# How many social classes are there in the United States? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 12, 2003, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423 "2003-06-12T19:57:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/1 "2003-06-12T19:57:23Z")
There is a persistent myth in America that we are a classless society and always have been. It’s obviously not true, but what’s the real picture? The most compelling analysis of the class system in America I’ve read in the past ten years comes from _The Next American Nation_ by Michael Lind (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 141-145 (very long quote, you might want to skip to the bottom): > [@](#): > > 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. Now, this is a good **start.** But Lind appears to be uninterested in the picture below the overclass level. It’s not just the overclass and all the rest of us, is it? There’s plenty of class tension between the middle class and those below. Even the way Lind defines a class – “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” – would seem to apply to the ruling class only. I read a book once called _Class_ by Paul Fussell, which carefully divided American society into ten classes, layered one above another. Fussell, however, was writing humorous journalism and did not even pretend to be doing serious sociological analysis. Furthermore, I hesitate to accept a simple hierarchical model of our classes, without taking race and ethnicity into account. It seems inappropriate to place poor whites and poor blacks in the same class, for instance, since they historically have been two definitely separate groups with practically no intermarriage or cross-association – separate enough that the white elite often could play them off against each other in wage-competition and strikebreaking. Someday they might merge to form a single class – the process is already beginning, I think, as taboos against interracial marriage fade – but for now, black and white workers should be distinguished, just as Lind distinguishes three overclasses by race. So what do you think? Apart from the white, black and Hispanic overclasses, how many social classes are there in America. Is a janitor in the same class as a plumber? Is a homeless person in a different and lower class? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/2 "2003-06-13T04:59:08Z")
I’ve always believed that life is just like high school, except that you don’t get to graduate in 4 years. In high school there were 2 social classes: The jocks and the freaks. So, I go with 2. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/3 "2003-06-13T05:36:39Z")
You must’ve gone to a pretty small high school. Mine only had ~1000 students, and we had far more than 2 cliques. ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/4 "2003-06-13T05:44:44Z")
I would have to do a lot of research to figure out the number of classes in the US, and the nature of those classes. But one thing is becoming pretty clear. The class barriers in this country are pretty impermeable. There are occasional exceptions to this, but the class that you’re born into is the one you’ll probably die in. It takes money to make money, and if you’re not born with money, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being rich. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/5 "2003-06-13T05:50:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MrVisible \* > \*\*I would have to do a lot of research to figure out the number of classes in the US, and the nature of those classes. But one thing is becoming pretty clear. > > The class barriers in this country are pretty impermeable. There are occasional exceptions to this, but the class that you’re born into is the one you’ll probably die in. It takes money to make money, and if you’re not born with money, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being rich. \*\* First of all, you’re confusing economic class (or what would more acuarately be called income percentile) with social class. Two different things Secondly, you have presented 0 data to support your claim. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/6 "2003-06-13T06:24:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MrVisible \* > \*\*I would have to do a lot of research to figure out the number of classes in the US, and the nature of those classes. But one thing is becoming pretty clear. > > The class barriers in this country are pretty impermeable. There are occasional exceptions to this, but the class that you’re born into is the one you’ll probably die in. It takes money to make money, and if you’re not born with money, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being rich. \*\* Oh what complete crap. I was so poor I though “Irregular” was a designer label. We used catchup for spaghetti sauce. The 3 kids in my family, a girl and 2 boys, shared a single bedroom. Now I live in a half-million dollar house and have a six figure income. Meanwhile, a friend of mine whose father went to Harvard and is related to two presidents, three Mayflower passengers, and Edgar Alan Poe, is now just scraping by in a sucky, low paying job. How about friggin Bill Clinton. He was complete peckerwood. Being born rich makes things easier, but hard work, good choices, and dumb luck make moving up the class ladder very possible. Best decision I ever made was leaving the East Coast, where remnants of class conciousness remain. Out west no one cares about class. ---
