but assume that we’re “middle class” because we’re similar to the other folks we know. And then, og help us, we read People magazine and get a skewed perception of the number of people on the extreme upper end of the distribution.
An awful lot has to do with where you’re living. There’s a big difference between what you can afford in CA versus what we can get in WV.
I do OK for income and fall in upper end of the catatories quoted above. I don’t need to worry about taking the taxi if I’m tired. If all continues, then we’ll be OK for retirement, although a lot will depend on how much future education bills will run.
However, I know rich people, and they make serious money. Like one guy who just bought a jet for a couple of million. I’ll never see, be around, smell, gaze at, or even comprehend that kind of cash.
Fortunately, I’m confortable, but not rich.
Are you defining class as wealth? By many measures I’m wealthy (though Brainiac4 and I both need to work for a living). But I’m not upper class, nor will I ever be - our money is earned.
On the other hand, I have a friend who is from one of those wealthy Minnesota families (not the aforementioned McKnights). He choses to be working class, but his family - despite not having Hilton like wealth remaining - is upper class and he has a ticket to use if he ever chooses to. i.e. he can sit on foundations by virtue of family name.
And that may be the difference between wealthy and upper class in the U.S. If you can get appointed to the board of a foundation on your father or mother’s name alone - not based off your own net worth or the work you’ve done, you’ve crossed over.
I am:
-upper class (defined by taste) (I like champaign, caviar, etc.) 
-working class (by income) :eek:
I hate to break it to you, but school teacher is not a working-class job…it’s a middle class job. It requires a college degree. A public school teacher may be struggling financially, but they are not working class.
One of whom gave birth to a prime minister (though at first the prime minister characteristics were mistaken for Down’s Syndrome). She gave birth at the home of her husband’s older brother, who had the title of Duke and thus the far richer wife, Consuelo Vanderbilt. (Consuelo hated her husband, but her mother- a Bama born sociopath named Alva- literally locked her in her room and threatened to have any man she dated killed until she agreed to marry the Duke, whereupon she did, gave him a fortune in dowry, had two sons she called “the heir and the spare” [which is how that started], and finally left him with an “I’d rather be broke” fit of gumption [though she never was really broke as most would understand the term].)
These marriages used to fascinate me.
Huh. I want to say “upper middle” but by most people’s standards we would be “upper” I guess. Household income in six figures, two kids in private school, vacations limited only by time available to take off (but usually at least 3 one-week-or-longer), two British luxury-brand cars, and even my six year old knows which utensils to use and in what order when faced with multiple sets at dinner. We plan to retire in 10-12 years (we will both be in our early 50’s).
To my mind, these quintiles do not capture what is meant by class, and indeed I question whether the former notions of “class” are all that relevant these days - the three-part class system was a discriptor of another era, that of industrialism.
In my opinion society appears to be bifrucating into “haves” and “have-nots”, with a yet lower/underclass below “have nots” defined by drugs, crime and/or destitution, and an overclass above “haves” consisting of the really wealthy; neither of these groups necessarily do what is traditionally considered “work”.
The better definition nowadays concerning working people is about choices. Do you command enough resources, whether money, reputation, professional qualifications, work experience or entreprenureal skills that you meet most or all of the following criteria:
You can more or less choose where you want to live - if you want to live in a detached house in a good neighbourhood, you can;
You do not fear being laid off, because you know that you have resources to draw on and a skill or qualifications that will ensure another job;
You have crossed the line inbetween “people are doing you a favour by giving you work” and “you are doing people a favour by agreeing to look into their problems for them”;
You can pretty well buy whatever clothes, jewelry, electronics, cars, vacations, and other toys and games that you want - what is stopping you is financial prudence or the desire to increase investments, not lack of money;
Childcare. Can you afford whatever childcare set up you want (such as a live-in nanny, a paid for preschool);
… then you are a “have”.
For example, according to the above statistics (I am Canadian and I simply assume they more or less hold true here) I’d be easily in the top 5% and household gross income just misses the top 1% (double professional household); however, I do not feel “rich” as I must work for a living, and always will have to until retirement … I do however think that there is a quite fundamental difference between what I do (lawyering, my wife is a financial editor) and someone working, say, in the retail service sector, or even someone with a good union job in manufacturing putting in a lot of overtime (who could easily end up in the fifth quintile).
I had a friend, as an undergraduate, who went to Kings, Canterbury. I was completely unaware until we started talking about intramural school sports (or something like that), and he mentioned that his “house” had once been the site of parliament in 1470!