MetaChat - Are you middle class?

Middle class used to mean something when there was a middle-class. Now, it's just code for the prison where you are forced to work some job you hate so that you can buy crap you don't need from the empire. In other words, welcome to Rome.

So yeah, unfortunately, I am middle class. And to me, it means that I'm slowly losing my soul.

posted by panoptican 16 January | 13:11

I never had a soul. Also, no class. I am, however, pretty middling.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 16 January | 13:18

I'm rich. I was raised in a rowhome in the city by parents who married young and cranked out lots of kids. We ate a lot of fish sticks. My sister and I shared a bed. Just the other day, we were having some mundane conversation about fabric softener and she said, "We use fabric softener. We are RICH!" Other things that make us feel rich: having two different kinds of conditioner at the same time, changing our toothbrushes regularly and driving cars that start in the morning.

posted by jrossi4r 16 January | 13:21

Well, I have to work so I think that automatically excludes me from the upper class. And I work so I think that helps exclude me from the lower class. Combined with the fact I live in California I think that pretty much puts me squarely in the middle class.

posted by fenriq 16 January | 13:25

I'm with jrossi.

There are two ways for me to look at it. First, I'm aware that simply being able to get by in a first-world country makes me among the richest people in the world. I go to the dr. and dentist, have the car that starts (finally), have clothes and shoes appropriate to the weather, and more than enough to eat. So, I'm rich.

But I'm not sure I'm 'middle class', whatever that is. I actually think there really isn't much of a middle class any more. There are people who seem to be very affluent; some probably are, some are probably leveraged out the wazoo on credit card debt and loans, though. But I'm not sure I'll ever be able to buy a house as a single person on my circa $40K non profit salary, and that doesn't seem right. Home ownership would seem to me a basic middle-class possibility, and it's getting harder. If I had a partner with whom I shared finances, we'd probably be living a little more middle-class life.

But, I have a college education and am an administrator/manager type. So based on my circle of peers, I guess I'd be middling.

I dunno. I do know there are way too many rich people messing up my country, tho. And I don't mean the billionaires; a lot of the mess is being made by the petty burghers of the suburban bourgeousie. /opinion

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:27

I think class is about being comfortably something. I can't claim that, I guess.

posted by selfnoise 16 January | 13:27

Yeah. That's ultimately how I'd describe myself, both economically and culturally, for better or worse.

What does that mean to you, anyway?

Well, economically, it means the obvious: not rich, not poor. Occupations usually held in middling esteem: skilled blue-collar, low-level white collar stuff like sales or middle management or small business owners.

There's a set of values that come with it I guess, that I sometimes wish I could shake (in the case of attention to propriety), but other times I'm glad I have (in the case of the work ethic, respect for other people).

posted by jonmc 16 January | 13:28

You really think it's just money? No matter what I make, I think I'll always be culturally middle class. Just like it seems to me that jrossi's point of view isn't really middle class, because no one in the middle class would think conditioner or fabric softener would make you rich. (I hope that doesn't come off as insulting, jrossi.)

posted by dame 16 January | 13:28

Wow, fenriq, I wouldn't base it on working. Most of the super-rich people I know do work every day - they may not *have* to, but if they stopped they would stop building wealth, and they're all about building wealth.

And the poor? God, they work harder than everyone, for the most part. I come from working class roots. My family was poor, though we called it 'working class' instead of 'lower class', and they are/were all really hard workers.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:29

I am working class by descent, middle class by education & profession, & an aristocrat in my deluded imagination.

posted by misteraitch 16 January | 13:31

You really think it's just money?

Not at all.

No matter what I make, I think I'll always be culturally middle class.

Me too. Odd that we're so different in many ways. Not trying to start a fight, just noticing is all.

I come from working class roots.

Most people who were first-generation suburban in the 70's like myself, were the children of people who had grown up working class (either urban or small town), and we probably inherited many of those values and attitudes. Also, I think the 70's was the last time a middle-class family could move to a suburban area easily. My parents (a schoolteacher and a home furnishings salesman) have said that if they were a young couple tday they'd have a much harder go of it. My dad has occasionaly said that he wishes he hd gotten a job with the city and stayed in New York.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 13:34

dame - yeah, I think it's not just about money or a job. Education, enculturation, profession, peer group...all play a part. If you go by that broad definition, I'd be middle class.

I guess I define 'upper class' in terms of the quantity of resources a person can command, how much they've got in assets like disposable income and buildings owned. I'm not sure where I'd draw the line, but knowing me it would be pretty low. Once people get to a certain level of comfortable, many make a pretty big mental transition, it seems.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:34

I grew up lower class/working poor.
When I was a teenager I was middle class.

Now I make about $40/month over my necessary bills (rent on a small apartment, food and utilities), and have no car.
So I guess I'm lower class again.

posted by kellydamnit 16 January | 13:35

jonmc: it sounds like you and I are from very similar demographics. I think it's true what you say about the 70s. It may have been the last time there was that type of social mobility.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:36

I'm working class/poor by descent, somewhat poor by income (although I'm sort of "kept," so maybe that doesn't count), middle-class (maybe even higher) by education and on-again, off-again profession. Where does that put me?

posted by goatdog 16 January | 13:37

I think class is more than just income, though. A college instructor might be poorly paid, but people would still think of him as middle class or above. Plumbers and other skilled blue-collar workers often make really good money (morethan the hypothetical professor), yet we'd generallythink of them as working class regardless.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 13:38

That's funny to hear you say that, jon. I'd say by definition blue collar isn't middle class; even if a plumber does make more than a teacher, the teacher is more middle class.

Likewise the cultural attitudes to descibe. I mean, we fundamentally disagree on so much, it doesn't make sense to say we're culturally the same, no?

posted by dame 16 January | 13:41

I think it has a LOT to do with education.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:41

note: That last post was written way before some of the others, but didn't post. If I seem confused.

posted by dame 16 January | 13:42

[education...] which would go with dame's comment about a teacher being more middle class. My grandfather was a master plumber, and made more at the time than any teacher did. He was also very smart. But his training came from the Army and then a vocational program of the GI Bill, not a college.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:42

...people can belong to more than one culture at a time.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:43

No insult at all, dame. By the numbers, I'm probably solidly "middle class." But I don't have the mindset. I grew up poor and blue collar. Now I'm doing well, but my upbringing colors my perception. I'm more appreciative of little luxuries than others in my bracket. We also are comparatively conservative with our spending. We drive older cars and live in a less fancy house than many of our peers in the same income bracket.

posted by jrossi4r 16 January | 13:43

I'm striving to become middle-class. I have bourgeois aspirations.

posted by shane 16 January | 13:47

jonmc: it sounds like you and I are from very similar demographics.

That probably explains our mutual Springsteen fandom. He reminds me of my dad and uncles in a lot of ways and I see where I've inherited a lot of their attitudes (good and bad) myself.

Odd side note: pips teaches high school in a very rough area of the Bronx; we're talking public housing and welfare, here. Yet when her students did autobiographies almost all of them described themselves as "middle class." Maybe it's relative: kids who live in private apartments think themselves middle class compared to project kids and the like.