**Author:** ![Rhum\_Runner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rhum\_Runner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhum_Runner)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/7 "2003-06-13T07:20:08Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MrVisible \* > \*\*The class barriers in this country are pretty impermeable. There are occasional exceptions to this, but the class that you’re born into is the one you’ll probably die in. It takes money to make money, and if you’re not born with money, you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of being rich. \*\* I strongly disagree. I have only anecdotal evidence, but my father was first generation off the farm, he was a very successful businessman, despite having gone to a no-name college that doesn’t even exsist anymore. He was never given anything by anyone. I am in law school, and many of my friends here are/were the first in their families to attend college, much less profesional school. With education and hard work it is entirely possible to create your own future in this country. I firmly believe that. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/8 "2003-06-13T07:44:36Z")
Hmmm…well I went to a public high school with the normal distribution of bright and not-so-bright students. We had the usual assortment of 4.0 valedictorians and the like. However, in ten years we only had one person get into Stanford (the most prestigious college our people had any chance at). Essentially if you went to my high school you had next to no chance of getting into Stanford no matter how hard you tried. My friend went to a public high school with the normal distribution of bright and not-so-bright student. Their 4.0s didn’t go to Stanford, they went to the Ivy Legues. Stanford was plenty interested in their less spectacular students though, and every year dozens would end up there. Guess which class was rich and which one was poor, and then give me a lecture on social mobility. ---
**Author:** ![spanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@spanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spanna)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/9 "2003-06-13T07:46:45Z")
Class seems to get everybodies backs up. Basically, all it means is that if you are poor you may have low expectations, you may even believe that people in positions of power and authority are really, really clever. Your parents may not be in a position to support you and you have to take the first job that comes along to bring any amount of money into the family. If you are born to a rich family, you meet and know lots of people in high powered jobs and learn that they are just normal people (the good, the bad and the dickheads) So you know you could do those sort of jobs. Also your parents can support you while you bum around trying to figure out what you are going to be. Whilst there are is mobility between classes / economic groups these other factors either hold us back or provide a platform for us to reach higher. ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/10 "2003-06-13T07:47:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by John Mace \* > \*\*First of all, you’re confusing economic class (or what would more acuarately be called income percentile) with social class. Two different things > > Secondly, you have presented 0 data to support your claim. \*\* On both your points, you’re absolutely right. But I think that economic class and social class are pretty well related. On that front, I can provide you with some interesting data. Taken from [_Family Income Mobility–How Much Is There and Has It Changed?_ byPeter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danziger,Revised December 1997](http://fmwww.bc.edu/ec-p/wp398.pdf). > [@](#): > > …94.6 percent (75.1 plus 19.5) of individuals who started in the lowest quintile of family income/needs in 1990 ended up in the first or second quintile one year later. There was also relatively little mobility out of the highest quintile. Of those in the top quintile in 1990, 79.2 remained there and 94.8 ended up in one of the top two quintiles. > … > > Mobility was greater for whites than non-whites (29.7 versus 14.4 percent) and for college graduates relative to those without college degrees (41.8 versus 23.7 percent).18 Upward mobility was especially low for welfare recipients, as only 7.5 percent of them left the lowest quintile. > … > > 46.9 percent of the people in the lowest quintile in 1968 were still in the lowest quintile in 1991. Nearly half of those who had moved up, landed in the second quintile (25.1/53.1) and only 1.3 percent had made it all the way to the top quintile. To compensate for temporary fluctuations in the income of their subjects, the authors also did a comparison based on a three-year average income for the beginning and end points of the study, i.e., the subjects’ average income from 1968-1970 compared to their average income from 1989-1991. In