have you ever/do you try to pretend youre of a different class?

I know people who are privileged and try to "slum it" in an effort to be more "real" because they're useless, uncreative, spoiled pieces of shit who think living among the "lower class" will make them more relevant, even though they always have two independantly millionaire parent escape lines. Okay I am talking about one person, but boy is he dud. However, playing to a particular class for a real reason, like doing well at work, is less dud.

Yeah, what's it with trash talking rich rich kids?

I blame Mick Jagger

Well, I don't see anyone else smiling in here...

I know people who are privileged and try to "slum it" in an effort to be more "real" because they're useless, uncreative, spoiled pieces of shit

Haha you have just perfectly defined a moment at my (priviliged British private) school, around 15/16, when a good two dozen of my yearmates suddenly started sounding like extras from Oliver Twist. Twats.

In retrospect, that post fully did not need the level of vitriol it had.

I know people who are privileged and try to "slum it" in an effort to be more "real" because they're useless, uncreative, spoiled pieces of shit who think living among the "lower class" will make them more relevant, even though they always have two independantly millionaire parent escape lines.

maybe they think that because lower class people keep calling them useless, uncreative, spoiled pieces of shit

Err. Poor little rich kids? I'm not sure where you were going with that, sunny.

well if you write off every rich as "spoiled" and "useless" how can they correct that but to pretend they arent rich?

if i were rich id be SO spoiled and useless. i mean, thats the appealing part, right??

If your overall life satisfaction and self-definition doesn't involve anything resembling your productivity or creativity or contribution to, like, the world, omg, then I guess so.

who thought this thread was a good idea or interesting??

some middle class tosser no doubt. ;-)

British people

ah ok so british

LOL XP

if i were rich id be SO spoiled and useless. i mean, thats the appealing part, right??

-- sunny successor, Friday, 12 October 2007 18:07 (6 minutes ago) Link

I live for the day when I can be spoiled and useless*. I've worked/ done enough good in my life. I'm ready to live in a Corona commercial. with better beer, obv.

(*I am 98% kidding)

I don't know if this thread translates well to the US, where "class" as a set of mannerisms is far more fluid. There are lots of rich people with lowbrow tastes, and lots of poor people who appreciate culture and the arts.

ilx thinks it's so clever and classless and free

Isn't that the case in the UK too? I thought class wasn't totally connected to money there, whereas in the US you're kind of automatically upper class if you're rich and can be middle or lower class but very cultured.

Classless? FREE? U mad.

I think ILX is just freakin tired of talking it to death, esp cos everyone is just going to be defending his or her own background/actions from start to finish, and we've seen that movie already.

true

I want to sleep with common people.

The class system in Britain suffers from waaaayy too much reverb. In the USA there are far fewer reliable class signifiers. Speech patterns are frequently useless as a way to sort class in the US. Clothes often are, too. Supermodels on their days off wear t-shirts and jeans. Billionaires wear the same polo shirts as golfers on public links. Even that Rolex could be a knock-off, while genuine designer clothes could just mean a whopping huge credit card debt.

It would be fair enough to say that in the USA vast numbers of people are constantly pretending they are in a different class, so much so that the whole thing has become a shell game that no one presumes to understand any more.

Aimless, OTM, especially on the credit card thing.

Whoo. I know some Gucci credit having, Target paycheck getting motherfuckers.

All that "spending" gonna catch up.

The only time I still really think about this sort of thing is when I am (rarely) in an expensive restaurant. The most important factor in pretending to belong somewhere expensive is not one's manners or habits, but the casualness that comes from feeling you belong there. It's much more of a *giveaway* to fret over whether you're using the right fork than to use the wrong fork.

Sorry, even I find that post kind of annoying.

go head big baller

wait ,this thread isn't about D&D?

http://www.collider.com/uploads/imageGallery/Into_the_Wild/into_the_wild_movie_poster.jpg

I think I imagine myself to come off much more free-floating, class-wise, than I actually do.

i pretended once i was a bassit hound and i wnet HOWL HOWL

herro puppy

"Screenplay and directed by Sean Penn"

I remember when I first got to ILX (early 2003, I think?) , I assumed most people here were british, because class kept being brought up. Worst topic ever.

well if you write off every rich as "spoiled" and "useless" how can they correct that but to pretend they arent rich?

-- sunny successor, Friday, October 12, 2007 2:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

Note that I wasn't overgeneralizing, and know many interesting, creative jetsetters, and was going off on one particular person from my past who I'd rather not remember exists

I suspect Sunny will not be joining my Eat The Rich campaign.

