It's so hard to think about class in the United States

[firecat]

snippy posted about an interactive feature on CNN.com that attempts to determine whether you, a person residing in the US, can correctly identify whether you count as "middle-class."

Here is the gist of the comment I left over at snippy's post:

Income is not a great gauge of class by itself. Net worth matters a LOT.

Have you read The Millionaire Next Door? One of the main themes is that some professionals with high incomes believe that appearing wealthy is an important part of their professional reputation. So they have big houses, expensive cars and clothes, and are deep in debt. Some rich people think it's important to save money, so they have lots of assets but they don't live in fancy houses, drive beat-up cars, etc. (The book is rather simplistic in its judgements but I agree that those patterns exist.)

Those rich folks and professionals might have similar gross incomes. But are they the same class?

They are defining "middle class" where I live as a household income of $68,420—$107,815.

They're counting it as the middle fifth of income, which means they're assuming five classes. One wonders what the results would be like if they took the middle third of income (I suspect the results would be more boring, although I'm sure some people would define themselves as middle class when they aren't in the middle third of income).

Comments

[johnpalmer]

I've heard it said that in the UK (and maybe other parts of England Europe - damned E confuses me all the time!) a professor is "upper class" but might have a pauper's income. Not sure if I have it right.

I do know that there's a concept of "working class" which most of "middle class" America belongs to.

[spiralsheep]

In England a professor would be socially upper/lower middle class from their job, regardless of income, but might have come from a working class or upper class background and might retain some social "class" or "status" markers from that background in addition to their employment markers (Oxbridge or redbrick university?). Some social markers are generally more influential than others while some markers are situation specific. Which partly explains why class in England is such a minefield and causes social tensions in many ways, personal and societal.

[johnpalmer]

Fair enough; I'd heard (as I said) that a professorship was (and maybe "was" as in, past tense!) a higher status/"upper class" job.

But that's an interesting point - that there are so many conflicting class markers.

I mean, they exist here, too... but I think since they're not admitted to, they're even trickier to spot.