that table, which I’m unable to reproduce here, it shows that if you start out in the lowest fifth of incomes in the US in 1968, you have a 75.6% chance of being in the lowest or second lowest quintile _thirty years later_, and you have a 0.9% chance of landing in the top quintile by then. Given the increasing disparity between rich and poor over that period, I find that kind of economic stasis pretty appalling. Individual examples like **Dan Blather** aside; there are always exceptions to the rule, but they are, as the data indicates, a one in a hundred shot over thirty years. This one is from a paper at [The Century Foundation](http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Issue_Briefs/ClassWarfare/myth4.pdf). > [@](#): > > Overall, an American has one chance in five (20 percent) of ending up in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. But as Figure 1 shows, those odds change a lot depending on what sort of a family you were born into: > > - If your father was in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution, you have about one chance in fourteen of ending up in the top 20 percent, roughly a third of the overall chance.1 > > - If your father was in the top 20 percent, the chance that you will also end up there is about two in five, roughly double the overall chance. > > - A child born to a father in the top 20 percent of the income distribution is about five times as likely to end up in the top 20 percent as the child of a father in the bottom 20 percent. > > In fact, recent research for the U.S. population shows that the exact opposite of Glenn Hubbard’s claim is true: while a child’s income might deviate from that of his family for a few years, the longer one compares economic outcomes, the more the experience of the children reproduce that of their fathers. > > Studies of economic mobility typically predict the son’s or daughter’s income on the basis of father’s income, correcting only for the age of parent and child.2 As recently as 1988, economists thought that a father’s earnings were only weakly correlated with his children’s income. Recently, however, new data sources have permitted studies that look at ten times as many father-children pairs (3000 versus 300) for periods as long as sixteen years.3 These studies show that the longer the period over which income is averaged, the higher the correlation between the incomes of fathers and children. That is to say, there is indeed a lot of year-to-year income variation over a worker’s lifetime. But averaged over many years, the income of the father is a very strong predictor of the income of the son or daughter. The correlation is even higher for families with low wealth(the poor) than for the wealthy; it is also higher for black families than for white. The idea that anyone can grow up to become anything in the US is, actually, quite true. But the higher up you start on the ladder, the higher your chances are of ending up on top. And starting up there means you’ll probably end up there as well. Not surprising? Well, no. But it certainly speaks to the existence of classes in the US. If you’re born into a wealthy family, you’ll probably stay wealthy all your life. Welcome to the upper class. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/11 "2003-06-13T12:09:39Z")
Err… to be honest with you, no amount of social equality (and American has an awful lot of it) is going to compensate for a complete lack of moeny. Given lower starting resources and equal opportunity and skill, the player in a game with more resources grows them faster tha the player with less. You can complain about the game, but the only unfair point is the start, which no one has EVER been able to really rectify over the long term. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/12 "2003-06-13T12:13:29Z")
Sorry, forgot to say, that in America, the existence of economic classes is a lot fuzzier, too. Middle class people drink wine, can buy good quality imported food, and wield THE decisive power in politics - as a voting bloc they are the ones politicians of all stripes want to woo. Moreove,r it has become increasingly clear that there are no discreet economic classes, but rather a continuum of economic class, which only partly correlates to social class. Moreover, at any one point in economic class, you will find imense difference of opinion. Ultimately, a “class” is defined by those who aren’t a part of it. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/13 "2003-06-13T12:48:30Z")
"The idea that anyone can grow up to become anything in the US is, actually, quite true. But the higher up you start on the ladder, the higher your chances are of ending up on top. And starting up there means you’ll probably end up there as well. Not surprising? Well, no. But it certainly speaks to the existence of classes in the US. If you’re born into a wealthy family, you’ll probably stay wealthy all your life. Welcome to the upper class." Probably true, but that has nothing to do with how hard it is to get into that class if you \*\*didn’t[b/] get born into it. Without backing this up with data, I’d suspect that the people born into the extremes of wealth or poverty tend to stay there, but the **vast majority** inbetween are quite mobile. No time to search but data. Maybe later. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/14 "2003-06-13T12:58:39Z")