Likewise the cultural attitudes to descibe. I mean, we fundamentally disagree on so much, it doesn't make sense to say we're culturally the same, no?

Well, other factors (including personality) come into play I think. My mother is a European immigrantraised in a small town blue-collar (her dad carved gravestones for a living) Catholic fanily during the Kennedy era, so she's very into the upwardly mobile striving thing, but she has low patience for snooty people. My Dad was a city kid (and from a line of dockworkers and sailors (great grandad helped build the Erie Canal i was told) turned small shop owners, so he was a bit more cynical and tough-minded. I inherited some stuff from Mom and others from Dad.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 13:48

Education is such a thing, miko. It's funny, whenever I think about a class, I feel so two-sided (I swear one day I'm going to do an essay on both class and racial two-sidedness): on the one hand, my family is so straight-up American dream poor-in-the-twenties to solidly-middle-class-today it's funny. On the other hand, I went to schools way outside my class and picked up a fair amount of that culture, though always through the prism of expecting more but knowing you weren't the same. Really, the only people I know with the same perspective are other Scholarship Kids (tm). Frankly, it seems like you wind up happier on the jrossi route.

As to the question of the seventies and economic advancement, I don't know if it's still possible at that level, but I do know plenty of scholarship kids grown up, who went from being all striving lower-middle to middle-middle class to being reasonably upper-middle-class (low six-figure incomes and the attitudes they acquired ealier).

And then there's the whole question of what you deserve.

posted by dame 16 January | 13:52

My father's father was a gas station attendant, functioning alcoholic, and finally a garden supply / nursery owner. My grandmother on that side raised the kids and helped manage the nursery later on. To be honest, I don't know what my mother's mom did other than drink, smoke, and play cards. That side of the family was more poor than my fathers' side.

My father was an ambulance driver, and then a steel worker for twenty years, and now he's an apprentice machinist. My mother was a lunch lady, a cleaning lady, a floor manager in a garment factory, and now does data entry for a shipping company.

Most of my cousins aunts and uncles (except for one) are either one or a combination of the following: criminals, substance abusers, construction workers, warehouse/factory workers, butchers, truck drivers, or in the military.

My sister and I were the first two to graduate from college. Hopefully some of the younger cousins will as well.

I wanted out.... I don't know what all this makes me other than pissed off. And totally uncomfortable in nice restaurants.

posted by safetyfork 16 January | 13:54

That's interesting about the Bronx kids. I remember reading somewhere that something like 85% percent of Americans self-identify as middle class, even though obviously a lot more of those people would be categorized as either lower or upper by income standards. Apparently Americans just feel that 'middle class' means, somehow, 'normal', 'fairly sucessful', or at least 'unexceptional'.

posted by Miko 16 January | 13:55

I seem to recall hearing somewhere (perhaps college soc class, perhaps Metafilter thread) that *most* people consider themselves middle class, even if they are in fact quite poor or wealthy. Maybe because there's always someone poorer or richer than you?

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 January | 13:55

It's interesting how the term middle class is used. Hell, in the idealistic, fantasy America of school textbooks, class doesn't even exist in America.

But to me, middle class is solely an economic measure, not something that measures education, or culture, or whatever. To me, it just means "earns an income near the median."

I also (generally) use the term in strictly American sense. Middle class in America would be easily upper class in other countries.

As far as I know, the lower/middle/upper class distinction, in an American setting, was originally used in this economic sense. At least, that's how it was taught to me. But the term seems to be broadening.

In that sense, the middle class is tightening a bit. But it as also THE element that drives the American economy. Without a broad group of people able to buy "stuff," the American economy goes poof. So it can't really be gone.

But American's tie their identity in so tightly with income, that many lower class (income-wise) people consider themselves middle class, and many middle class people (income-wise, again) consider themselves upper class. And the upper class considers itself filthy rich, even though there are probably less than a million people in the entire country who are actually "rich" by a good definition of that word.

All of this "class-creep" is done because Americans live in a culture that, either implicitly or explicitly, tells them that poor == bad, rich == good. Of course, then, there is the politicians desire to seem like the lower or middle class (which make up the overwhelming majority of the voting public), and thus affect a "heartland America" or whatever bullshit stance is in vogue today.

posted by teece 16 January | 13:57

You know -- it's kind of interesting that at least the folks commenting here now are educated and professional but come from fairly modest backgrounds. And my sense in the broader MeFi community is that there's quite a bit of that - in these sorts of threads there always seem to be many fewer prep-school products and moneyed clan scions than I've encountered in my life and my education. Maybe they just don't talk about this kind of thing because they've never had to give it a thought.

(Totally knowing what you mean about Scholarship kid, dame.)

Maybe it's something about MeFi peeps, but maybe it's more a reflection of general trends in American history.

posted by Miko 16 January | 14:00

I dunno teece -- in my line of work I deal with a lot of the truly filthy rich, and the funny thing is that a lot of them don't consider themselves upper class. They have the deluded notion that they're pretty much like anyone else. They usually fail to be aware of the conveniences and comforts their wealth is able to buy them as compared to most other people.

posted by Miko 16 January | 14:03

Exactly, miko- I used to work for a rich woman, and she was so out of touch with how most people live. You mean there are people in NYC who don't have doormen?? Umm, yea.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 16 January | 14:11

Back in the 50s, my grandfather bought a cheap patch of waterfront bogland in Avalon, NJ, and build a house. Over the years, the houses around it got fancier and my childhood summers were spent hanging out with extraordinarily wealthy people.

Fortunately, our neighbors were of the "old money" sort and didn't really care. We fished together, swam together, partied together. I didn't realize how rich and powerful these people were until I got older.

The snooty, nasty, people who looked down on us were invariably the "new money" people. To this day, I can sniff 'em out and can't stand them. No matter how much I make, I'll never be one of them.

posted by jrossi4r 16 January | 14:12

I've been "free-lunch" poor, but never "homeless/hungy" poor. My mother's family is academic middle class. My father's family is primarily working class poor (but with an artistic and socio-political bent). I worked blue collar jobs for a dozen years or so, but after returning to college as an adult, have worked my way up to the class typically referred to as "upper middle class," as defined by my education and income. But I don't really identify with any one group. I have plenty of friends and family who'd be happy to take the piss out of me were I ever to forget the journey.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 16 January | 14:14

I grew up dirt-poor, and if it wasn't for the welfare system that exists in New Zealand I'd probably never have seen a computer before. But luckily welfare gave us a house to rent and money to live off, even if it was supplemented by regular trips to the food bank and the occasional and embarrassing donation from the church I attended as a teenager.

I copped all sorts of flak at home because I spoke like someone who wasn't poor. I emulated people around me who spoke well, I read a lot, I learned big words and stuff, and my stepfather hassled me for years for talking like a snob. Even now I deliberately drop big words into a sentence when I speak to him, quite deliberately. Last week's word was 'penultimate'.

