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What I and others have argued is that commonly-accepted class distinctions are bogus...,
Not to just split hairs, but...
is there some otherwise accepted (or acceptable) class distinctions to be used in the stratifying data?
Or do you reject the entire notion in total?
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...and that criteria used to identify a "middle class" are, economically speaking, very flimsy.
Meh on flimsy... but sadly that "middle class" is not really in evidence like it once was.
Some are blaming it on wage dilution from too many working women.
What I and others have argued is that commonly-accepted class distinctions are bogus, and that criteria used to identify a "middle class" are, economically speaking, very flimsy.
Already said many times just in this thread. These are labels that mean whatever the listener/reader wants them to mean, and most speakers/writers know it.
Universal code words for "those people, you know"... when it's not "I mean you, of course."
Oh my gosh - LOTS of people prefer to work rather than kick off their shoes. I sure don't want to relax on the beach after I retire from my job...I want to be productive. I'd love working with Habitat for example.
Thank you for that lol. I’m independently wealthy, I can do whatever I want to do, but what I want to do is work hard toward my goals and dreams! That’s what lights a fire under me and what fills me with passion and excitement, what makes me wake up every day happy and ready to make progress. Sitting around all day doing very little is only fun *after* a week of hard work where you feel you deserve a bit of rest and relaxation. I don’t ever want to “retire,” as in do no work, I want to keep pursuing my dreams and setting new goals until I can’t do it anymore.
Thank you for that lol. I’m independently wealthy, I can do whatever I want to do, but what I want to do is work hard toward my goals and dreams! That’s what lights a fire under me and what fills me with passion and excitement, what makes me wake up every day happy and ready to make progress. Sitting around all day doing very little is only fun *after* a week of hard work where you feel you deserve a bit of rest and relaxation. I don’t ever want to “retire,” as in do no work, I want to keep pursuing my dreams and setting new goals until I can’t do it anymore.
+1
Yes! As long as I am able to, I will work at something, in some capacity. I consistently find that people who continue to work and continue to learn are healthier and happier in their senior years. It's just as important to keep our brains active as it is to keep our bodies active.
I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as retirement. You just change what you do.
For some people that is probably true. For many people, "retirement" happens when we are still capable of enthusiastically engaging in our own projects. At 72, five days a year laying around on a beach is about all I can handle without getting irritated by the lack of activity.
The advantage of retirement is not being able to do nothing, it's to be able to do what you want on your own schedule without asking anyone's permission. Write a book. Restore an old car. Become a gunsmith. Grow a garden.
You may not be able to go mountain climbing like you did in your 20s. My backpacking nowadays is limited to hiking in 2 or 3 hours, setting up camp, fishing for a couple of days, and packing back out. I only go bird hunting half a dozen times a year, but am having a great time training one of the finest field springers I have ever owned. She gets me into the field for an hour a day, and is overjoyed to do the job she was bred to do. She and I will have plenty of time to get old and debilitated together.
My wife has spent her retirement so far being on the board of three nonprofit corporations, including chair of two of them. She is going in for hip surgery next month, so will be immobile for a couple of months. She is retiring from the boards for health reasons, but maintaining her Rotary membership, so in a few months I predict she will be right back in the thick of it. She doesn't have any more tolerance for boredom than I do.
The advantage of retirement is not being able to do nothing, it's to be able to do what you want on your own schedule without asking anyone's permission. Write a book. Restore an old car. Become a gunsmith. Grow a garden.
Well, so we're told. Or sold. "Work real, real hard until you're quite old, and then you can go play." I suppose it works out for some people, but a majority - I suspect - find out that it's all a bit of a shuck. Not only can you not rockclimb and hike cross-country, but likely your vision and your fine motor skills are not quite up to quality work as an artist or gunsmith or furnituremaker, and your stamina may not even be up to gardening.
Double this if retirement means relocation - you can finally move from the cesspool city of your work, friends, pension, benefits, children and life to paradise... where you know no one and have no community connections.
Triple it if you spent your life like most, giving lip service to savings and retirement funds while you spent, spent, spent your endless river of income on toys, trash and a 'proper level of living.'
And... but enough. The idea of a right-angle turn at retirement, dangled as a carrot to keep us working longer and harder, is bovine excrement.
Work and life should be intertwined so that you can continually adapt and scale down as the years go by; a linear progression from your days as a 20yo world-changer to an 80yo dabbler. Everything else is a shuck and an illusion designed to benefit employers, consumption and 'the economy' far more than the individual.
Much of the post industrial work is like that regardless of education and job titles.
Much, yes. But millions of American "workers", if not tens of millions, spend their working-days deciding questions of strategy, writing essays intended to guide or persuade, conducting experiments on different methods or addressing various scientific questions, engaging in intellectual sparring with peers. Indeed, the essence of being a "professional", or "white collar", isn't the bare unadorned fact of working in an office, vs. a factory or field. Rather, it is the doing of things that advance the scope of human understanding, rather than repairing things, or solving individual people's problems, or making copies of what's already been made.
By way of example, compare two different lawyers. One represents litigants in divorce battles. Another writes opinions on Constitutional questions about the right to privacy, about the meaning of due-process or the tension between freedom and security. The first kind of lawyer is, arguably, "working class", albeit in an exalted and sophisticated way (and well-paid). The second kind is not.
To recap, some people's work entails the keeping of the world running. Others however redefine what the world really is.
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Originally Posted by Quietude
... you can finally move from the cesspool city of your work, friends, pension, benefits, children and life to paradise... where you know no one and have no community connections.
Some of us moved to a "cesspool city" precisely for career-reasons. We dream of early-retirement to move BACK to the place where reside the preponderance of our friends, where we feel cultural and personal affinity, where the weather isn't so harsh, where economic vitality is better, and where we can actually feel as part of the community.
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