# 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:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/41 "2003-06-15T14:46:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by even sven \* > \*\*It doesn’t matter what message something sends you. What matters is the reality. And right now we live in an era where your economic status pretty much determines the quality of your education as a child. This, combined with the forces of tuition, pretty much determines your access to post-secondary education. It also determines the kind of educational support you are able to give your children (and thus the cycle continues). And while there are ways to "make it’ without college, those ways are pretty rare- rare enough to be discounted. Your pretty much out of the “professional” class without a degree, and the most you can hope for is “para-professional”, if you can afford trade school. > > There are whole neighborhoods where, no matter how smart you may be, your chances of getting into a four-year university is next to nothing, and it has been that way for generations. I call that “class”. I guess I believe that class is largely a product of educaiton. One or two may get out. But just because a class is theoretically mobile doesn’t mean it is any less of a class. > > And sticking your fingers in your ears and going “lallala this is America and anyone can be president (although nobody but fairly well off white men ever has been)” won’t change a single thing. \*\* Oh please. Those neighborhoods are the minority of the population of the United States. The reality is that if you work hard and make smart decisions, you can better your life. Even coming from the ghetto. There are scholarships, there are loans. So what if you don’t go to an Ivy…go to a state school, they are usually plenty good enough. I went to a working class school. I had illegal immigrants, kids that had to go to the local church for food every week, kids whose parents never even made it so far as graduating high school. Our school had to cut programs and sometimes had 50 kids in a class with history books that ended with Iran-Contra. And you know what, a lot of those kids went to college. They didn’t go to Harvard or something, but they went to a Cal State or a community college and got a degree in something. And they’re doing all right now. Hell, look at yourself, by your own admission you went from a poor, single mother to graduating from a four year university. And you’re STILL complaining about lack of opportunity and crap. Except, you’ve just proven that it CAN happen if someone has the drive to do it. Geez. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/42 "2003-06-15T18:28:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by even sven \* > Great, so now I’m a “fuck up” for being born to a poor single mother, succeeding academically enough to be one of the few people in my high school to go to a four-year college, and needing student loans to pay off the debt. > > I guess my boyfriend is a “fuck up” for working in the non-profic sector where he can do work that he loves and that helps others, but that does not provide much oppertunity to get rich. > > Becauwe the persuit of money is the only worthwhile thing to do, and not doing it (or not being able to do it) makes you a “fuck up” > > Yep. That certainly disquailifies us from being president. \*\* Why don’t you spare us your personal issues? Not every president of the USA was born the son of a billionare. Jimmy Carter was the son of a farmer and a nurse. Regan was born in a small town in Illinois and attended Eureka Collge. Clinton’s father was an auto parts salesman in Arkansas. Hardly what I would call a “ruling class”. What disqualifies you from being president is you (and your boyfriends) averageness. By the time a person is old enough to be president, I don’t expect them to be super-rich, but I would expect that would be highly successful in whatever career field they happened to have choosen. Generally, some degree of financial success tends to follow. ---
**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 15, 2003, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/43 "2003-06-15T23:24:31Z")
The difference between “some college” and an Ivy Legue is pretty big, though. Kids from Ivy Legues go on to do some things, and kids from non-Ivy leagues go on to do others. Kids from state universities and trade schools end up somewhere else completly. Yes, hard work and talent will occasionally pay off with a better life. I’m not argueing that it is worthless to work. But there are some things that hard work isn’t likely to do anything about, especially when it comes to overcoming a crappy chance at an education as a young child. ---
**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 16, 2003, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/44 "2003-06-16T00:29:47Z")
> [@](#): > > Even Sven wrote: > There are whole neighborhoods where, no matter how smart you may be, your chances of getting into a four-year university is next to nothing, **BULL SHIT** Show us a cite on that. Anyone with good grades can get into a 4 year college in the US. They might have to work to put themselves thru school, but so what? > [@](#): > > The difference between “some college” and an Ivy Legue is pretty big, though. Kids from Ivy Legues go on to do some things, and kids from non-Ivy leagues go on to do others. More BS. “Pretty big?” You’re kidding if you expect anyone on this board to accept that statement. There is no doubt that going to a top school can open some doors for you. But if you think an education from UC Santa Cruz, for example, is going to hold you back, you live in a world of self delusion. Hell, I personally know dozens of successful people who got their educations at Chico State and San Jose state. You should be well aware that neither of those schools is hard to get into. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/45 "2003-06-16T02:25:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by even sven \* > \*\*The difference between “some college” and an Ivy Legue is pretty big, though. Kids from Ivy Legues go on to do some things, and kids from non-Ivy leagues go on to do others. Kids from state universities and trade schools end up somewhere else completly. > > Yes, hard work and talent will occasionally pay off with a better life. I’m not argueing that it is worthless to work. But there are some things that hard work isn’t likely to do anything about, especially when it comes to overcoming a crappy chance at an education as a young child. \*\* So, basically, you just don’t understand anything about anything. Hey, fantastic. So state universities and trade schools end up somewhere else completely? State universities and trade schools are somehow on the same level? You’ve got to be kidding me. Kids from Ivy Leagues sometimes go on to do things that are different from kids who go to non-Ivies, a lot of times they do the same thing. Please spare us your whininess until you actually get out in the real world. And this is from someone who’s only been in the real world for about a year. Hard work most certainly does overcome a crappy chance at an education as a young child. Hard work and smarts. If you have those, you’ll go far. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/46 "2003-06-16T03:35:48Z")
_Sigh._ Guys, you’re all getting sidetracked. You’re turning this into a debate about how much social mobility there is in the United States; and within that question, you’re focusing on how hard or easy it is to reach the very top. These questions are important and relevant, but they are not the focus of this thread; maybe a different thread. Social mobility exists, but social classes exist too. And it is a fact that **most** Americans die in the same class in which they were born. Look, I’ll give you all a start. The following is from _Class: A Guide to the American Status System,_ by Paul Fussell (New York: Summit Books, 1983), pp. 27-50: > [@](#): > > My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows: > > ## Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle > > ## Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low proletarian > > Destitute > Bottom out-of-sight > > One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these clases. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money. > > * * * > > Not that the three classes at the top don’t have money. The point is that money alone doesn’t define them, for the _way_ they have their money is largely what matters. . . . The main thing distinguishing the top three classes from each other is the amount of money inherited in relation to the amount currently earned. The top-out-of-sight class (Rockefellers, Pres, DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Vanderbilts) lives on inherited capital entirely. . . . > > “When I think of a really rich man,” says a Boston blue-collar, “I think of one of those estates where you can’t see the house from the road.” Hence the name of the top class, which could just as well be called “the class in hiding.” Their houses are never seen from the street or road. They like to hide away deep in the hills or way off on Greek or Caribbean islands (which they tend to own), safe, for the moment, from envy and its ultimate attendants, confiscatory taxation and finally expropriation. . . . > > * * * > > The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight, work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed. It’s likely to make its money by controlling banks and the more historic corporations, think tanks, and foundations, and to busy itself with things like the older universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the like, together with the executive branch of the federal government, and often the Senate. . . . And secondly, unlike the top-out-of-sights, the upper class is visible, often ostentatiously so. . . . When you pass a house with a would-be impressive facade visible from the street or highway, you know it’s occupied by a member of the upper class. . . . > > * * * > > We now come to the upper-middle class. It may possess virtually as much as the two classes above it. The difference is that it has earned most of it, in law, medicine, oil, shipping, real estate, or even the more honorific kinds of trade, like buying and selling works of art. Although they may enjoy some inherited money and use inherited “things” (silver, Oriental rugs), the upper-middles suffer from a bourgeois sense of shame, a conviction that to live on the earnings of others, even forebears, is not nice. > > Caste marks of the upper-middles would include living in a house with more rooms than you need, except perhaps when a lot of “overnight guests” are present to help you imitate upper-class style. . . . This class is also the most “role-reversed” of all: men think nothing of cooking and doing housework, women of working out of the house in journalism, theater, or real estate. (If the wife stays home all the time, the family’s middle-class only.) Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you’ll have inferred already, that it’s in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others’ _Official Preppy Handbook,_ that significantly popular artifact of 1980. > > * * * > > . . . The middle class is distinguishable more by its earnestness and psychic insecurity than by its middle income. I have known some very rich people who remain stubbornly middle-class, which is to say they remain terrified at what others think of them, and to avoid criticism are obsessed with doing everything right. . . . > > “Status panic”: that’s the affliction of the middle class, according to C. Wright Mills, author of _White Collar_ (1951) and _The Power Elite_ (1956). Hence the middles’ need to accumulate credit cards and take in _The New Yorker,_ which it imagines registers upper-middle taste. . . . > > If the audience for that sort of thing used to seem the most deeply rooted in time and place, today it seems the class that’s the most rootless. Members of the middle class are not only the sort of people who buy their own heirlooms, silver, etc. They’re also the people who do most of the moving long-distance (generally to very unstylish places), commanded every few years to pull up stakes by the corporations they’re in bondage to. They are the geologist employed by the oil company, the computer programmer, the aeronautical engineer, the salesman assigned to a new territory, and the “marketing” (formerly _sales_) manager deputed to keep an eye on him. . . . IBM and DuPont hire these people from second-rate colleges and teach them that they are nothing if not members of the team. Virtually no latitude is permitted to individuality or the milder forms of eccentricity, and these employees soon learn to avoid all ideological statements. . . . Terrified of losing their jobs, these people grow passive, their humanity diminished as they perceive themselves mere parts of an infinitely larger structure. Interchangeable parts, too. “The training makes our men interchangeable,” an IBM executive was once heard to say. > > * * * > > . . . Oddity, introversion, and love of privacy are the big enemies, a total reversal of the values of the secure upper orders. Among the middles there’s a convention that erecting a fence or even a tall hedge is an affront. And there’s also a convention that you may drop in on neighbors and friends without a telephone inquiry first. . . . > > * * * > > . . . Proceeding downward, we would normally expect to meet next the lower-middle class. But it doesn’t exist as such any longer, having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class. What’s the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect. Our former lower-middle class, the new high proles, now head “the masses,” and even if they are positioned at the top of the proletarian classes, still they are identifiable as people things are done to. They are in bondage – to monetary policy, rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast food, consumer schlock. Back in the 1940s there was still a real lower-middle class in this country, whose solid high-school education and addiction to “saving” and “planning” maintained it in a position – often precarious, to be sure – above the working class. . . . These former low-white-collar people are now simply working machines, and the wife usually works as well as the husband. > > The kind of work performed and the sort of anxiety that besets one as a result of work are ways to divide the working class into its three strata. The high proles are the skilled workers, crafstmen, like printers. The mid-proles are operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor, like longshoremen. The special anxiety of high proles is fear about loss or reduction of status: you’re proud to be a master carpenter, and you want the world to understand clearly the difference between you and a laborer. The special anxiety of the mid-proles is fear of losing the job. And of the low proles, the gnawing perception that you’re probably never going to make enough or earn enough freedom to have and do the things you want. > > * * * > > But high proles are quite smart, or at least shrewd. Because often their work is not closely supervised, they have pride and a conviction of independence, and they feel some contempt for those who have not made it as far as they have. The are, as the sociologist E. E. LeMasters calls them and titles his book, _Blue-Collar Aristocrats_ (1975), and their disdain for the middle class is like the aristocrat’s from the other direction. . . . Like other aristocrats, says LeMasters, these “have gone to the top of their social world and need not expend time or energy on ‘social climbing.’” . . . > > Since they’re not consumed with worry about choosing the correct status emblems, these people can be remarkably relaxed and unself-conscious. They can do, say, wear, and look like pretty much anything they want without undue feelings of shame, which belong to their betters, the middle class, shame being largely a bourgeois feeling. . . . > > * * * > > High proles are nice. It’s down among the mid- and low proles that features some might find offensive begin to show themselves. These are people who feel bitter about their work, often because they are closely supervised and regulated and generally treated like wayward children. . . . Andrew Levinson, author of _The Working-Class Majority_ (1974), invites us to imagine what it would be like to be under the constant eye of a foreman, “a figure who has absolutely no counterpart in middle-class society. Salaried professionals often do have people above them, but it is impossible to imagine