I realized my self-image of class had shifted once I noticed that my idea of a resonably-priced restaurant shifted from $15 entrees to $30 entrees.

Perhaps your self-image just caught up with inflation?

I still think McDonalds needs to slash its value menu.

More like my self-image caught up with my promotions!

http://conservativlib.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/churchillcry3.jpg

I need to sell out.

I pretended I was getting into Criminal Justice once at a dinner party.

ilx: pure class!

once I faked a North London accent at a party. (I, like everyone there, am Canadian.) It went off without a hitch. Now, was I playing up my class (anyone who lives in London has to be able to afford to live in London, surely!), or down (I talked about how my "mate" got "merked" after a few drinks, and then told people that meant "laid")

I still don't think of $30 entrees as reasonable, unless it's a special occasion. I should probably worry less about that and more about what I spend on food on a daily basis tho.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Cartimandua4/bryanferry1.jpg

Ian OTM (about that time I pretended to be a rogue cleric)

i've told this story on ILX a zillion times and has fuck-all to do with class...

the first time i went to London, I was accused of faking my American accent as an exotic way to pull birds. it worked, but only after i showed my american drivers license and various paperwork.

Different class? Hell, I'd be happy if I had ANY class!

Steve, do you have really bad teeth and frotty skin?

Øystein OTM

All the Australians thought I had a Canadian accent.

(I was born and raised in Arkansas. ¯\(º_o)/¯ )

They were just trying to be nice.

The class system in Britain suffers from waaaayy too much reverb. In the USA there are far fewer reliable class signifiers. Speech patterns are frequently useless as a way to sort class in the US. Clothes often are, too. Supermodels on their days off wear t-shirts and jeans. Billionaires wear the same polo shirts as golfers on public links.

Is the implication here that supermodels are upper class, but look like working class people on their days off because they wear t-shirts and jeans? Because from a British perspective that doesn't make much sense. I don't think anyone would claim that Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell were upper class. It's not really got anything to do with how much money you end up making. Also, I don't really think jeans and t-shirts would signifiy anything much in terms of class.

Maybe they thought I was Levon Helm.

xp

Aimless, yes I look like Shane McGowan.

It"s hilarious to think that, like Nasty said, Kate Moss would be considered upper class. She's nouveau rich, certainly not upper class (nor even upper middle class). And surely Americans have such a thing as "old money" (and therefore upper class), you must be in denial to think otherwise.

Also, those who lament the fact that this thread was started: ever tried not clicking on it and move along to the next subject? I mean, sheesh, do you keep watching a television program you don't like and moan, moan, moan or do you change channels?

I think most people in America don't know anyone with "old money", esp if you're not from either coast (East more than West, I guess?). So that sort of oil baron lifestyle hold-over is more like a fairy tale to most people, something for the history books.

Basically everyone that the average American has ever heard of as "having money", ie being rich, is nouveau riche, or nearly.

I have to admit that, thanks to my parents, I've never had to do a shitty job, and I've always got a house of my own to fall back on... but all this is not without its drawbacks, in terms of sense of self etc. I'm not complaining, and some people envy me (understandably), but it's not straightforward.

and some people envy me (understandably)

ha ha, friends of yours?

Laurel: My friend was telling me about a trip he took to Georgia, where the old money is in the form of people passing down old estates. Thing is, the people they pass them to aren't rich, and they turn into these really beautiful old pits of squalor. He had a picture, which I can't find, of this giant house with a bunch of cheap air conditioning units sticking out of the windows.

Yeah, there were lumber fortunes and estates/plantations and so forth BACK IN THE DAY but most of that money has petered out already, sometimes a few generations ago. There's a GORGEOUS old out-of-print book called Ghosts Along the Hudson that's photos of abandoned estate houses on the river, now in varying stages of furnishing and repair. In some, the last aged inheritant died and no one could afford to take the place over, so every drapery, every settee is still in place, quietly moldering. God, what a book.

My parents house was a second home, a summer home for a Chicago family, and part of an estate...we've got the biggest chunk of the land & buildings now, and it's not very much -- and we're pretty solidly middle middle-class.

I don't know any poor or rich peeps

Considering the old houses: It's very much the same here. A lot of it is sold to nouveau riche, cause they can't afford to maintain it.