I was a scholarship kid and I blew it. I did use the money my school gave me ($500, from memory) as a deposit on my halls of residence and relied on student loans for everything else at first. I got a job five months into university, stacking supermarket shelves from 3am till 7, and with the combination of working to keep going, and trying to have a social life, and staying awake in lectures, I dropped out in my second year. I managed to pull myself up, by working my way up the office management ladder, to comfortable middle class -- and now that I'm married with my two kids and house, we're definitely that. I wouldn't call it soul-sucking by any means, but I'm not working at the moment. I worked hard and now my reward is being a stay-at-home mother. It may not always feel rewarding, but it's, you know, what the middle class does. :)

posted by tracicle 16 January | 14:15

You're right, miko, but I think there are two dynamics at work. ALL classes think of themselves as "normal," and I think that is what the upper class do: they're middle class in that their "normal." (although not the filthy rich. The 1000 richest people in America know they are special and have amazing power, regardless of whether they will admit it. There are a lot of people that are very well off, but that are nothing more than well-to-do middle classers. I don't call them rich. People like Bush and Gates and Jobs and Forbes are rich -- even millionaires are small-fry nobodies compared to the super-elite that actually rule America. I think of that elite as rich; the rest, merely upper class).

But when you ask people if they make a lot of money in a context devoid of "normal," they tend to overstate their place in the American money distribution. There was a study that asked people if they thought they were in the top 1% of wage earners. Something like 5% or 20% (I don't remember the number) thought they were; something like half thought they were in the top quarter; hardly anybody thought they were in the bottom quarter. And if you ask folks in rural Arkansas if their $19K a year wage is small, they'd probably tell you they were just average, middle class folks. But they aren't: they're poor.

Americans don't tend to self-identify as poor, unless it's to make a point about how they've grown out of it by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

posted by teece 16 January | 14:15

This conversation reminds me of the Chris Rock bit about "rich" vs. "wealth."

posted by jrossi4r 16 January | 14:18

*most* people consider themselves middle class, even if they are in fact quite poor or wealthy. Maybe because there's always someone poorer or richer than you?

Yes, but of course they're wrong. There is such thing as class and it isn't just about income. Not to mention the flipside of Miko's point: lots of people who become wealthy still don't share upper class values and to pretend that they are the same doesn't make any kind of useful sense. Like class-creep, I think people want more money but I don't think they'd change their values if they got it.

posted by dame 16 January | 14:21

I'm downwardly mobile, extremely downwardly mobile. I call myself high socio, low economic, and that pretty much fits. I think of myself as working class these days; even when I had a reasonable job it was in nonprofits and, at 42, I've never yet made more than $32,000 a year. It's starting to look like I never will, either. Is class all about money? Sometimes.

I grew up upper middle class, maybe even upper class for a few years in there when my father was really riding the high waves. He was a CEO, Ivy League, a Kennedy democrat, lace curtain Irish, from an old Southern family & my mom's family was similar, with a dip in the depression to deal with mental illness and a certain stubborn strain of determined artists. So as a child I vacationed in Europe, had a nanny, a cook, a chauffeured limousine, a 1936 Bentley to ride in on Sundays, an Arabian horse named Alfie, a 32 foot sloop called Bandicoot, and, of course, I went to prep school - I got kicked out of three of them, actually, almost breaking my older brother's record of five in four years. But as that same brother said once, it's like we have all the disadvantages of being rich kids without the advantages, and there was some truth to that.

Nowadays, I'm going down economically for the third time and I don't live the life my debutante ball was supposed to prepare me for (actually, I had a baby instead of a ball, that's part of the problem, I know) and the Junior League would never return my calls: I think the tattoos took care of that long ago. I've dressed my kids out of thrift stores; sent them mostly to public schools and lived in working class neighborhoods my whole adult life. My friends are artists and musicians and assorted whatever; we have in common that we're all fucking starving these days, as rents go up and salaries, at least in the service economy that is this tourist/retiree town, drop unless you can keep on waiting tables forever.

Anyway. A long winded way of saying, I've never really thought of myself as middle class anyway, I always thought that artists and serious weirdos were class exempt.

posted by mygothlaundry 16 January | 14:25

What's also weird is that some elements of the class you begin in stick with you even when you leave it. I have an uncle, who was the son of a Brooklyn railroad worker, who now works in the financial field and makes metric assloads of money, but he still has a Brooklyn accent thick enough to cut salami that marks him as different from others in the old money burb he lives in. And at family gatherings his parents' 14karat working class-ness is very apparent. But oddly they're very big on putting on a show of spending money. I think there may be some insecurity at work there. Every year at christmas they put out an obscene amount of food, but oddly most of it dosen't require much effort to make, whereas my housedress wearing Italian grandmother in the hills of Vermont makes home cooked means in a no-frills setting that are much more satisfying.

Well, it's a complicated set of questions. I'm glad for a lot of the values I've inherited though,both from them and from other people I've encountered along the way.. I was working for pocket money at a young age, and for a living soon after (since my parents couldn't afford to support a layabout, and I'd already inherited a work ethic).

posted by jonmc 16 January | 14:25

Well, according to this quiz, I am 87% Upper Middle Class. Huh.

posted by jrossi4r 16 January | 14:28

Strictly speaking, I'm very, very poor. Historically, I'm middle-class. Culturally, I'm a combination of the intelligentsia, middle, and upper classes.

The first has a lot to do with education and I think Dame is right about what she says regarding good schools. The second is how I grew up. The third is because my maternal grandparents were wealthy and I spent a lot of time with them.

My sister didn't spend as much time with our maternal grandmother as I did, but she, like me, has better taste in a lot of things than either of our parents. (Truly, my sister has extremely good taste.) I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a Rolex, for example—I'd buy a Patek Philippe. Good taste and a certain kind of attitude about wealth has a lot to do specifically with my grandmother, though. I knew friends of hers who had horrible taste and flaunted their wealth. My grandparents' wealth was self-made, not inherited. When my mom was a child, they were upper middle-class. And my dad's family were very poor.

Race and sex have a big impact on how people experience class in the US, though. As a white male, I'm very privileged and am able to be far more socially mobile than others.

posted by kmellis 16 January | 14:29

I read in a book once that one of the ultimate middle class traits is that middle class people generally feel affinities for/get corrupted by those on either side of them. I seem to have more working class affinities than upper class ones, whatever that says.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 14:30

Ha, ha. Your quiz nailed me pretty well, jrossi4r:

"You scored as alternative.

You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don't take drugs ok?"

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 16 January | 14:35

There is such thing as class and it isn't just about income.

This is true, dame, but I will not use the terms upper/middle/lower class to denote anything but money.

Terming the culture of a group of people as "lower" is insulting and counter-productive, and is what leads to some of the difficulty we have here in defining what it even means to be middle class.