professors or executives being required to bring a doctor’s note if they are absent a day or having to justify the number of trips they take to the bathroom.” . . . > > The degree of supervision, indeed, is often a more eloquent class indicator than mere income, which suggests that the whole class system is more a recognition of the value of freedom than a proclamation of the value of sheer cash. . . . One is a mid- or low prole if one’s servitude is constantly emphasized. Occupational class depends largely on doing work for which the consquences of error or failure are distant or remote, or better, invisible, rather than immediately apparent to a superior and thus instantly humiliating to the performer. > > Constantly demeaned at work, the lower sorts of proles suffer from poor morale. As one woman worker says, “Most of us . . . have jobs that are too small for our spirits.” > > * * * > > At the bottom of the working class, the low prole is identifiable by the gross uncertainty of his employment. This class would include illegal aliens like Mexican fruit pickers as well as other migrant workers. Social isolation is the norm here, and what Hoggart says of the lower working class in Britain applies elsewhere as well: “Socially . . . each day and each week is almost unplanned. There is no diary, no book of engagements, and few letters are sent or received.” Remoteness and isolation, as in the valleys of Appalachia, are characteristics, and down here we find people who, trained for nothing, are likely out of sheer despair to join the Army. > > Still, they’re better off than the destitute, who never have even seasonal work and who live wholly on welfare. They differ from the bottom-out-of-sights less because they’re much better off than because they’re more visible, in the form of Bowery bums, bag ladies, people who stand in public places lecturing and delivering harangues about their grievances, people who drink out of paper bags, people whose need for some recognition impels them to “act” in front of audiences in the street. When delinquency and distress grow desperate, you sink into the bottom-out-of-sight class, staying all day in your welfare room or contriving to get taken into an institution, whether charitable or correctional doesn’t matter much. In the concluding chapter, Fussell identifies a tenth class, a “Class X” of declassed bohemians and intellectuals. I started out talking about the “white overclass” theory of Michael Lind – in Fussell’s terms, the overclass would be the top-out-of-sight, upper, and upper middle classes. Lind is probably correct that these three classes now have merged to the point where they freely intermarry between levels. Now, as I mentioned early, I find Fussell’s analysis somewhat unsatisfactory as it fails to account for divisions between ethnic subcultures. Also, the book is now 20 years old, times have changed . . . somewhat . . . and I think the whole topic needs to be revisited. So, all of you: What do you think of Fussell’s picture of the American class system? Do you have a better model to offer? ---
**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 16, 2003, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/47 "2003-06-16T04:30:20Z")
Offhand, I’d say the portrait of the top classes has held, based on all the sotries about coporate CEOS making millions while their companies fail. The upper classes WILL take care of their own, and the devil take the rest. As for the lower classes, I think the very bottom – what he calls the out-of-sighters and the proles are still the same, though I would argue that a lot of the out-of-sighters aren’t really there because of class but because they’re suffering from untreated mental illnesses, esp. schizophrenia. Schizophrenics have a way of not taking their meds and getting worse instead of better. I think there’s a tremendous amount of churn between the lower class and the middle class and even into the lower reaches of the upper class. The difference between where you are on the ladder generally has to do largely with whether or not you have a job, and what job you have, and that changes a lot nowadays. I think a lot of the cultural attributes that go or do not go with the various classes the sociologists have come up with are bogus because they don’t take into account the levelling effects of the mass media. I’ve known people from all walks of life as a writer and editor, and it’s amazing how much commonality of experience they all have thanks to newspapers, radio and TV. I’ve worked with black women working as administrative assistants (i.e., clerks) who liked to politic and spend their free time doing volunteer work at their community theater and who came to me for advice on buying home computers and software. They liked to go on vacation in the Caribbean and be rich American women wooed by the local studs. I’ve worked with leaders in my state – I mean, the sort of middle-aged white guys who got sent to the Soviet Union when it collapsed to show them how to establish local services and so forth when the central economy collapsed – who liked to politic, drink beer, eat barbecue, chase women and virtually nothing else. There just aren’t any hard-and-fast rules about class in America in the middle and lower ranges. Too much churn, baby. How people behave is more a matter of what their opportunities are at the moment than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/48 "2003-06-16T12:50:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BrainGlutton \* > **_Sigh._ Guys, you’re all getting sidetracked. You’re turning this into a debate about how much social mobility there is in the United States; and within that question, you’re focusing on how hard or easy it is to reach the very top. These questions are important and relevant, but they are not the focus of this thread; maybe a different thread. Social mobility exists, but social classes exist too. And it is a fact that most Americans die in the same class in which they were born.