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I didn't even have to read the article,. The responses to it here tell me it must have been darned close to spot on. The problem of course isn't trying to do the best you can for yourself and your family. It's thinking and acting as if you are still some sort of hard-scrabble, boot-strapping "everyman" while banking multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Get real.
Throw church out of that "charitible giving" (bc that is a crock of self-serving crap) and recalculate.
And add back in all the taxes that are paid and used in blue areas to support things that red areas simply ignore and leave in the inefficient laps of private charity if anything at all is to be done about them.
To answer your questions about why someone might feel guilty about sending their kids to private school: Hypocrisy. Is that really so impossible for you to understand?
What's impossible to understand is anyone who can be on board with anyone bitching about someone with more money than them.
Another poster referenced this same article (originally in the Dallas forum, but moved to Great Debates.) Pub-911 is ironically one of the few who appears to understand the central thesis - self-admittedly without even reading it!
Of course people want the best for their kids. Of course people want to hold onto any wealth and power they have. It's human nature. The point (at least as I saw it) was the writer observing that in Britain, people openly see class. In the US, our "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" and "I worked for this" mentality allow for us to be "class-blind" in a way. As I mentioned in the other forum, it's like the "color-blind" approach to race. We have come to see that as inherently racist because it allows us to deny real differences that actually exist. When people have money, the "I earned it" mentality allows us to deny the fact that anything other than our hard work factored into our financial success. If hard work was all it took, every hard worker would be equally compensated for their efforts. It's simply false. You can be the hardest worker in the entire world and have earned your money the good 'ole fashioned American way - rags to riches. But that doesn't mean the class system has ceased to exist in America. It's just ignored, denied, and invisible - at least to those who have enough money to ignore/deny it.
The point is not to feel guilty or give away all your money or sabotage your own self-interests. It's simply to acknowledge the system is inherently unfair. Brits see class for what it is. Maybe we should do the same.
The upper-middle class is where you should want to be in American society, imo. It is achievable for a large percentage of people if they try hard enough.
Mythology alert! There are certainly a number of bank vice presidents in the country, but do the math -- the notion that anyone who wants to be one can become a bank vice president does not at all follow. Similarly, upper middle class is too small a slice for a large percentage of people to be able to fit into.
Mythology alert! There are certainly a number of bank vice presidents in the country, but do the math -- the notion that anyone who wants to be can become a bank vice president does not at all follow.
why should everyone expect to work the same hours if they don't have the same skills? poor people need to either work more hours or work to gain skills
and comparing to some other country and pointing the finger saying well, they don't have to, well move over there and see if they want an foreign bum in their country and see how welcoming they are
article should be called "stop pretending you are poor", when most poor people can perfectly capable of getting themselves out of the hole they dug themselves
Class system in the USA? Sure. The difference being that people get to choose what class they belong to. Most people are exactly in their own comfort zone. Many don't want to work to get ahead.
There are far too many people who have worked their way up or that have propelled their children up, to deny that it is possible. There are no people with mad skills working a 3 hour shift flipping burgers and collecting welfare. Those part time burger flippers are people who think it is too much effort to learn a marketable skill. Or they deliberately limit themselves to part time low income work for some reason of their own-- like if they earn too much they lose their welfare, or maybe a partner works for a big salary and their part time is ad money and they have to be home when the kids are home)
It's not that difficult to position yourself to be middle class in the USA.
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