I believe you must be. Uggs are all over the place. When I went to visit San Antonio TX last summer, all the girls had a pair of nice cowboy boots, and a pair of Uggs. 
BTW, I am betting you have a degree?
That, or Ugg and North Face are culturally biased — not sold in Canada (I’d have my butler run a web search to find out, but he’s peeling me a grape).
You don’t see the xenomorphs screwing each other over for a percentage. 
I have to think an off-world planetary engineer for Wayland-Yutani probably pays pretty well in the future. In terms of class, probably equivalent of a petroleum engineer working for Exxonmobile in Saudi Arabia. The sort of jobs smart, educated people who don’t want to sit in an office all day get into.
That tool Burke was definitely some sort of private school douche.
I agree with this. I know people of inter generational wealth, and they run the gamut. Some are indeed classic east coast prep, all natural fibers and summer homes and tasteful luxury. Others live in tacky McMansions, drive flashy card and look just like a car salesman who won the lotto. Others work customer service jobs, rent cheap apartments and smoke lots of pot. Others jet set around and wear haute couture.
I had assumed that reading as a class indicator was due to leisure time. A poor person/family is less likely to have the time to read books. Being a good reader starts early with parents that have time to read to their kids, schools with teachers and resources to develop good readers, and a culture that encourages reading in general. But I think TIME is a big factor here.
My wife’s family was dirt poor growing up. They immigrated to the US and started with nothing. Both her parents worked multiple jobs to support their family. They didn’t have time to read to her at night, and she attended one of the worst elementary schools in the area. A lot of stuff middle class People often take for granted (even things that would be “free” and theoretically accessible to anyone) aren’t necessarily so obtainable to lower class people due to limitations like time.
I think the reason lower class people watch so much TV vs reading is because unlike reading a book for hours on end you can actually do housework with the TV on in the background. Along with TV I bet lower class people listen to the radio; I observe many homeless people that are pretty avid radio listeners.
My wife claims SAHMs are class indicators. Because the husband can afford to support his whole family on one income, they are better off than families that have both parents working. Both her parents worked crazy hours (each had a full-time job+part-time job) just to support their family. The idea of her mom caring for her full time was unthinkable. So when my wife sees families with a SAHM who claims its “cheaper” she’s a little :dubious:
I am new to this board and there seems to be a lot of nice people. THere also seems to be a lot of snarky comments. I was simply stating what I see in my world. A lot of posters I have noticed, always have to write comments which are insulting to someone they do not agree with. Talk about holding yourself to a higher level than the plain folk, who wear there Uggs in the summer. :smack:
It depends on the jobs. Women working crap jobs to have enough money to pay the rent. Woman working as a VP or doctor, no. Ditto staying at home out of choice rather than not being able to find a job (for both men and women.)
The town I lived in 25 years ago had a lot of people working at research centers, and tons of stay at home women who among other things volunteered. I’d guess that this isn’t so true there any more, not from the jobs but from more of them having professional degrees.
Whether a stay at home parent is cheaper or not depends both on the jobs and the price of daycare. Most of the working class SAHMs I knew when my kids were growing up had not only no college degree, but no skills. Not even the traditional pink collar skills like typing, bookkeeping,hairdressing etc. ( They really were throwbacks to my mother’s time). Most of those who ended up getting jobs had to take the sort of minimum wage jobs that could be worked around the school schedule or their husband’s work schedule. It’s probably not worth it to take a job that grosses $300/wk if child care is going to cost $150.
But certain class indicators apply more to one class than others. For example, some of those working class SAHM's looked down on working mothers. Because obviously they married badly as their husbands couldn't support them - after all, why would you bother working if he could? I've never seen that attitude among wealthier, more educated people- they might think lawyer-wife should be a SAHM, but they don't think doctor-husband is a poor provider because she works.( Which is not to say there aren't other criticisms. )
Both time (you do need to have it) and whether the parents are themselves readers. My brother was one until he met his wife: in their house, her college books still outnumber non-school-related adult reading (she finished college in 2000). In her parents’ house, the only book is the phone book, so their two dozen novels are a definite step up, but the kids’ main source of non-school reading is still my mother’s house(hold).
Time isn’t always a factor though. I grew up working class ( a class that’s often left out of these conversations.) Nobody worked two jobs, the mothers were SAH unless they were divorced or maybe widowed and all the housework was done by dinnertime. For the most part , the evening hours were spent in front of the TV- but not doing housework . Reading material consisted of TV Guide, gossip magazines and the ocassional volume of Reader’s Digest Condensed books. It wasn’t lack of time to read- it was lack of interest. I remember someone saying to me " You read?" in a shocked tone of voice. It was almost as if I said I had a horse in my urban backyard.-
I sort of assumed it was the opposite. Or that it was somewhat of a vicious circle. Poor people became poor (or less wealthy) because they don’t value reading, education or other intellectual pursuits. They would rather spend their leisure time watching TV and/or drinking beer. Typically what might happen is they half-ass their way through school. Assuming they graduate and don’t have a drug problem or get in too much trouble with the law, many of these people can earn a decent blue collar working class living in a trade or the local factory. Where they get into trouble is if the economy turns or the local factory packs up and moves. Then they can start to encounter real economic hardship without a lot of options to get out.
