# Under Class, Lower Class, Working Class,Middle Class **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 22, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132 "2009-09-22T20:18:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![The\_Falling\_Reverend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Falling\_Reverend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Falling_Reverend)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/1 "2009-09-22T20:18:39Z")
I’ve been perusing the threads on UHC here over the last couple of days & I keep seeing these terms being thrown around. Now I’m sure people may have different views on the exact definition of each term but some people seem to have a skewed outlook on this type of thing. The following is just my opinion. Under class-people not willing to work. Drug dealers,welfare scammers, people able to work but claiming disability(I suppose this could be lumped in with welfare scammers), petty criminals and the like. Lower class-People willing to work or already working but can’t really get ahead. People that bust ass but still can’t seem to get that slightly better place to live, or build up any kind of savings. Working class-People who work hard but don’t really have any desire to climb the social-economic ladder. They like where they are and what they do & seem to be proud of earning what they have. Middle class-People who work, but live comfortably. Generally they are home owners, have a bit of a savings built up, & don’t really have to worry if they have enough money left in the bank to buy groceries after they pay the utility bills. Now I’m just generalizing here & saying what I think based on experience and observation. I’m sure someone with more knowledge on the subject could break it down even more. So what say you? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/2 "2009-09-22T21:18:04Z")
To my mind, at the bottom are those who choose or are forced by circumstances to live lives on the margins of society. Above them is the great mass of people who live within the bounds of society but are required to earn a living. These used to be divided into a multiplicity of shades and gradations (along the lines of "lower middle class’ etc.), but increasingly only two really matter: A- those who provide services which are in effect interchangable with the services of other people, and so ideally require job security from their employer (through unions and the like); B- those who either own thier own means of employment or who provide professional-type services which are unique and so do not ideally require job security from their employer. Above them are people who live within the bounds of society but do not need to personally earn a living (and are not living on a pension or the like): in short, the very wealthy. To my mind at least the difficult question in Western society at least is that group B above is increasing in wealth and power, whereas group A above is tending to lose the job security that it needs and so is decreasing in wealth and power. In short, society appears to be stratifying in what used to be described as the middle class. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/3 "2009-09-22T21:43:31Z")
From [_Class: A Guide Through the American Status System,_](http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253) by [Paul Fussell:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell) > [@](#): > > 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. They 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 last chapter, Fussell identifies a tenth class, a “Class X” of declassed intellectuals and bohemians. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/4 "2009-09-22T22:16:30Z")
BG, I can’t believe that book you constantly cite was published in 1992. It seems like something out of the 50s. Or the 1850s. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/5 "2009-09-22T22:31:21Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > BG, I can’t believe that book you constantly cite was published in 1992. It seems like something out of the 50s. Or the 1850s. 1983, republished in 1992; I don’t know if any revisions were made to the 1992 edition. In any case, 1983 is not that long ago in sociological terms; something, say, from any year earlier than 1970 **would** be a long time ago in sociological terms, as there were so many socioeconomic as well as political and cultural changes in the '60s and '70s (one of which, as Fussell notes, was the destruction of the lower middle class). ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/6 "2009-09-22T22:34:33Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > BG, I can’t believe that book you constantly cite was published in 1992. It seems like something out of the 50s. Or the 1850s. It does, and at the same time I’m pretty shocked that it actually seems to describe things fairly accurately. ---
**Author:** ![ZPG\_Zealot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e47c2d/32.png) [@ZPG\_Zealot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZPG_Zealot)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/7 "2009-09-23T00:48:47Z")
> [@The\_Falling\_Reverend](#): > > Under class-people not willing to work. Drug dealer? Major disagreement here. Drug dealing may not be legal work, but it’s very hard, time-consuming and dangerous work, and at the entry level doesn’t pay more than the typical unskilled, minimum-wage job. A drug dealer that makes money real money at it puts as much time and effort into their business as a CEO. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/8 "2009-09-23T01:09:41Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > Major disagreement here. Drug dealing may not be legal work, but it’s very hard, time-consuming and dangerous work, and at the entry level doesn’t pay more than the typical unskilled, minimum-wage job. A drug dealer that makes money real money at it puts as much time and effort into their business as a CEO. “Hey, you guys got dental in Jersey?” “No, man, we might have to go on strike in October!” – _Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back_ ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/9 "2009-09-23T01:25:04Z")
> [@The\_Falling\_Reverend](#): > > Under class-people not willing to work. Drug dealers,welfare scammers, people able to work but claiming disability(I suppose this could be lumped in with welfare scammers), petty criminals and the like. And what about people who actually _ **can’t** _ work? Either because they are disabled or because the jobs just aren’t there? Your “underclass” definition looks a lot like classic right wing blame-the-victims to me. Or simply denial that such people actually exist. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Falling\_Reverend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Falling\_Reverend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Falling_Reverend)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/10 "2009-09-23T01:30:29Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > Major disagreement here. Drug dealing may not be legal work, but it’s very hard, time-consuming and dangerous work, and at the entry level doesn’t pay more than the typical unskilled, minimum-wage job. A drug dealer that makes money real money at it puts as much time and effort into their business as a CEO. Maybe drug dealer was too broad of a term. How about about street vendor as a substitute. You are correct though. A real dealer is an entrepreneur. Maybe not a legal or moral entrepreneur, but one none the less. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Falling\_Reverend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/aca169/32.png) [@The\_Falling\_Reverend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Falling_Reverend)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/11 "2009-09-23T01:38:37Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And what about people who actually _ **can’t** _ work? Either because they are disabled or because the jobs just aren’t there? Your “underclass” definition looks a lot like classic right wing blame-the-victims to me. Or simply denial that such people actually exist. I thought it was clear in the OP “ **people able to work but claiming disability** ”. I’m talking about the people making fraudulent disability claims, Not someone with a legitimate medical condition that prevents them from working. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/12 "2009-09-23T01:47:55Z")