** Maybe because you have yet to prove some sort of case. Basically, you quote guys who can’t even agree on what class is, what defines class - except it may have something to do with economic status, race, ethnicity and habits. You haven’t broken down class, you’ve broken down demographics. There is no clear hierarchy aside from economic ones in the US as there is in other countries, or as there used to be in Europe. And the economic ones are fairly mobile, as are the social ones over time. ---
**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 16, 2003, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/49 "2003-06-16T13:17:18Z")
“And it is a fact that most Americans die in the same class in which they were born.” It is? Well I must’ve been sick the day they taught us that “fact” in high school civics class. ---
**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 16, 2003, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/50 "2003-06-16T13:41:21Z")
Y’know, I’ve looked for some cites on the total amount of inhertied wealth, but I’ve found nothing comprehensive to date – just the Forbes 400 survey, which I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and say is atypical. My suspicion is that most people who inherit wiealth don’t want it widely known. I am reminded of articles I have read about lottery winners, who are advised to changek their address and get an unlisted phone number and otherwise hide themselves from all the never before seen relatives and firends who would help them divest themselves of their winnings. In short, I’m wondering if any accurate data on this info is available at all. The census collects nothing on inherited wealth and the IRS has only estate tax records, which apparentlty the really wealthy are able to avoid. Most of the cites on inherited wealth were clearly politicized pieces, mostly having to do with the proposed repeal of the estate tax, which tended to cite the Forbes survey. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2003, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/51 "2003-06-16T14:02:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Evil Captor \* > **Y’know, I’ve looked for some cites on the total amount of inhertied wealth, but I’ve found nothing comprehensive to date – just the Forbes 400 survey, which I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and say is atypical.** So the Forbes survey is atypical based on nothing but your preconceived notions? That’s nice. Until you have a better cite, that’s all we have. > [@](#): > > **In short, I’m wondering if any accurate data on this info is available at all. The census collects nothing on inherited wealth and the IRS has only estate tax records, which apparentlty the really wealthy are able to avoid.** Maybe, maybe not. How do you know the Forbes data isn’t accurate? You don’t, it just doesn’t fit with your arguments. Come up with something better or stop making the argument. Second, the really wealthy aren’t able to avoid the estate tax better than anyone else. In fact, it’s almost impossible for the really wealthy to avoid the estate tax since the main way to avoid it is by manipulating the exemptions. The really wealthy can knock down how much they have to pay on it, but avoid it? Not really. It’s much easier for the moderately wealthy or upper middle class to avoid it since they are more likely to be able to have their assets moved under the exemptions. All with proper estate planning, of course. If you don’t plan, then you get hit hardest of all no matter who you are. \*\* > [@](#): > > Most of the cites on inherited wealth were clearly politicized pieces, mostly having to do with the proposed repeal of the estate tax, which tended to cite the Forbes survey. \*\* Again, find a better one or accept those. And just because they disagree with your preconceived notion doesn’t make them “politicized” anymore than cites showing that all wealth is inherited is “politicized.” Either get some new cites with raw data, or accept what we have, which is the conclusion that while inherited wealth makes up probably a majority of the wealth in the country, it is likely not a “vast majority.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2003, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423/52 "2003-06-25T21:17:49Z")
Posted by **John Mace:** > [@](#): > > “And it is a fact that most Americans die in the same class in which they were born.” > > It is? Well I must’ve been sick the day they taught us that “fact” in high school civics class. You don’t have to try to remember back to your high-school civics lessons, **John.** (And in any case, if those lessons even touched on the nature of the American class system, I would be very surprised.) We’ve already covered this question in this thread. See the above post by **MrVisible,** which cites to statistical studies showing that the degree of social (or, rather, economic) mobility in the United States is very limited, and that most people will remain at roughly their parents’ income level, for life. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-social-classes-are-there-in-the-united-states/181423.md?page=2)