What social class are you?

[really]

My family's origins: Peasants
My accent: Peasant
My sporting interests: Peasant

My income and education according to the chart: upper middle class

 

[Rambuchan]

Thats a great post Rutters

What it is is another telling of The American Dream. Emphasis, as always, on Dream.

And look where those wiki links lead (maybe the last sentence will shed some light on my previous post about British upper class values):

Reality

According to a study of The Pew Charitable Trusts, the intergenerational mobility in United States is quite low, comparatively to some other countries. Mobility is 1.2 times higher in France, 1.5 in Germany, 2.5 in Canada and 3.2 in Denmark.[11] In the same way, the Center for American Progress reports that "Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States".[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_dream#Reality

If you click the link for the first citation there (namely [11]), you get these key findings of the cited report:

Spoiler :

^ Two screenshots of some of the key findings in this PDF. See what it says about the "rags to riches" tale of the American Dream, Family Background and Race.

.. but most of us actually live in something resembling a meritocracy.

So, does it resemble a meritocracy, as you offered? Or does it resemble something more like "the concentration of power in the hands of a social elite" definition of "elitism" that I offered previously? And can a meritocracy ever be achieved in large scale societies, especially in capitalist ones?

There is never a perfect playing field for competition. Power is always held in the hands of a few. And that power is generally denied to those not in the elite, whatever you wish to call them.

 

[Ecofarm]

In the same way, the Center for American Progress reports that "Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark.

That's kinda bunk.

France: VERY socialist
Germany: Socialist until recently
Canada: Socialist
Sweden: VERY socialist
Finland: ?
Norway: VERY socialist
Denmark?

Basically, to move from lower to middle class in those countries, you need like an extra 5 bucks per year. Big deal. Compare that to moving from lower to middle class in the US... big difference. Of course it is easier to change class in those countries - there's little difference between class. Massive wealth redistribution programs in little tiny 1st world countries tends to do that. All those countries combined are probably not 1/5th of the US population.

 

[Rambuchan]

Ecofarm: There is some evidence of social mobility and meritocracy in what I posted. It's never black and white, after all. But I'm not sure what you've targeted is the right bit or way of going about it. Anyway, it's a bit more interesting than people rolling out their mini-biogs at least. [edit: So we might as well stick this in the thread too:]

Social class

Most Americans would like to consider America as a merit-based society where individual effort and abilities determine how successful one will be in life (Johnson 2006: 150; Domhoff 2006: 200; Hochschild 1997: 18). The belief held by many Americans is that individuals themselves have the ability to choose their own destinies. Although the American Dream focuses on individualism and obtaining material, economic, and educational assets; evidence shows that hard work alone does not guarantee success, nor does merit alone determine a person's position in life. Johnson (2006) uses the working poor as an example of how some people work very hard and yet never achieve success.

Research has shown that social class is one factor that greatly impacts a person's privileges and advantages in life. "Class can shape, constrain, and mediate the development and expression of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, motives, traits, and symptoms" (Aries and Seider 2007: 138). In laymen's terms, the more money, wealth, or economic assets one obtains, the higher the class he or she will achieve. "Social class constrains the possibilities they [people] face and the decisions they make and it provides the possibilities and limits for his or her personal identity" (Aries and Seider 2007:138). Social class places people in different positions that either benefit or limit their advantages in pursuit of the American Dream. Poverty reduces opportunities and can greatly inhibit one's chances of success. Therefore, class greatly impacts the way people perceive and achieve the American Dream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_dream#Social_class

 

[luiz]

I guess old habits die hard.

So true, specially when I am not trying to change them.

Funny that.

But do you disagree?

Oh, so now you're a fan of the velvet glove?

I don't want to ban terms like "lower class" or "working class", but I think they are pretty inaccurate and shouldn't be the mainstream ones.

Why shouldn't we talk about things like symbolic capital, race, speech, culture, values, power relations and social exclusion? Isn't society and life about a bit more than how much money people earn? Also, what do you think it is about Brazilian society that has lead to you having such views?

Race doesn't exist. If you can tell anything about one's personality based of the color of his skin, you're a better man than I (yeah Aerosmith was on the radio just now )

Symbolic capital, I have no idea what you mean by that. Do they accept it in the shopping malls?

Speech is great, but what has it to do with class?

Values are individual traits not class traits. I find it a ridiculous notion that one's values are dictated by one's class; I don't want to rant but this is typical and vulgar deterministic marxism with no basis on reality. I say that my values may be more similar to those of a poor fisherman or those of a european prince then with those of another middle class fellow. Likewise, culture is much more related to location then class; my culture will be more similar with that of any carioca, regardless of the social class, then with that of someone from Yemen who is of my class.

