That’s your opinion. I think your definition is wrong. US is not Europe and doesn’t yet have (thank God) hereditary aristocracy, no matter how much some people try to establish it. “Upper Class” is what the great majority of the population perceives it is. And as you found out on this thread, you seem to be in a tiny minority in thinking that people like the Clintons don’t belong to it.
Who is in this version of your upper class today? I can’t really think of anyone that qualifies in the U.S. based on your definition. What specific people do you think fit into it today and what differentiates them from those you have rejected?
By the definitions used in Post #5, the Dunphy family in Modern Family is clearly middle class (no higher), and the Heck family from The Middle is “high proletarian” at best. (The father is the foreman at a quarry, and the mother has little education. The parents have neither the education nor the income to get them out of the working class. Also, while the Hecks own their own home, they struggle with money.)
P.S. The author of the book in question contends that the lower-middle class no longer exists, having been “pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class.” From the book: “What’s the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect…” Also: “The high proles are the skilled workers [and] craftsmen… The mid-proles are the operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor…”
I’m with BrainGlutton on this one. By your definition, you ought to be easily able to draw income lines and segregate everyone by their income, if it’s something that’s not based on social class and/or heredity.
Saying that Kanye West, or for that matter any number of other vulgar, yet wealthy entertainers and athletes are upper class is patently absurd, no matter how much money they may make. You might as well lump big lottery winners in with them- they have that kind of money or more.
Like others have said, there’s more to socio-economic class than sheer income. It’s as much a matter of outlook, mentality, habits, connections and opportunities than anything else. That’s why the divide between middle class and upper middle class is so hard to define; they’re all middle class, but there’s something (income and/or occupation) that’s setting the upper middles apart from the middles. The mentality isn’t significantly different, and neither is the education for the most part.
The Clintons are an interesting case- they’re one of the places where easy segregation breaks down. Clearly they’re wealthy and powerful, but they’re also brought up middle class. I suspect that Chelsea and any children she may have will be upper class for sure, but I’m not entirely convinced Bill and Hillary are right now.
It is not one or the other. Some (in fact, many) of the upper class people are in it because they are born in it. But definitely not all.
There are vulgar nuveau riches. And there are non-vulgar ones.
And they can only be described as non-upper-class if you define upper class as “brought up by upper class parents”. Which, as I said, is a trivial and tautological definition.
Oh I see. So all you were pointing out was that the post under your reply wasn’t categorically 100% correct in all cases. Gotcha. Good point. That is all you were pointing out, right?
No, it still doesn’t make any sense. I grew up partially in a trailer home, I went to an Ivy League graduate school and now my family is flat-out rich to the tune of $100 million or more collectively with more to come based on huge natural gas strikes that my great grandfathers set up a very long time ago.
However, I am not an an upper-class American by these definitions even though I stay at the finest resorts every summer and my kids go to great schools. I live close to Martha’s Vineyard and yet have only been there once briefly for four hours and never intend to go back even though I could on an extended lunch break.
If you have a limited amount of time to spend at the beach, Cape Cod is about the last place in the world I would want to do it. You would think that nobody has ever invented planes to the Caribbean the way some people talk. The Hamptons are the same way. What, were all the trailer parks along the Florida Gulf Coast booked for the season? They are a better deal overall. There is no other reason for anyone to consider that a valuable piece of vacation property other than early 20th century inertia.
My point is that that there is no American "Upper-Class’ except in a few people’s minds. A few of you have disputed that and I will dispute it right back. I work as a lead engineer in a blue-collar industrial sector and have to wear safety gear every day like steel toed shoes. I want to see who qualifies in your mind and why. I know a few people with a net worth in the $100+ million range who went to great schools. If they don’t qualify, nobody does. Like I said earlier and aristocratic heritage with nothing else to go along with it will get you a decent job as long as you have other good qualifications. On second thought, forget about the the heritage part, nobody cares about that in the U.S. What can you can now to make more money?
My personal favorite definition of class is, if you can’t buy what you want you;re poor, if you have to work to be able to buy what you want you’re middle class, if you don’t gave to work to be able to by what you want then you are upper class. By this definition, there is not much distinction between the 2.
But are you in the social register? What supper club were you in at Harvard? Were you tapped for skull and bones? I think those sorts of things are what the poster who mentioned the need to be born into it was referring to. For some people a certain “class” of people, these things are very important. Many people in this group are not going to be terribly impressed by your wealth I would imagine; you still would not be their “sort” of people without the proper lineage. How much power these folks actually wield is another question altogether - and an extremely difficult one to answer at that.
I didn’t join any clubs in college. I couldn’t afford it at the time. I had to work to afford to even be there and that didn’t leave any time except for that and making good grades. I am not sure what Supper Clubs Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg joined either. I am pretty sure it was none because two of them never even graduated from college at all yet they are (or were in Jobs’ case) some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the U.S. Warren Buffet isn’t a Supper Club type either and he is firmly old school.