When I was in Atlanta I did visit friends of friends who had "old money." We drove for hours through fields which belonged to them. At first I had this kneejerk reaction (which I always had when confronted with old money), disliking the woman and considering her to be a terrible snob. Then I realized she had this sense of (false) confidence (which I lack). It reminded me (and the rest of my year) of being at this boarding school which consisted of old money/artistocracy. How they looked down upon us. It was sort of funny. It didn"t hurt me at all. Do I envy them? *shrug* Not at all. They have perks (money, good education,...) but they also have a set of "problems" (expectations,...).

I see poor and rich people every day in our shop. Some filthy rich - they really don't know what to do with their money - and then pisspoor people who would be happy with 1 procent of the former's wealth.

Americans are all closet Marxists. We consider the 'nouveau riche' are just as upper-class as the scions of the robber barons - it's all about wealth (which the nouveau riche generally have more of these days - between the Waltons and the dot-commers, most of our billionaires are recent 'fuck you rich').

The notion that millionaire Kate Moss isn't even 'upper-middle class' would puzzle most Americans.

must be her voice. same thing with Vic Beckham.

The notion that millionaire Kate Moss isn't even 'upper-middle class' would puzzle most Americans.

OTM

But that's not just because we believe economic class is the same thing as social class -- it's because our idea of the topmost social class includes a lot of stuff about fame and celebrity.

NB&S,

While I would agree with you that, in Britain, class distinctions are rigid enough that a tee-shirt and jeans would not signify much when placed beside the public-school education, the proper accent, the manor house and the right tie. But my point was that there are few, if any, such reliable signifiers here in the USA.

Sure, we have our old money, but they don't have an exclusive hold on any cultural signifiers or levers of power. They don't have identifiable accents. They don't have titles. They don't have schools from which the new-monied are excluded. Any upper class signifier you would care to name can belong to any class-bounding newcomer. You can't tell the old money from the new unless they make a point of wearing it on their sleeves and annouincing their old money status loudly and often, which as you know, old money recoils from.

So, there you are. The USA upper class, such as it is, must suffer all this in the quiet knowledge of their superiority, but outside their own territory, even they can't be sure who is in the club and who is not, unless they make inquiries.

(xp) perhaps. i think it might have more to do, though, with what's not a prerequisite to be in our topmost social class.

xpost - Wait, I feel like there's a better way to put that. It's true that Americans have somewhat less of a sense of "social class" than Brits, but it's not like the distinction isn't still there and understood. But our notion of an elite social class also isn't as much based on old manner or name -- it includes stuff like celebrity, general glamour, and educational or societal roles that wouldn't quite confer the same status in the UK (I don't think).

xpost - yes, Gabb, that's the perfect way to put it: we don't think about family / breeding / name, is probably the key

We consider the 'nouveau riche' are just as upper-class as the scions of the robber barons - it's all about wealth

yeah but Americans are entranced by them for different reasons; old money has the obvious mystique and the only thing that trumps it is the self-made go-getting thinkeroutsideoftheboxer dynamo wet dream. in both cases all but the most progressive among us secretly suspect financial status correlates almost directly with personal virtue on some level. it's not funny, we're soooo much more deluded than brits.

Aimless is pretty otm. while we're not free of signifiers here (even if there is a multiplicity of signifiers), a lot of our 'upper class' also eschews public attention as much as possible, and without a 'royal' frisson, they're too boring/non-idle for us to pay any attention to.

xpost

even they can't be sure who is in the club and who is not, unless they make inquiries.

They can look in the Social Register! I read about it in my sociology class. Most of us in the US aren't even aware that such a thing exists. (I certainly wasn't until I took the class).

yes, Gabb, that's the perfect way to put it: we don't think about family / breeding / name, is probably the key

well there are upper-classers in the US who do think and care about that stuff quite a bit, but almost no one else does, and there is no institutional culture to privilege what they care about

They don't have schools from which the new-monied are excluded.

Social Register == Burke's Peerage for the DAR set.

well no you can't buy your way in if you're a moron. in most cases.

The notion that millionaire Kate Moss isn't even 'upper-middle class' would puzzle most Americans.

it's a perfect example of british class at work. she may be a famous multimillionaire, but her grandparents kept a pub, so...

I keep thinking of old money as Lorelei's parents in Gilmore Girls.

I think the point is that the American upper-class is so upper-class that they might as well not exist.

