Why is everyone so afraid of saying “working class”? I keep reading stuff like this:
I don’t blame Obama personally. I know if he said “working class” that the McCarthyites would be all over him. But obviously the intent is to say “working class,” and simply “working” is not even accurate. Someone who’s been laid off would not be “working” but would presumably be included in the group of people this effort is intended to help.
It isn’t just the “McCarthyites” - when my own family was working class (by income) we thought of ourselves as middle class and would have resisted any other description.
Keep in mind that middle class in American culture is an expression of a set of values far more than it is an expression of income - that’s why you’ll see quite wealthy people describe themselves as middle class and poorer people describe themselves the same way. “Working class” has unfortunate underclass connotations that many poorer people do not want to associate themselves with.
I always thought “working class” was a euphemism for “lower class”. “Lower Middle Class” seems to be common nomenclature nowadays too.
I don’t know why Obama (and politicians in general) feel the need to distinguish families by class. Why not just say “American families”?
And from my experience, many comfortably middle-class people like to identify themselves as working class just to separate themselves from the bourgeois.
I’ve always been under the impression that “working families” is politico-speak for “families headed by union members.”
“Working families” has been in play for decades. There’s even a political party called the Working Families Party, whose rise is largely responsible for the demise of New York’s Liberal Party.
And “working families” are not necessarily working class, that is, blue-collar or traditional labor-type workers. People in white collar and professional jobs and people otherwise living a middle class lifestyle can also be encompassed by “working families.”
(1) “Families” is up there with “kittens” in terms of feel-good words. Why not cram it in early and often?
(2) “Working” reassures the average taxpayer that proposed “social spending” is not going to a welfare queen, etc.
I’m not even sure it’s a euphemism for “working class” at all. I think Obama or anyone in his position would very likely want to include middle and upper middle class people among “working families” to whom he would promise some form or another of economic solace, whether in gov’t programs, tax relief, etc.
Class expressions are almost always tangled.
I’m technically a blue-collar worker. But then again I’m also in a “skilled trade”, have a top quintile income and decidedly bourgeosis tastes in many things. But my Marxist parents always regarded working class as a badge of pride and they would consider me working class because I’m non-management, blue-collar, am paid hourly wages and in the greater scheme of things I am a powerless wage-slave cog in the greater capitalist imperium ;).
Sorta comes down to how you choose to define yourself. I’m not sure any of the categories other than “destitute” or “richer than God” are well-defined.
This does not seem to be Pit material, so I will give this a bump over to IMHO.
Speaking as a Brit, it seems to me that there are those who work - therefore ‘working families’ - and those that don’t - retired, rich, unemployed, whatever - so ‘working class’ has ceased to have a meaning.
I agree with Huerta88. This wording is about reassuring people that funds are not intended to promote a cycle of dependency.
Also speaking as a Brit, this is facile, and rather like those arguments that Arabs can’t be anti-semitic.
There are several pretty clear groups in the UK, I think:
underclass: no job, benefits, poor access to good food and services.
working class: work an hourly paid job over which they have no control (eg, call centre operative), multi-channel tv.
lower middle class: work a pseudo professional job (estate agent, provincial accountant or lawyer), tacky matching furniture, drive a vauxhall or ford, keep it clean, very concerned with appearances. multi-channel tv but hide it in a cabinet.
say ‘pardon’
upper middle class: oxbridge or london academic, senior doctor, barrister. drive a beaten up car. no matching chairs. say ‘sorry’.
upper class. rare. work as art dealers. say ‘what’.
These insights aren’t original, of course. check out ‘watching the english’.
pdts
And I continue to believe that Obama, or any modern politician, would want to be perceived as catering to all but the first and last categories, hence “working families” captures things pretty nicely. He’ll talk tough on welfare for those who don’t have jobs (everyone from Reagan forward has used the EITC to emphasize that having a job, any job, is generally the Holy Grail), and he’ll talk tough on the “very rich who have disproportionately benefited from the past economic successes,” thus justifying his intent to turn the screws further on the top 2% of earners who already pay 50% of all taxes.
But he definitely needs the vote of those barristers and estate agents (and IT managers, and HR managers, and bank VPs) who fall short of UC but earn $180k between husband and wife, are in no sense “working class,” but may well have voted for him and don’t want to see their taxes go through the roof. Millions of them voted for him. They work and are families, hence the “working families” meme.
Note that, in the UK, ‘upper class’ is purely an inherited thing. Your class status can come apart very easily from your financial status in the UK. I haven’t lived in the US for very long (1.5 years), but one thing I notice is that nobody self-identifies as ‘working class’, which is very different to the UK. Even joe the plumber, despite doing a very stereotypical working class job (note: the fact that it can pay rather a lot does not make it middle class, at least in UK terms) seems to see himself as a small-businessman.
In the US, even someone who works at an hourly-paid job for $10/hr, has next to no health coverage and would be finiancially ruined by either a job loss or major illness is very keen to describe themselves as ‘middle class’-- even though they are clearly anything but, at least in UK terms.
In the UK, ‘middle class’ is a bit of an insult, a bit like ‘suburban’ in the US: certainly lower middle class implies dull, pretentious, judgemental, provincial. But the lower middle class do for a bit of a backbone of society–in American terms, who else manages the local walmart, or is employed by the local bank branch?
pdts