I think people are confusing social cliques with class here. The former certainly exists everywhere from junior high levels through the professional world but I think there is strong proof that it doesn’t mean much at the highest levels and that is what the important part of upper class means to most Americans. The main contemporary counterexamples that I can think of are the Bush and Kennedy clans but even both of those are losing influence quickly so that shows even family dynasties are very fleeting today. Even Wall Street who has the most clicky of the cliques just looks for raw talent these days. They will take a physicist PhD with a new theory who came over on a raft as long as it will make everyone money.
I know some extremely wealthy people personally but it all self-made or just one generation removed. That is a good thing and it buys power as long as the money lasts. However, I do not understand why people think there is an old world style aristocracy in the U.S. outside of money. It doesn’t exist.
What do you call a person who is a direct Mayflower descendant who went to Harvard and now lives in a mobile home because they can’t find a job?
Trailer trash just like anyone else. The background doesn’t mean anything. Only current circumstances do. The same idea applies if they just live in a sedate suburban house or anything else. The idea of inherited class outside of personal wealth, education and socialization are foreign concepts in the U.S. I still don’t understand the European rules on it even though I have tried. It makes no sense to my Americanized brain.
In the UK we have plenty of examples of the “down-at-heel upper classes”. These are old families with great pedigrees but whose fortunes have declined and who exist in genteel poverty.
In many cases they will still send their children to minor private school while they try to maintain crumbling ancestral piles where the rain leaks in through the roof of the ballroom.
There’s a great documentary called “The F*cking Fulfords” about the 24th heir of the Fulford family who inherits an 800 y/old manor in the south west of England. The Fulfords are crude, vulgar and their house is a wreck but despite their home being in a worse state than most lower-middle class houses they remain undeniably upper-class (have a look on Youtube for some clips).
I don’t understand exactly what you mean by Warren buffet being old school; he was born pretty upper crust if you ask me - his father was U.S. Representative Howard Buffet, so he doesn’t exactly come from peasant stock. Same thing with Bill Gates; he was born to "William H. Gates, Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates. His ancestry includes English, German, and Scots-Irish.[15][16] His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Gates’s maternal grandfather was JW Maxwell, a national bank president. "(Wikipedia). All three of the names mentioned are prominent enough to have their own Wikipedia articles, most definately not peasant stock. Zuckerburg has a bit of a questionable lineage, his parents were only a dentist and a psychologist; even so he went to Philips Exeter. The only one of pure peasent stock you mention is Steve Jobs. What’s it all mean? I don’t know, actually I don’t really care - in fact I’m a bit confused by your post in response to my post - its as if you’re implying that the elite membership to clubs, fraternities and organizations open mostly or exclusively to certain individuals based largely on their background and family has no impact or an insignificant impact upon future success. Anyhow, I’ll finish this post later, I have to go catch my bus.
Those sort of things are important to the sort people who want to feel important and entitled based on who their family was or where they grew up. And when you start looking at who actually has money in this country and who actually runs the institutions that wield power and influence, my sense is that it doesn’t really matter that much.
As I said, the only thing class does is afford people with mediocre ability to think they are something special because they were fortunate enough to have parents who could send them to the top schools or finance their various hobbies and interests.
I think class is more important in Europe and UK than in the US. In the US, we tend to respect wealth and success, regardless of where it came from. Ergo the existence of the Bravo network.
Upon what is this sense based exactly? It doesn’t matter to people like you and me maybe but I believe the people with money power and influence care a bit about these things. I could go into much greater depth on the matter, there was a time when this type of discussion interested me greatly and I have read extensively on the subject. However, unless someone were to say “hey Mr. Nylock, please enlighten me with your bounteous wisdom” I’ll just leave it at that and say good sir we will have to agree to disagree - a legitimate analysis of the situation gets very long and complicated.
Obviously there is no concrete dividing line, but I’ve always put it at use of a mini bar in a hotel. If you use items from the mini bar, you are upper middle class. If you walk across the street to a convenience/liquor store you are middle class. Same with room service.
I associate the upper class with international vacations, private schools (full freight tuition), a “nice” house in a long-established “nice” neighborhood (in addition to other properties), summer houses, and “help”. Anyone who is wealthy could easily obtain all of these things. Someone who is upper middle class has a couple of these things, but not all.
Someone who is “comfortably” middle class has crude approximations of the above. They may own a McMansion in a newish subdivision and a timeshare in Florida. Their kids may have partial scholarships to pay for fancy private schooling, or they attend public schools that pride themselves on being the best in the state. They may hire “help” to clean the house for special occasions.
A “regular” middle class household may have one of these things, but they don’t have most.
You can find at least some of them in any Social Register.
I was going to say “pilgrim”, haha!