How do you determine what socioeconomic "class" a person is in?

[XT]

@Me

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

@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.

@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

[msmith537]

@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.

[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.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@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.

[duality72]

@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>

[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!

[BrainGlutton]

@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!

[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.”

[Hyperelastic]

@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.

[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

[The_Hamster_King]

@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.

[The_Hamster_King]

@Tamerlane

2000 Nissan Maxima SE.

Middle-middle.

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

[Yeticus_Rex]

@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>

[msmith537]

@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!

[BrainGlutton]

@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.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@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.

[msmith537]

@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.

[Alessan]

@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.

[BrainGlutton]

@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.

[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 ~