Of course, poor, rich, and middle all have their own cultural mores, but there is no way to label one as "lower" and the other as "upper" without pejorating the reputation of one, which is bunk to me, so I don't do it.

posted by teece 16 January | 14:35

jrossi's test says I'm alternative, which I guess is what I'm trying to say. I opted to leave the class system entirely in some sense when I decided to major in painting instead of economics; and psychologically I think I believed that getting rid of money would = getting rid of my father. I should have chosen another trait to focus on, maybe, but ah well, we can't pick our subconscious.

You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don't take drugs ok?

alternative 88%
Middle Class 79%
Lower Class 71%
Upper middle Class 33%
Luxurious Upper Class 21%

posted by mygothlaundry 16 January | 14:36

Mygothlaundry, I think that having a nanny and an arabian horse and a chauffeured limousine still solidly qualifies you (then) as upper-class.

People are funny. I knew (aquaintance, house sitter) Samantha Kluge 13 years ago and she seemed not that hugely unlike anyone else. She was a very nice person. But these days when I Google her, I read stories of the obnoxious super-rich that blow my mind.

posted by kmellis 16 January | 14:37

Dammit! I want to be one of the alternative kids, not upper middle class.

Now all you freaks get off my finally manicured heirloom seed lawn!

posted by jrossi4r 16 January | 14:38

My results:

You are Middle Class

Lower Class 63%
Middle Class 63%
alternative 58%
Upper middle Class50%
Luxurious Upper Class 17%

*shrug*

posted by jonmc 16 January | 14:39

Oh, yeah, I know, I grew up upper-class. But am I still? I doubt it seriously. Certainly I don't have any of the outward trappings of it: old cheap car, old small house in a poor neighborhood, mutts instead of pedigreed animals & the upper class museum donors I used to work with treated me like a servant. I think I've been successfully class mobile, albeit downwards. ;-)

posted by mygothlaundry 16 January | 14:40

MetaChat: Thank you for lettin' me be myself, again.

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 16 January | 14:40

I come from wildly divergent class background, my mom's family are upper-middle class from NY/NJ/Conn and my dad's is (at best) working class from rural Pennsylvania. So I had one cousin who died running with crack gangs in Plainfield, NJ and on the other side, a cousin who was CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. Growing up, my immediate family was often close to or probably below the poverty line. Dad was a truck mechanic but never very steadily employed. I guess having the two different sides of the family gave me a good perspective and kept me working hard.

I've fairly recently become fairly middle-class economically and am pretty much a stereotypical suburban soccer dad. My son, on the other hand, is growing up very middle class and has never known want. I still think of myself as a poor kid from Jersey though, and probably won't ever shake that.

posted by octothorpe 16 January | 14:41

tracicle:

I grew up dirt-poor, and if it wasn't for the welfare system that exists in New Zealand I'd probably never have seen a computer before. But luckily welfare gave us a house to rent and money to live off, even if it was supplemented by regular trips to the food bank and the occasional and embarrassing donation from the church I attended as a teenager.

I copped all sorts of flak at home because I spoke like someone who wasn't poor. I emulated people around me who spoke well, I read a lot, I learned big words and stuff, and my stepfather hassled me for years for talking like a snob. Even now I deliberately drop big words into a sentence when I speak to him, quite deliberately. Last week's word was 'penultimate'.

Yep, this is me exactly. Hey, tracicle!

Growing up, my extended family was really what I call "determinedly working class". Any attempt at upward mobility was sneered at (very non-American!) I grew up on welfare, and was castigated when I went to college because my student allowance (based on need) meant that my mother's welfare money was cut a bit. My aunts and uncles (most of whom worked - although some are petty criminals as well) sympathised with my mother because at the age of 26 I didn't have a "real job" (I'd just graduated with my PhD).

I could go on, but MeCha isn't my therapy session :)

Now, my mother works in a pretty decent job, but she's certainly not in a situation where she could buy her own place, or save for her retirement. Thank goodness mr. g's parents are very well off, so we'll hopefully have to only look after one parent when they are elderly.

As for me now, given that I've put myself through higher education and am en route to becoming a professor, and am married to a medical doctor -- I guess I've upwardly mobilised quite a bit.

posted by gaspode 16 January | 14:43

You scored as Middle Class. You're content in your position and would prefer a house or a family than a seven figure pay cheque. But you have your moments of weakness when you buy a lottery ticket in the hope of knowing how the rich and famous live.

Middle Class 71%
Alternative 67%
Lower Class 46%
Upper middle Class 46%
Luxurious Upper Class 42%

And I'm also in the class which hates it when people confuse "jealousy" and "envy".

posted by kmellis 16 January | 14:44

Alternative - 75%
Upper middle Class - 71%
Middle Class - 63%
Lower Class - 42%
Luxurious Upper Class - 25%

Can't resist an online quiz?

No / / / / / Yes
X

posted by safetyfork 16 January | 14:48

Alternative 79%
Upper middle Class 63%
Luxurious Upper Class 58%
Lower Class 46%
Middle Class 42%

Ha ha ha. I always thought I was *so very* middle class and that's what I scored lowest on. See what happens when you send your kids to fancy schools? (Also, kmellis, that whole thing was poorly written and missing importantant prepositions; drove me nuts.)

Teece: Fair enough, but then you have to come up with some new & descriptive terms.

Any attempt at upward mobility was sneered at (very non-American!)

Oh, I don't think that's true at all. There are plenty of Americans who get the same thing. The thing is, they want more money. But not more class.

posted by dame 16 January | 14:58

I think one of the biggest delineators in class, even more than income, might be education and the type of work you do. I know that my inferiority complex comes out the most when I'm around people who I percieve to be of higher intellectual or artistic family backgrounds than myself, since I come from a long line of plodders and/or strivers. For what that's worth.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:03

For instance, when I was a teenager I went through my artistic/bohemian phase and my Dad kinda snickered at it, believing that it was an affectation that i'd grow out of. Our cultural consumption as a family was basically TV, popular fiction, and the oldies station. And while I've broadened that somewhat, I have a deep-seated (probably overly so) suspicion of the pretentious and hifalutin, and take a rather perverse pride in my low brow. This is good in some ways (it's nurtured a strong populist streak) and bad in others (I tend to sneer too hard at artistic ambition out of sour grapes, I guess).

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:08

For instance, when I was a teenager I went through my artistic/bohemian phase and my Dad kinda snickered at it, believing that it was an affectation that i'd grow out of.

and I guess he was right, ultimately.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:10

You scored as alternative.

Upper middle Class 67%
alternative 67%
Middle Class 63%
Lower Class 33%
Luxurious Upper Class 25%
***

I'm not sure what to make of that little survey. It definitely seems to determine class based on values alone.

May I just say how interesting this thread has been? The life stories make some fascinating reading.

My own is quintessentially American. Paternal grandparents were the plumber and homemaker, both Texans, and both very hardworking. My grandmother actually grew up in a family of 8; her mother was a widow and ran a boardinghouse and bootlegging operation in Beaumont, TX.

Maternal granparents were Irish Catholic Roosevelt Democrats from the Bronx. Both had jobs with the CCC/WPA during the 30s, and both became career Army after WWII, my grandmother in communications and grandfather as a master sergeant. They settled in New Jersey near an Army base and raised my mom there.

