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I've decided that there's really no such thing as "class" in the U.S. We shouldn't even be talking about the "middle class". We can talk about middle-income, low-income, and high-income groups, but to separate us into classes only serves to divide us.
It's all what you do with it AUM. Like anything else. Classes do exist and they are more readily understood in terms of how much freedom a human being can experience based on purchasing power. Not that a bigger pile of toys= freedom, but that freedom isn't possible when someone can't meet their own needs even while employed. How much freedom is possible for someone when their health is in question. When you can't pull your kids up out of a downward spiral when you have to choose between low nutrition impacting their ability to get an education and vaccines impacting their long term survival. When no amount of squirreling nuts away for a rainy day is ever going to cover the real costs of retirement, it defeats the point of participating in civilization. Someone somewhere set the price for how much it costs to exist, and they don't seem to care much how many can't afford to exist in a system servicing only the 1%.
This younger generation is rethinking lots of things. Taking a cue from homeless, melting into the hills and living on roots, berries, and deer meat guaranteeing being ignored by corporations isn't off the table.
There's this from the 70's... Permaculture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taken to a whole other level as if a subsistence farmer cooperative network... Global Village Construction Set - Open Source Ecology
These kids have spunk, alright. I'm rooting for them.
OK, a question for Americans about class, Sir Paul McCartney, a knight of the UK realm, wealthy etc etc, what class would he be in the USA ?
Because in Briton his working class Liverpool accent gives his background away immediately.
Class and cutlery in the USA, do the so called US upper class do the normal American swap of knife and fork ?
Working Class is the media's new word for almost poor/ barely getting by/stuck here/low income folks. Often neighborhoods are defined as Working Class.
The kind of place where most kids dont go to college when they graduate high school, if they graduate high school.
Every time the media does a story in an old run down neighborhood, or neighborhood full of small cheap homes, they call it a Working Class Neighborhood.
Nobody's dream neighborhood is a working class neighborhood. Folks dream to get OUT of these neighborhoods.
Last edited by sware2cod; 07-30-2012 at 05:56 AM..
If you HAVE to work for a living, you are working class
Many "middle class" people are just working class people who don't like the title or connotations associated with working class, which has become synonymous with lower or poor class.
Okay, yes, everybody who has to work is "working class" as opposed to capitalist, per Karl Marx. I think you know this, but in this thread 'working class' is being used for the division in Marxist broader definition of 'working class. As in the middle class clearly being doctors, lawyers, architects, CPAs, and other professionals, as well as successful business owners - those with a great deal of autonomy within their work.
I'm not sure if you were going for this, but something I do see in the lower end or gray area of what could be considered culturally 'middle class' is a needless pretentiousness and attempting to hang on the coattails of the true professional middle class. A attribute of the actual working class and one that I admire is that they are humble and often reject pandering in (wannabe?) middle-class pretentiousness, rather than trying to be something they're not.
Remember Marcy D'Arcy from 'Married With Children'?
Quote:
Originally Posted by harborlady
Well said, but I'd add a caveat-- middle class implies that the potential for upward mobility remains viable and investment income can substitute working income in your golden years. Working class implies you're going to be doing physical labor until you drop.
In the US at least, working-class individuals can and often do build up a nice retirement, beyond just social security. It's gotten more difficult, sure, but that is yet another reason I think the working class should be actually recognized. But I would agree that it's more the propensity of the middle class (correlating with education, I think) to plan and save.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nzrugby
OK, a question for Americans about class, Sir Paul McCartney, a knight of the UK realm, wealthy etc etc, what class would he be in the USA ?
Because in Briton his working class Liverpool accent gives his background away immediately.
Class and cutlery in the USA, do the so called US upper class do the normal American swap of knife and fork ?
I would say he's working class here too. Rich and famous doesn't take somebody's working-class roots from them, especially if they don't try to distance themself from them and change, which unfortunately is a common phenomenon in America.
Charles Murray asked the question "Have you ever had a job where a part of your body hurt at the end of the day?"
When I think of working class, I think of the people who do real productive work. Someone who works in investing/finance might be spending his time away from home, but he isn't really "producing anything".
As a general rule, if you aren't working a job which makes your body sore, you aren't really working. And your job has absolutely no lasting impact on the world.
Think of a "model". Not only does she(or he?) not do "real work", but her job is basically completely unnecessary, and produces nothing of intrinsic value. This can be said for pretty much any job in "sales" or "marketing" as well.
Working class are people who do real productive work, which has an "intrinsic value"(IE a farmer, construction worker, electrician, plumber, etc). Most of the people in the middle and upper-classes are either taking advantage of the labor of others, or are taking advantage of special-privileges handed to them by governments(government jobs/contracts/licensing/subsidies/etc).
funny how the people who scream the loudest about the 1% are the 1% politicians and celebrities. Yet do they write an extra check to the government ... what a joke.
Wow, remember when Obama was acting like raising taxes on the rich would solve all our economic problems lol? <smack> <he's an idiot>
"less than five percent of American society are members of rich households."
The workers are merely disposable drones to be used and taken advantage of, basically treated like garbage.
Yep, Did you ever hear the term OBamaBot?
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