I just recall that reading and education was something that was instilled in me as long as I can remember. Even through high school with the other kids in my class - While being a “nerd” wasn’t particularly cool, you didn’t want to fail out of school and end up as a janitor, garbage man, gas station attendant or other similar job on the low end of the prestige scale.
One thing I’ve noticed is how my wife and I tend to think of things differently, based on how we grew up. My wife’s parents aren’t that well off and live in a rural area. I grew up in a middle class suburb to highly educated working professional parents. Even though both my wife and I are the same education level, income and professional status, we’ve seemed to have adopted different mannerisms:
-I tend to throw things away as if there were a never ending supply.
-She tends to save scraps of things like aluminum foil, shopping bags or napkins you get in a takeout bag because you might find a use for them later. This tends to create a “hoarding” effect around the house.
-I buy clothes when I need them.
-She feels pressured to buy clothes when they go on sale (although usually it is for stores we shop at anyway).
-She’s very big on being overly punctual and following directions for authority figures with little question.
-I’m…not. I had actually read something about this phenomenon (Malcolm Gladwell IIRC). People in higher income brackets tend to have more of a sense of entitlement when it comes to demanding respect or results from institutions as well as more confidence in working the system. For example, where a lower income person might accept a low grade on a test without question, a higher income person might be more inclined to go back to the teacher, question the grade and possibly find out that the teacher had made a mistake.
-Her parents seem genuinely nice without a lot of pretense.
-My parents are also nice but it’s very clear there is a lot more work in effort going into making the holidays “perfect”.
I wasn’t being snarky. I hadn’t heard of either brand, perhaps because they aren’t sold here.
Peel me a grape is a joke going back 81 years.
Unless I’m being whooshed.
Or because most of their items aren’t particularly in-your-face about the brand. North Face jackets have a very distinctive, usually very visible logo, but not their other clothing items; Uggs don’t yell the brand either. I wouldn’t be conscious of the second if it wasn’t for younger coworkers; North Face, I first encountered them in sports stores and as sponsors for sports taking place in cold locations (mountain climbing for example).
I am really sorry, I am oversensitive and react before I think sometimes. I do not know what being wooshed is, but it sounds like fun. 
I must agree on the Uggs. I have never seen a commercial or ad for them, except maybe once for their slippers. I guess it is all word of mouth. The movie stars in Hollywood are often pictured wearing them, I would imagine that is wear the rage started. They say they are real comfortable, and worth the money. One time I threw on my daughters to go somewhere quickly. I was really surprised at how they did not live up to their reputation. They did not keep my feet warm, and were not even that comfortable. I call this daughter “the follower”. She dresses like all the girls around Boston dress. The styles they wear are boring, and they all look like clones. My youngest has her own style, and does not look at the labels of items. Sorry for ranting.
Just to clarify: The young girls around my area all wear exactly the same outfits. Yoga pants, tank tops, Uggs, and North Face jackets. I would say 99.9% of the children I see have at least one of those five items in their closet.
I would say their families are probably considered middle class. Now, my daughter does have some friends in the upper class. They have beautiful homes, and they also are identified by even more expense brand names. The latest I heard were Hunter boots. Never heard of them until recentley, but my daughter informs me everyone has them. There are some other brand names to, like Abercrombe that kids wear.
Oh, and do not forget Toms shoes. All the girls wear them to school with their uniform.
It is sad that these children and their parents, bow down to pressure from these vendors and society, and will actually buy these items when they really do not have the money.
I have seen this all my life growing up poor. Back in my day, if you had a pair of Calvin Klein jeans, and a pair of Nike’s, you were put on worship status.
Being wooshed is when someone makes a joke and it goes over your head. It makes a woooooosh! noise
And Hunter boots are the uggh. We called that style Katiuskas (after a musical set in Russia and its protagonist), I always found that the only good thing about them was that after you jumped into a few puddles you had your own personal puddles - sadly, that’s a pleasure reserved for little kids. Those things are ovens except when you need your feet warmed; at that point they turn into fridges.
Here are the things I noticed
A Kid being yelled at in public most likely come from parents that are lower income( a middle and upper class kids may yell at their kids but it is likely they do it behind closed doors)
Allowances, most of my middle and upper middle class friends received an allowance while my working class friends were told to “get a job”.
If I see child that curses like a sailor that is a good indication of the child’s family social standing. I am not typing that rich people don’t swear but when I went to work as an after school instructor for a lower income school, I was pretty surprised to see how many five year olds that dropped f-bombs left and right
One poster mentioned teeth and dental care
Drinking mineral water may indicated that you are more likely to be middle or upper middle class.
Shopping Target vs Shopping at Wal-Mart
Being seen with your own children in public?!! How bourgeois. The true upper crust don’t have to spend ANY time with their children. They send them to the finest boarding schools or exclusive summer camps or have their au pair take care of them.