I would say class was once a fairly meaningless distinction but that it’s becoming more meaningful as the US economy continues to go to hell in a handbasket. Everyone is having to work longer hours for less real income. Result: more people who can literally be described as wage slaves, as the bulk of their waking lives are spent doing things for wealthy people to earn money so they don’t lose what they have. Lotsa poor people now work two jobs to survive. Middle class people find their work weeks creeping up to 60 hours from the formerly standard 40 hours as the working class has all but given up on unions and other forms of collective bargaining. Wage slaves all. Some Americans are working part time in 34-hour-per-week jobs so their bosses don’t have to classify them as full-time and pay them benefits, typically they are also struggling to make ends meet. You have to have disposable income and free time to enjoy the benefits of freedom. Americans in the middle and lower economic classes are losing both rapidly. In the future the only people with enough money and time to be a meaningful consumer group for anything but basic necessities will be the upper class, if trends continue as they are at present. As for the upper class, it’s a just another subculture. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/15 "2003-06-13T13:01:56Z")
I would urge you to read Torstein Vebeln’s great work “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS”. In this very old book (ca 1899) he gives a through explanation of class in America. Though old, the book is still essentially true…the old WASP inherited-income elite isstill around. What I find interesting…the “social climbers”. Take the example of a guy I know…and Italian American (2nd generation) who , through hard work and honesty, made a fortune in retailing fruits and vegetables. His kids go to prep scgcolls, and play lacrosse (and date Wasp girls). He however drinks beer and plays bocce. This guy (for all his wealth) will never be accepted by the upper class-and he knows it (and doesn’t care!). Then you have the degenerstes…old-time wasps who have squandered the family fortune and now live in bare houses and wear their grandfather’s suits! They still theink that they are upper class-even though they are broke! ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/16 "2003-06-13T13:15:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrainGlutton \* > \*\*There is a persistent myth in America that we are a classless society and always have been. It’s obviously not true… \*\* Ah, yes. “Obviously.” :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/17 "2003-06-13T13:59:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MrVisible \* > **…94.6 percent (75.1 plus 19.5) of individuals who started in the lowest quintile of family income/needs in 1990 ended up in the first or second quintile one year later. There was also relatively little mobility out of the highest quintile. Of those in the top quintile in 1990, 79.2 remained there and 94.8 ended up in one of the top two quintiles.** So people who are in one quintile tend not to leap into the next quintile or get sent down to the lower one from year to year? Big deal. What the heck did you expect? > [@](#): > > **46.9 percent of the people in the lowest quintile in 1968 were still in the lowest quintile in 1991. Nearly half of those who had moved up, landed in the second quintile (25.1/53.1) and only 1.3 percent had made it all the way to the top quintile.** Sounds pretty mobile to me. What this study shows is that after 30 years, most people end up in the next quintile. Just because they don’t shoot up to the very top means nothing. More than half of those who moved up landed in the third quintile or better. So basically, this study says that if you start out in the lowest quintile, the odds are better than 50/50 that you’ll be out of it in the next 30 years. And if you do move out it, the odds are better than 50/50 that you’ll end up making around $42,000 a year (2001 mean income for 3rd quintile). In other words, there’s a one in four chance that you’ll go from the bottom to the middle. Not great odds, but certainly not some sort of wall and is actually not a bad bit of mobility. > [@](#): > > **If your father was in the top 20 percent, the chance that you will also end up there is about two in five, roughly double the overall chance.** But your chances are three in five that you won’t end up there. So the odds are better that you will end up in a lower class than your father if you are in the top quintile than to stay there. Sounds like an impenetrable system of upper class social welfare to me. So to conclude: if you are born into the economic upper class (top quintile) than you are more likely than someone from a lower economic class to end up there. But the odds are still against you staying up there. If you are born into the lowest economic quintile, there is a better chance that you will move up into the next economic quintile during your 30 year career, and a 25% chance that you will end up in the middle class. Sorry, **MrVisible** that’s not a dire indicator of economic immobility. ---