Parents met when my Dad was in the Army training for Viet Nam, and they married at 21(Dad) and 18(Mom). Had me one year later. My mother raised us kids for the first 12 years, then got an AA in journalism at the community college, and has gradually risen through her field to become a newspaper editor in a singularly affluent NJ region. My Dad took Army engineering training in the 70s and went on to a productive career as electronics engineer, though never got a degree. You couldn't do that now - you wouldn't even get into the field.

I'm a first-generation degree earner, and also the first in our entire extended family, cousins too. We never had any money growing up, but had what we needed. My parents were able to buy a house only because they bought it from my grandparents and got the family deal. They have become comfortable enough now, though, after really building their careers. And always they were literate and valued continued learning.

I grew up with a scruffy multi-ethnic mix of New Jersey small-town/small-city kids. We thought 'rich' was the kids who could afford to go to Catholic school rather than public. We all had jobs from the day we could get working papers, and we all pretty much worked to buy our own cars and clothes, and to save for college if we went.

I'm really glad to have grown up in exactly this way. I think I learned respect for hard work, tolerance, and how to identify the truly important elements in life vs. the fluff. I'm also proud of my working-class family, because their native smarts allowed them all to succeed well enough to enjoy a decent life while starting with, basically, nothing. My ancestors were either off the boat at Ellis Island or scrabbling a living in East Texas at the beginning of this century.

At times in my career, I look to the left and to the right, and wonder if people can tell what a scruff I am underneath.

posted by Miko 16 January | 15:11

Maternal granparents were Irish Catholic Roosevelt Democrats from the Bronx...Parents met when my Dad was in the Army training for Viet Nam, and they married at 21(Dad) and 18(Mom). Had me one year later.

change a few numbers a localities and same family story on my dad's side. you're my long lost brother, aren't you miko?

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:14

sister!

Well, tribe member, anyway.

posted by Miko 16 January | 15:15

cool.

Dem udda kids is wikkit smaat.

*walks off to batting cages* ;>

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:17

meetcha at the diner later.

posted by Miko 16 January | 15:19

That's awesome, miko. Though Jeebus knows I'm glad I didn't have to have a job in high school. And I'm kinda proud not to have a work ethic* but instead a gigantic sense of entitlement. I know people like to bemoan both those things, but to a certain degree, it gives you some pretty decent cultural leverage: one of the biggest signs of upper-classness, to me, is giving off the air that you have the right to be there and deserve to be taken seriously. There is so much power in that attitude and it doesn't have to be used for ill.**

Anyway, it all makes me think that despite teece's point about lower implying worse, in life most people take pride out of what they are regardless. It hopeful I suppose.

Also, jon, I would say the bad part of artistic sour grapes is that you miss out on things you might otherwise enjoy. Like Belle & Sebastian.

* Though I have a crappy work ethic, I do have a passion for quality, so I manage not to be a total fuckup.

** It's like when I used to do activist work and people would argue about vocabulary and writing standards and claim that the more privileged ought to constrain themselves so that no one felt dumb. And I always was like, no, the point is to make it so that everyone feels they have a right to ask what something means and the tools to make it better--which is how the educated fuckers got a big vocabulary in the first place.

posted by dame 16 January | 15:23

you like apples? how you like them apples?

I'll stop now...

Also, jon, I would say the bad part of artistic sour grapes is that you miss out on things you might otherwise enjoy. Like Belle & Sebastian.

You might have a point, but ultimately (for the most part) that kind of stuff dosen't speak to me as viserally as the stuff I like most, even when I can intellectually appreciate it.

But I think taste in music is kind of like taste in food. It may be partially cultural but partially instinctual. And there's ultimately no accounting for taste.

It's like when I used to do activist work and people would argue about vocabulary and writing standards and claim that the more privileged ought to constrain themselves so that no one felt dumb.

Well, there's something to that. Part of good activist writing is clarity, I think you'll agree. And there are several of my favorite MeFi people (prospero and vacapinta come to mind) who are very erudite and learned but never make you feel stupid, which is a hard trick to pull off.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:29

I usually don't say anything in threads like this because I'm vaguely ashamed of my background - and kind of ashamed, I guess, that I dropped that silver spoon so very emphatically. I was horribly embarrassed by it all when I was a kid and I tried not to let anyone know what it was like at home and I rarely invited anyone over to visit. There were other reasons for that of course, but people would just treat you differently when they realized you were "rich" and they would never understand why, if your family had all this money, you didn't get the newest toys or a car as a teenager or all that kind of thing.

Class is a funny thing. My family really hated the nouveau riche: people who were tacky and had no taste. There was a sort of silent set of distinctions and old money was better than new money, old houses better than new houses and so on, but no money & class is still better than new money and tackiness. They would say things like, "well, so & so's family lost all their money & they subdivided their house into apartments but aren't they lovely and brave, but this new family has put down (gasp) wall to wall carpeting and a huge TV in that lovely old house, what a shame, we'll never speak to them." Taste was just a huge part of it; walls of books and old paintings, clothes from LL Bean and Brooks Brothers and Talbots, the right drinks, the right food. Nothing showy, nothing loud. Once when I was 17 or so we were having dinner at the yacht club and I ordered a bourbon & coke; my father nearly choked on his scotch and water because it was such a tacky, declasse drink. You were just supposed to know what was right and what was wrong - and I guess I did, and I still don't like stuff like that, huge TVs and big American cars, and big swimming pools - the kind of thing that popular culture shows as "the good life" was not, in my experience, what the upper class was all about.

posted by mygothlaundry 16 January | 15:33

I find vacapinta very unclear. But anyway clarity is using the appropriate words,a nd often writing "down" makes things unclear. I'd rather have people learn to love the dictionary; constraining choice is not an image of the world I'd like to see.

As to B&S, I really think you'd like them if you gave them a chance. Other stuff I like, not so much, but that, definitely.

posted by dame 16 January | 15:33

well, mgl, my mom always aspired to that mien, but she's never been able to pull it off for a variety of reasons, and I rebelled against those ambitions with a vengeance.

Also, embracing the tacky can be a lot of fun.

(I also remember a great story about my dad growing up in NYC. He was and is a very sharp dresser. How he spawned me I'll never know. In the summers, his family would hang out at Breezy Point, in those days a working-class beach resort of Irish-Americans. (when I was a kid, I thought of it as the place where the grownups walked funny) He would get his white shirts cleaned at the local chinese laundry then pay his younger sister 50 cents to iron his shirt and polish his shoes. All this so he could sit on a barstool with his Paddy friends on the beach. But I bet Dad was quite the ladies man back then. Go get 'em, pops)

As to B&S, I really think you'd like them if you gave them a chance. Other stuff I like, not so much, but that, definitely.