Power relations and social exclusion have much more to do with cash than anything else. In our modern world it really doesn't matter where you come from, if you have enough cash you'll be accepted pretty much anywhere.

And I certainly think that there is much more to life than merely money, but there isn't more to class.

 

[luiz]

Nope, not necessarily. Your position is fanatical anti-commie over-reach. How is "working" substantially different to "labour" other than semantically? Yet "labour" never applies to doctors, does it. Despite the fact that doctors do, one could say, labour away for longer than many working class people.

Shock horror, common words have multiple senses, and workers/working has well-established sense of being applied in the manner it's being applied. When people talk about "workers" they ain't never talking about the boss. Yet the boss still has "work" to do, using another sense of the same word. Just like one can be a professional construction worker but never referred to as "a professional." Words have contexts!

The boss very much is a worker. Are bosses unemployed?
Furthermore it's not only bosses which are excluded from this "working class", but all sorts of workers in all sorts of positions. It makes no sense that they are not part of the working class.

And a professional construction worker would be refered to as profssional, I don't see how not.

The term is misinforming.

 

[germanicus12]

250K a year. Though most of it goes into savings, saving up to buy a house for me and my wife. Currently lives in apartment.

We have the house picked out, just need to pay the 400K downpayment by July 25th and the house is ours. Almost there.... just 100,000 more to go.
Any one want to donate?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

There is never a perfect playing field for competition. Power is always held in the hands of a few. And that power is generally denied to those not in the elite, whatever you wish to call them.

This paragraph is largely true, but don't forget that you get to mold the playing field too. You can have some power of your own if you are ambitious enough.

My earlier post was to point out that none of our current candiates for President was raised in anything resembling an upper class. Power may be denied to them, but they are taking it anyway. Just because the top gets really narrow doesn't mean there is no opportunity for these people to move into the leader class from another class.

 

[ummmm........]

According to the image for US social classes, I have a working class job with a lower middle class income and an upper middle class education. Go me!

 

[ComradeDavo]

That seems to be a contradiction to me since David Beckham is a typical example of a working class guy who happens to play football rather well. That he is now loaded didn't change his general mindset, culture or background.

Owning a bussiness in my mind also has nothing to do with class. People who own a porn movie production company are probably not considered upper class by upper class people.

To me upper class are the "patricians" of our times and often from families that have been "patricians" for a long time. These families tend to produce politicians, lawyers, judges, members of boards of international companies" etc. on regular basis. Often go to the same schools, universities are members of their own little clubs and practive their own sports (polo for instance).

You can achieve whatever you want in life, maybe even become prime minister but to those people with that upper class mindset, you will probably never be "their kind of people" just because of your background. In older times ofcourse it had to do with being of nobility.

You speak with logic, but as I saw I think in the UK celebrity as become part of the upper class, hence why I put people like David Beckham in that bracket. Perhaps it would be more sensiable to split the upper class into 2, those who are the modern nobles etc, and those who have become so but came from lower/working class roots.

In regards to buissness - I should have been more specific, I meant people such as those on the board of BT or Shell and so forth.

 

[Brighteye]

We get a lot of parvenus here in Oxford. I saw a couple of chaps playing table football for £50 yesterday, an ostentatious and vulgar display of wealth that some might say would not appeal to the upper or upper-middle classes.
And yet others would say that the ability to fling money around so freely, and the willingness to do so, is one of the defining features of those same classes.

Class is no longer as well-defined as it once was, with competing conceptions of class, depending on background and class.

 

[raketooy]

I live with my family and I would say that my family is, by income, upper middle or upper class, but our lifestyle is by no means snobbish or anything like that. Here in Finland you can't generally tell one's social class from the way s/he speaks etc and the incomes are quite equal, so we don't really care much about social classes here. It would be considered odd here to show off one's wealth.

 

[Bronx Warlord]

Upper middle class even with a mere E-5 income. BAH is a wonderful thing. Manage your money well, it is definately worth it.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Upper middle class even with a mere E-5 income. BAH is a wonderful thing. Manage your money well, it is definately worth it.

Appreciating rents is a great long term strategy. I wish non-military like me could get loans at a VA loan interest rate... that would be awesome. I'd be all over that.

 

[Bronx Warlord]

Appreciating rents is a great long term strategy. I wish non-military like me could get loans at a VA loan interest rate... that would be awesome. I'd be all over that.

The loans are nice, the education benifits of some states are really good too above and beyond the GI bill.