**Author:** ![Rhum\_Runner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rhum\_Runner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhum_Runner)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/18 "2003-06-13T15:31:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by even sven \* > \*\*My friend went to a public high school with the normal distribution of bright and not-so-bright student. Their 4.0s didn’t go to Stanford, they went to the Ivy Legues. Stanford was plenty interested in their less spectacular students though, and every year dozens would end up there. > > Guess which class was rich and which one was poor, and then give me a lecture on social mobility. \*\* I graduated from a large, and good, public high school. Over 700 people in my graduating class. I doubt we even sent “dozens” to U of I. Maybe 25, but not “dozens.” I’d like more information on this public school where many go to the Ivy League, and “dozens” settle for Stanford every year. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/19 "2003-06-13T15:55:58Z")
Everyone seems to be obsessing about social mobility. Even a very high degree of mobility is not inconsistent with the existence of a class system. As Lind pointed out in another of his books, _Up From Conservatism,_ “For centuries commoners have been ascending to the British aristocracy and younger sons have been falling out of it. That does not mean there is no British aristocracy.” Everybody’s discussing class-issues, but, nevertheless, we’re drifting off-topic. I started this thread taking Lind’s description of the existence and character of the overclass as a given, as a starting point. As yet, nobody on this thread has directly challenged Lind’s analysis. And I challenged all posters to direct a similar analytical process to all classes BELOW the overclass. Let’s focus on that: What, exactly, separates or distinguishes the “middle class” from the “working class”? What, if anything, separates the “working class” from the “working poor”? What separates the “working poor” from the “underclass”? I mean, APART FROM INCOME LEVELS. **It is possible for me to belong to a higher class than you even though your income is higher than mine.** To continue the analysis in Lind’s terms, the things we need to be looking at are the boundaries of association, intermarriage, membership in organizations, lifestyles, cultural assumptions, race and ethnicity, religion, dialects and patterns of speech, and above all, life patterns. For instance, it seems to be that the higher up you go on the class ladder, the longer you delay marriage and childbearing. What else can we find, that distinguishes one class from another? Also – as I argued above, in some cases we can distinguish two classes without placing them in a hierarchical relationship, one above the other. In my view, working-class whites and working-class blacks are two separate and distinct social classes sharing roughly the same level of the social pyramid. Does anyone care to dispute this, or to build on it? Finally – Lind rejects such class-analysis models as Marxism, but purports to base his own analysis on “the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu.” Is there any doper who agrees that a class system exists in America, but thinks some other analytical model is more appropriate than Lind’s? Anyone care to take a stab at arguing that, for instance, Marxism is still relevant? ---
**Author:** ![eponymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e0b2c6/32.png) [@eponymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eponymous)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/20 "2003-06-13T18:03:43Z")
\*Originally posted by BrainGlutton \* > [@](#): > > Also – as I argued above, in some cases we can distinguish two classes without placing them in a hierarchical relationship, one above the other. In my view, working-class whites and working-class blacks are two separate and distinct social classes sharing roughly the same level of the social pyramid. Does anyone care to dispute this, or to build on it? OK - I’ll take a stab. I’ll agree that working-class blacks and working-class whites are roughly at the same level of the social pyramid. But why make the distinction based on race? For your thesis to hold, you would need to show what distinguishes working-class whites from working-class blacks. In other words, there are socio-cultural variables of the working class that can be sharply drawn along racial lines. My intuition tells me that if you were to look at a list of social-cultural characteristics of the working class that there would be no sharp distinction made along racial lines. That is, working-class whites and working-class blacks would share many of the same socio-cultural characteristics. Thus, there would be no need to distinguish working-class whites from working-class blacks as distinct social classes. Here is where, I think, a Marxian analysis would prove fruitful (working class vis-a-vis overclass). If you could point out distinct socio-cultural differences between the two, then your claim would be stronger. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423.md?page=2)