Maybe I'll give 'em another shot, but only if you agree to check out richard price *ducks*.

often writing "down" makes things unclear.

oh, agreed, and it can often be condescending as well. But being unneccessarily verbose and obfuscatory can be equally bad. It's a balnce thing.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:43

Growing up, my dad was in the arts and my mom was a housewife, and we had a lot of medical debts, so we didn't have a lot of money, but intellectually and culturally we were definitely middle class. The New York Times had a big story with lots of online charts and graphs a few months ago about class, and according to those, because of my extensive education and decent salary, I'm in the top quintile in all categories except property ownership (I still rent, being an urban single). It was a bit of a culture shock to realize that, especially since I'm surrounded by people in my profession and in my neighborhood who are a lot richer than me.

posted by matildaben 16 January | 15:53

this new family has put down (gasp) wall to wall carpeting

We had wall-to-wall in most of my house growing up. Linoleum in others. My grandparents house up in Vermont is wall to wall in every room except the kitchen, and it used to be a different color in every room making the whole place look like a patchwork quilt. This made my mom cringe, but it made me want to give them a hug.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 15:58

mgl: eh, don't be ashamed, it's interesting.

on taste and quality: In college I did a lot of house sitting for a very wealthy family. Before I saw the interior of the house, I remember thinking about what a palace this was going to be. After spending the week there, I had this revelation: "This isn't some wealthy playboy paradise. These people don't have anything different from what I have. They don't have a jacuzzi or a home theater or James Bond-like gadgets. But everything they do have is of infinitely better quality than mine. The silverware is heavier, the sheets are softer, the soap smells better, the notepaper is thicker, etc."

My friends and I called it the "much, mich nicer" effect. For instance, when they gave me a candle as a Christmas gift, a friend asked me "And is it much, much nicer than any candle you've ever had before?"

And it was. It was really big and heavy and really smelled great, and had a cool holder.

posted by Miko 16 January | 15:59

You know -- it's kind of interesting that at least the folks commenting here now are educated and professional but come from fairly modest backgrounds.

I have noticed the same thing, but put it down to the natural grouping that happens in society - like attracts like and all that.

Lke tracicle and gaspode, I grew up on the poor side of life in New Zealand (although it didn't seem that way at the time, because we were no different to most around us). I would say that I definitely had a working-class upbringing, but would consider myself solid middle-class now - we have two incomes, two good cars, a house (and a block of land where we are about to build a new house) and a mortgage that makes me cringe every time I see the balance. My eldest daughter was the first in our family to attend private school and university. I think my mother started our upward trend by refusing to be satisfied with welfare payments and instead worked at a job she hated for years and then, when it was clear that the economy in NZ was going to force her to keep doing that for the rest of her life, moved us all to Australia where we have prospered (relatively). My main incentive to move up the ladder has been to avoid ending up like my grandfather, who had to work mowing lawns until he was in his 80s because he had no savings.

You scored as Upper middle Class.

Your determination have soared you this high, yet not high enough to enjoy the luxuries of the upper class. Your most valued posession is your country club membership which is kept framed in the office.

Upper middle Class 75%
alternative 54%
Middle Class 50%
Lower Class 46%
Luxurious Upper Class 29%

Hmmm, sounds about right, except for the part about the country club membership. In the end, I think class is more about attitute than money, although it is almost impossible to be truly upper class without money. Some people will always be working class no matter how much money they have (this is not a bad thing).

posted by dg 16 January | 16:13

So, theory:

Three keys to upward class mobility:

1. Family and individual determination
2. Education
3. Government or social programs that encourage the development of real knowledge/skills (not just spinning-the-wheels jobs or welfare)

I was really thinking about #3, because my family would surely still be shanty if it weren't for the New Deal and the Army. Both sort of functioned as leg-ups, providing income, training, and exposure to people with ambition.

posted by Miko 16 January | 16:22

4. Brilliance

(not claiming, just saying)

posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson 16 January | 16:24

Oh, totally Miko. Especially #3. Like many other people here, my grandparents had the Navy and Coast Guard (and therefore GI benefits) to help them out.

posted by dame 16 January | 16:24

I grew up poor, working class in a street virtually identical to this (in the same town as this photo was taken, so it's probably just a few streets away from where I grew up).

We were poor because my dad was an alcoholic. The house was filthy and shabby, I wore my older sister's hand-me-downs and there was no money for luxuries (such as decent food - we grew up on beans on toast and egg & chips while my dad was buying everyone doubles and pints down the pub).

My saving grace was that I loved to read. I lost myself in library books from the earliest age, and through reading, I knew there was a different life out there. Although I was bright, I was an under-achiever at school, but had a strong survival instinct. I left school at 16, left home a few days after I left school, found a job in a pub (although I was underage), did a typing course so I could earn a better living, came to London and reinvented myself.

I went to night school and studied for a profession. I'm the first member of my family ever to get a degree. I suppose now I've moved into the 'middle class', although I know my flat Midlands vowels still mark me out as a member of the working class. I've never lost my Derby accent, although it's softened after such a long time in the South-East.

My sister still lives in Derby, and when I visit her I see the differences in our lifestyles. The only books in her house are the Yellow Pages and the Argos catalogue. She watches the soaps, has no interest in world events, and follows the pop charts. She and her husband are racist and homophobic and I have nothing in common with them. She thinks I'm an alien.

I live in a part of Essex (which is to London what NJ is to NYC) which has lots of 'new money' - soap stars, footballers, City traders, etc. - but little in the way of culture or art.

My friends are mostly single people around my age who've gone through some struggles and changes to find some inner contentment. Hardly anyone I'm friends with is materialistic or career-minded, although many are artistic and creative.

Bit of a ramble there ... This has been a really excellent thread.

posted by essexjan 16 January | 16:47

My quiz result:

You scored as alternative.

You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don't take drugs ok?

alternative 63%
Middle Class 58%
Upper middle Class 50%
Lower Class 25%
Luxurious Upper Class 21%

posted by essexjan 16 January | 16:56

Essexjan, that looks so much nicer than the American working-class hoods I know. Note lack of graffiti or bars on windows.

posted by dame 16 January | 17:02

Teece: Fair enough, but then you have to come up with some new & descriptive terms.

Dame: alas, I don't need to at the bottom end of the scale. Read through the thread: you'll see that "working class" is used in almost exactly the way that "lower class" would be used if it did not imply a negative judgement.

The upper end should be changed, as they don't deserve the sense of superiority that the label "upper class" implies, but I'm not sure what one would use.

Oddly, I don't think of myself as anything but middle class. We weren't poor growing up -- we weren't rich either. But I am the first person in my immediate family to get a college degree. Of a large, Mormon (maternal) and Catholic (paternal) family tree, I am one of only 3 degrees in the whole bunch. One of those degrees is a by-marriage uncle with a PhD, and the other is his son with an engineering degree. Both live out of state. The rest of the family has (largely) attained a comfortable, middle class living (with one person making it to the upper class by peddling insurance), a few of my Dad's relatives in Utah might be lower middle class to upper lower class, but none of them are as poor as my wife's relatives, say, who are largely in the urban lower class.