> [@](#): > > They are the geologist employed by the oil company, the computer programmer, the aeronautical engineer, … > 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 This guy sure as hell doesn’t know many programmers or engineers! ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/13 "2009-09-23T13:31:13Z")
The OP’s classification seems problematic, as does the rather ideological framing that Brainglutton quotes. Desirous of work or unwilling is subjective and difficult to measure. One man’s subjectively unwilling maybe another’s legitimately unable. The stratification based on ambition (or the entire set of rather dated and extremely subjective and ideological categories provided by Brainglutton) strikes me as leading to zero clarity overall, although either way the subjective definitions at least tell you what the other mate is thinking even if the parameters are bollocks. I’d suggest that non-subjectively one could set a matrix by income level and possibly type of employment (relative stability and social rating, by some survey standard, to get beyond one professor’s subjectivity to benchmark against wider social perception). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/14 "2009-09-23T13:56:31Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > I’d suggest that non-subjectively one could set a matrix by income level and possibly type of employment (relative stability and social rating, by some survey standard, to get beyond one professor’s subjectivity to benchmark against wider social perception). For that, check out [_Social Stratification in the United States: The American Profile Poster,_](http://www.amazon.com/Social-Stratification-United-States-American/dp/1565840216) by Stephen J. Rose. It ignores the sociocultural aspects of class identity on which Fussell focuses, and simply lays out a clear graphic picture of who lies where in America in terms of income, assets, ethnic/racial group, and occupational category. This poster should hang on the wall of every social studies or American history classroom in every high school in America. ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/15 "2009-09-23T14:28:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > This poster should hang on the wall of every social studies or American history classroom in every high school in America. I see no reason for this suggestion other than to contaminate young minds with “victimhood” The Jew and Asian minorities were marginalized and at the bottom of the income stratification. They didn’t need to stare at Stephen Rose’s poster everyday and yet they succeeded and moved up the income ladder. Why? Therefore, what constructive use is this poster for? It seems that _ignorance_ of Stephen Roses’ poster is better for America. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/16 "2009-09-23T14:39:31Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > Therefore, what constructive use is this poster for? :rolleyes: An educational use with respect the actual form and shape of American society, **of course.** We assume, and I hope you will agree, that teenagers should take social studies and American history in school; therefore, anything that will help them take away an accurate picture rather than a confused one of how-things-are is worth doing. What, if anything, they do with that knowledge is for them to decide. But how can plain facts be ideological propaganda?! (Telling the kids, plainly or subliminally (TV does a lot of the “subliminally”), that they are higher-placed in the socioeconomic hierarchy than they really are **would** be propaganda.) ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/17 "2009-09-23T15:09:45Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But how can plain facts be ideological propaganda?! Because it’s not just “plain facts”. It’s incomplete. Stephen Rose’s poster shows a snapshot of stratification but leaves out how the aggregation of consumer preferences leads to the stratification. His poster encourages the average person to assume this inequality is driven from the “top down” and that the govt should do more and/or the wealthy should be taxed more etc and/or wealth is a zero-sum game. In reality, it is “bottom up” and people have to take responsibility for it. The more interesting and accurate visual diagram is something that shows how the priority of preferences of human brains manifests itself as a social stratification. That type of picture would be more complete and would be more appropriate for the classroom. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/18 "2009-09-23T15:14:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > For that, check out [_Social Stratification in the United States: The American Profile Poster,_](http://www.amazon.com/Social-Stratification-United-States-American/dp/1565840216) by Stephen J. Rose. Well, relative to this conversation the Amazon link is not terribly helpful insofar as I have no intention of ordering up on US Amazon such a thing for the dubious pleasure of a msg board conversation about the US (notably as I was not specific to America as such). > [@](#): > > It ignores the sociocultural aspects of class identity on which Fussell focuses, Class identity? My you are a marxist aren’t you? I am not for “_ **ignoring** _” the social culture aspects of social class (never mind the dubious concept of ‘class identity’), but rather that the socio-culture not be simply asserted by some ad hoc and subjective standards, whether a professor of history is asserting them or a poster here. I rather think such things end up being pointless subjective tossing. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But how can plain facts be ideological propaganda?! (Telling the kids, plainly or subliminally (TV does a lot of the “subliminally”), that they are higher-placed in the socioeconomic hierarchy than they really are **would** be propaganda.) I have no idea with respect to this poster, but “plain facts” may be spun or presented in an ideological fashion such as to convey a subjective point. That’s nothing new at all, the expression Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics captures the idea - if somewhat abusively. Given your general ideological penchants… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/19 "2009-09-23T15:38:07Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > Because it’s not just “plain facts”. It’s incomplete. Stephen Rose’s poster shows a snapshot of stratification but leaves out how the aggregation of consumer preferences leads to the stratification. :dubious: And how, exactly, does “the aggregation of consumer preferences” lead to stratification? And how would you represent that graphically? ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132/20 "2009-09-23T15:42:53Z")
I submit that my classification is more useful, as it does not, as far as I know, internalize any preconceived theories on the ideal nature of our society … I certainly enjoyed the Fussell extracts, but I think his analysis is somewhat arbitrary, subjective and dated: going on about what makes a whole class of people 'ashamed" or what they tend to name their cats strikes me at least as gossipy and anecdotal. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/under-class-lower-class-working-class-middle-class/511132.md?page=2)