That seems to be the middle class that is getting it the hardest in America. My family lived a comfortable life, firmly in the middle, with nary a college degree or such in sight.

I don't think that is nearly as easy today.

posted by teece 16 January | 18:07

you'll see that "working class" is used in almost exactly the way that "lower class" would be used if it did not imply a negative judgement.

I don't know about that. Most of the time "working class," is used with no small measure of pride, in my experience.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 18:13

Most of the time "working class," is used with no small measure of pride, in my experience.

That's exactly my point, jon. "working class" is the label people will affix to themselves. "lower class" is the label they will reject. I bet it is very, very likely that every instance of "working class" identifies someone as in the lower class, or at best lower middle class. It also has strong connotations of uneducated, that is earning a living in a skilled or semi-skilled trade.

Lower class is not used their, because it has an implied value judgement. Wrongly, it implies lowness, inferiority, and a whole host of other bullshit. Very few want to self-identifies themselves as "inferior," so a new term to mean (almost) the same thing has come into play: working class.

Your point about pride meshes really nicely with what I'm trying to say. People would rather feel good about themselves, given a choice. That's why no one chooses to use the term "lower class" in reference to themselves.

It's an imperfect fit because some of the working class spills over into lower middle class (or even middle class, in rare cases), but its usage closely mirrors the way an economist might use the term lower class.

posted by teece 16 January | 18:30

I'm a college student, so I'd say my answer would have to be "Mu."

≡ Click to see image ≡
You scored as alternative. You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don't take drugs ok?

alternative
63%
Upper middle Class
58%
Middle Class
42%
Lower Class
13%
Luxurious Upper Class
8%

We are not men, we are Devo! I think it rated me so high as UMC because I've considered buying an investment property (which is a very middle class/lower middle class thing to do in Northern NJ, where the middle class would be upper middle anywhere else, I guess). It's funny, because while the middle class tends to be more upper in NYC/environs, the lower class is lower. Minimum wage doesn't carry you as far, and for some, it's easier to go on welfare, get a rent-controlled apartment, and pop out kids.

I've never understood the class thing apart from the landed gentry/serfs. Though just today I heard someone at a cafe on campus talking about how middle class used to be someone who owned their own business and now it means someone who's a slave to a monolithic corporation. Pretty much par for the course lunch conversation at a Ivory Tower University. But I'm not studying economics, so I'll instead stick to imagining a younger mgl on horseback, wearing a leather jacket and ripped jeans, smoking a cig, and flipping off the 'rents.

But if I had to, I'd say someone (usually with an education) and a dead-end job and no possibilty (I used to work in LMI lending, so I've actually gotten several of these people into homes; I'm just being lazy here) of buying a home is lower middle class (like my mother). Someone who has a home but isn't really rich is middle class. Someone who's got a million dollars they worked to make is upper middle (as several of my former business clients). They're not as free-and-clear as you might think someone with a mansion is; they've got enough to retire on, maybe, but they have to keep that money working, are constantly on the phone with their broker (or these days, online) and haven't quite "gotten over." Upper class to me are those individuals who don't have to work; who have enough money to live off the interest. My line for upper class is higher than where most people would put it. It is my goal to get to that point, though I'll probably have to do it through an invention or writing; but it'll give me the leisure time I need to devote myself fully to the pursuit of both. Lower class is someone doing unskilled labor or unable to work.

If I get a Ph.D, I'll probably be the first in my family, at least among the first in my entire extended family (i.e., the cousins I know of). But I won't have a lot of money (and will likely have quite a bit of debt). If anything, though, I think I'm defined more by the class gradient that drives me; I'm always reaching upward, no matter what class I am. That's likely true of everyone except mgl, but like mgl, I've sought to make everything I have my own. The only thing I got from my parents was my magnificent brain, love, and a roof over my head. Not that we were dirt poor, but I've paid most of my way through college, and everything I have, with the exception of the motorcycle my dad left me when he died, is mine. So my class doesn't define me so much as my aspiration to build myself up (whatever "up" is) without help from anyone. But at the same time, I scowl when I see kids of priveledge float through life without expending any more energy than reaching for a credit card.

Wow, that's longer than I'd believed was possible. Chalk it up to studying the Russian Revolution in Art History at the moment. And essexjan, if you're still reading, you simply must give us a voice post. And don't be shy; I adore English accents of every social strata.

posted by Eideteker 16 January | 18:43

Well, eidetker, I remember when we first met in person, one of the first things we bonded over was our families' NYC roots. I share that double conciousness in certain ways. Read my man Richard price's The Breaks for further elucidation.

posted by jonmc 16 January | 18:57

≡ Click to see image ≡ alternative 83%
Middle Class 71%
Upper middle Class 46%
Lower Class 29%
Luxurious Upper Class 17%

That's about right. When I was younger, I was poor and middle class. Free school meals, no television, patchy telephone. For a while I was the poorest kid in class. But, I got the whole education, education education thing, and we did the guardianista, talk round the kitchen table, speak properly thing too. Ironically, I was bullied at school for being posh. But I followed my educational path, was made to be interested in the arts and the sciences, got my degree and ended up where I am now. A moderately successful computer programmer with a slightly unconventional and very left-wing view on life.

posted by seanyboy 16 January | 18:59

b.t.w Bill Gates is middle class to the core.

posted by seanyboy 16 January | 19:04

The upper end should be changed, as they don't deserve the sense of superiority that the label "upper class" implies, but I'm not sure what one would use.

Uh, yeah, so there isn't an entirely new set of terms and my point remains. Come up with something different or else make a contribution that isn't petty sniping; fucking fill it out. Jeebus.

posted by dame 16 January | 20:19

It also has strong connotations of uneducated, that is earning a living in a skilled or semi-skilled trade.

Teece, I agree with the sense of what you say, but just wanted to address a fine point here. Skilled and even semi-skilled labors aren't uneducated; they just don't have a formal (academic) education. They typically have a trade-specific education. Even if it was learned on the job, it is usually an education in a very real sense.

In my grandfather's case, he actually went through an apprentice/journeyman/master process that ended in a certification. Of course this is that pride talking, but skills mastered are worthy of pride.

I'd say "unskilled" labor is the parallel to "uneducated." If you're skilled, you have had some kind of an education.

posted by Miko 16 January | 20:28

I have a feeling that I am part of the least desirable class stratification. Upper-middle-class professional with ambitions to become true upper-class. I work an incredible amount of hours doing soul-crushing work, I'm educated but not "cultured," I make a high salary but do not have much asset-based wealth (which is what really counts) and I have all sorts of fears about sustaining my lifestyle/career. I think I pay the most taxes as a percentage of income/assets.

I'm hurting America.

posted by mullacc 16 January | 21:37

You scored as alternative. You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all. Just don't take drugs ok?

alternative ---- 96%
Lower Class ---- 75%
Middle Class ---- 50%
Luxurious Upper Class ---- 33%
Upper middle Class ---- 29%

Huh, and I always thought of myself as blue-collar elite. The only drugs I'm on are for my heart and arthritis. Funny inversion with the Luxurious Upper Class, there. What the hell does that mean?

Waste energy, smash the state.

posted by warbaby 16 January | 21:44

Paul Fussel, Class: A Guide through the American Status System

Holy crap. I just read through you guys' results. Am I a weirdo or what? 96%!!!

Beat that, you conformists!

posted by warbaby 16 January | 21:53

Seanyboy! Let's form a club. We would all have clubs and go clubbing. Just like in Nova Scotia, but urban.

posted by warbaby 16 January | 21:56

This is a long thread. I am not reading it.

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 16 January | 23:18

Come up with something different or else make a contribution that isn't petty sniping

dame, Jeebus is right. If you thought I was giving "petty sniping" then either I can't write for shit, or you need to work on your reading comprehension. Or maybe don't make assumptions about what I'm thinking?

I gave you my solution: I don't use upper or lower or middle class as anything but income classifications. The fact that those terms apply a value judgement is NOT trivial. It's just like gender-biased pronouns. They have a major impact on the discourse and thinking. They imply that folks that make good money are "upper" and that folks that are poor are "lower," and people carry those terms over into discussions about culture and values and that's just stupid.

To me, talking about "middle class values" is nonsensical. As is "I'm poor, but educated." They are descriptions of income to me. That is, by far, the best way to use these terms. I don't get to tell anybody how to use the language, but using these terms as anything other than income classes (like the inane survey*) is fraught with major problems, and I was just pointing that out.

I would urge people emphatically not to talk about lower class and upper class when they are interested in anything other than income.

*The survey is completely inane (but not completely un-fun) because it needs only one question: how much money do you make? Anything else is anthropologically unsound.

posted by teece 16 January | 23:31

This is a long thread. I am not reading it.

You had to be there.

posted by Miko 17 January | 00:07

I'm an upper class dandy fop.

Excuse me while I spend three hours adjusting mt cravat.

posted by drjimmy11 17 January | 00:27

"Anything else is anthropologically unsound."

I disagree. Subcultural charactertistics correspond well enough with economic status in the US that this is useful for casual conversation. In other places where there are class distinctions that predate capitalissm, this isn't as true. But it's true in the US and it's useful to talk about this correlation, though perhaps we should use more neutral terms.

mygothlaundru, my granparents were nowhere near as wealthy as your parents seem to be, but they were reasonably wealthy, lived in the right place and moved in the highest social circles. Anyway, I wanted to mention that your embarassment at your family's wealth is just exactly like my youngest aunt's embarassment. She kept her parents' wealth as much of a secret as possible from her friends. She's only 7 years older than me, so I remember this. She didn't go to the debutante ball...the whole idea repulsed her. She was actually very religious and she felt her parents' lifestyle was sinful and that her dad was going to go to hell. When he actually died when she was 17, she had a major crisis of faith. Anyway, her distaste for her parents' money was both the kind of embarassment you felt along with her sense of Christian modesty.

posted by kmellis 17 January | 00:28

"my cravat"

(us upperclass dandy fops disdain spellcheck as hopelessly bourgeois)

posted by drjimmy11 17 January | 00:28

Teece, I'm just gonna quote kmellis:

I disagree. Subcultural charactertistics correspond well enough with economic status in the US that this is useful for casual conversation. In other places where there are class distinctions that predate capitalissm, this isn't as true. But it's true in the US and it's useful to talk about this correlation, though perhaps we should use more neutral terms.

Since you're the one wrapped up in this, *you* have the reponsibility to come up with some other phrase. Then again, I would rather switch off gendered pronouns than use something ugly and unwieldy; frankly, the benefits of discussing something honestly outweighs the "implicit judgement" in my book. Besides, in my magic world, people are smart enough to know that one is using economic comparison to discuss a cultural phenomenon and not using the terms in judgement.

posted by dame 17 January | 09:22

Hear, hear!

"Guys" as a form of address is gender neutral. TiGrace Atkinson told me so.

*posts 100th comment*

posted by warbaby 17 January | 11:17

Subcultural charactertistics correspond well enough with economic status in the US that this is useful for casual conversation

Sure. So does locality. Or religious background. Or ethnicity. Or any other of a dozen things. The correlation is fairly weak.

Further, the classification is inherently stupid for culture. There is nothing "low" about lower class income culture, and there is great variability within that quasi-culture. Ditto upper class.

It's like defining classes based on locality. Take this absurd, imaginary example. If you live in the suburbs, you are "average class." If you live in the city, you are "superior class," and if you live in a rural area, you are "inferior class." It's a bad naming system if you are concerned about culture, and it's only one of many factors that will be making up the culture of a particular group. And it sets people up to think of city dwellers as better that country dwellers, and it defines suburbanites as the norm. That's not only bunk, it will have profound impact on people's thinking if the terms are widely used.

It's best to use the terms as income qualifiers, and ditch them for everything else. If you are interested in culture, talk about culture. Income is only one of many factors that will change culture, and it's not even the dominant one.

And dame: you're just flat out wrong when you say "people are smart enough to know that one is using economic comparison to discuss a cultural phenomenon and not using the terms in judgement." That does not happen, AT ALL. Not even in your magic world. As you can see from this thread, people do not disassociate the cultural aspects of these classes from the income aspects, and it's a fairly erudite crowd.

Saying lower class (and even poor), implies a whole host of negative value judgments to most people. It is counterproductive to use these terms for culture, unless you really are interested in enforcing a class hierarchy with poor at the bottom and rich at the top in all senses, rather than just numerically based on income.

If you don't believe me, try to find some anthropologist that will use these labels easily. Or go around asking people if they are in the lower class. You'll get mostly negatives on both.

posted by teece 17 January | 11:58

SO COME UP WITH ANOTHER FUCKING OPTION INSTEAD OF SPOUTING OFF LIKE A MORON.

posted by dame 17 January | 20:59

Dame, all respect due, I think there were nicer ways to say that.

posted by mudpuppie 17 January | 21:02

Oh, and more to the point, in case you check this again, people here are mostly not judgemental about class; they do, however, use what you would prefer to call "economic" terms because there are no others.

(Mudpuppie, you're probably right. But I tried to say it nicely twice & got a bunch of nonsense about how evil our terms our without a suggestion of an alternative. I think it's dumb, but if it'll make teece discuss the actual subject, I'd be happy to use another term. I'm not going to think of it myself, though.)

posted by dame 17 January | 21:04

(Dame, I didn't upscroll -- I lost track of this thread a few days ago. I just saw that last comment in "recent comments" and thought that maybe the conversation had devolved because you'd gotten snippy. I apologize for making that assumption. I fully acknowledge that someone else may have gotten snippy first.)

(To whomever got snippy: Shame on you.)

(But I still don't feel like upscrolling. Carry on, everyone.)

posted by mudpuppie 17 January | 21:13

I agree with you entirely on this, dame, and am also a little annoyed with teece, but you're just too damn quick to go all nuclear on someone's ass.

posted by kmellis 17 January | 23:22

16 January 2006