I keep coming back to this:

yes, Gabb, that's the perfect way to put it: we don't think about family / breeding / name, is probably the key

... and I know it's completely, totally untrue but the people who care about it are so far removed from 95% of my social circle that, aside from controlling most of the country's wealth, their practical impact on my daily life is equivelant to the impact made by unicorns.

otm

US GDP - Per Capita (PPP): $44,000 (2006 Est.)
UK GDP - Per Capita (PPP): $31,800 (2006 Est.)

Well just to clarify, I mean "we" in a "whole of American culture" way, and the way I mean "breeding" is ... umm, not including race/ethnicity, not including your actual upbringing, etc. So basically meaning you can act however you can pull it off, and more or less nobody's gonna say "who is he kidding, his grandfather was a coal miner."

Way to stack the deck by discounting race in your assertion!

my daddy worked in a meeeeal

I don't think it's so unfair to kinda bracket that out when talking about "breeding" in the social-class way!

Gabbneb I don't even know what that means. Was it a Happy Meal?

My point is that excluding race neatly sidesteps the "acting white" phenomenon, which may be our country's purest form of class envy.

OTM

where is suzy?

Wait, Dan, I don't immediately follow -- can you explain?

(I was separating them more because, for instance, there are black elite social registries just as concerned with matters of breeding and lineage, but, you know, people who care a lot about race aren't exactly going to be impressed with them -- I just wanted to separate "class breeding" from actual racism.)

Oh wait, nevermind, I see what you're saying

Was it a Happy Meal?

http://archive.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/07/08/john_edwards/story.jpg

that's a silly point tho, i guess - labor pols like authenticity too

(multiple xpost) You see, in Britain I would say it's very much about your upbringing and background, rather than who you become as an adult. What kind of house did you grow up in? Did your parents own it outright, have a mortgage, rent it off the council? Did you go to a public school or a comprehensive? What kind of jobs did your parents do? What kind of education had they had? What kind of accent have you got? Where did you go on holiday? Possibly even things like choice of food / drink / TV channels & radio stations. All of this would count far more than whether you became a millionaire by winning the lottery at the age of 40, or lost everything you owned if your business failed or something.

Well, we shouldn't pretend that that stuff isn't relevant in the US -- it is, it's just that you have more leeway to get away from it. It's a big country, and if you can "pass" for having the manner of a different social class ... It's also a country where I think the cultural ideal is to come from nothing, get everything, but still retain the pose of a nothing-haver. Point out to a rich man that his father was a manual laborer and he has no education -- you're just complimenting his achievements.

But we're probably more interested in class in the sense of "glamour" than the sense of, like, gentry. There's something interesting in here, actually, about how a lot of the country probably got its introductions to what wealthy, glamorous urbanity might be like from Hollywood, which consisted so much of, umm, common, vulgar sorts elevated to the heights of glamour!

"When I worked in print we earned more than management, but we were still working class. It's what you know, who you identify with. People mistake affluence for class"

- retired London printworker, quote from Chumbawamba's Portraits of Anarchists book.

It's... who you identify with.

So, if I identify with Queen Elizabeth and Prince William, how does this affect my class identity?

ian riese-moraine ftw

he thought it was REALLY COOL to talk like a charles dickens era fancy boy british flapjack motherfucker. the famous quotes "SQUEE! CUDDLESTEIN MOUNTAIN!" were from his own totally serious and unironic posts. he talked about his mom ALOT and it turned out dude was from florida so it was like wtf.
-- chaki (chaki), Tuesday, September 19, 2006 5:01 PM (1 year ago)

thanks, we know

yeah, fuck those rubes who don't go to horace mann, amirite??

loool

gershy investigates gabbneb

As discussed above, class in America is based on how much money you make, and how much money your parents made to provide you with specific material advantages.

Even if your family has a thousand years of history, wealth in past generations in both Europe and the US, a cultural imprint on America, family with property and "important" cultural jobs in London, Paris, and Hong Kong, New England heiresses in the family circle, close friends in Oxford, Cambridge, and Reading in England, etc. etc., means nada. If you make lower middle class money, you're lower middle class. If you make upper class money, you're upper class. History, traditions, family culture don't mean a thing - what matters if you got a Lexus for your 16th birthday.

Since money doesn't pass down too long in the US, you'll probably find more "noble" middle class people than upper middle/upper class types. Of course, in the US it's a little easier to climb up the social chart just by sacrificing your life to make a lot of money.

Reading

wait what

Ah, the Didcot Set.

I think most people in America don't know anyone with "old money", esp if you're not from either coast (East more than West, I guess?). So that sort of oil baron lifestyle hold-over is more like a fairy tale to most people, something for the history books.

-- Laurel, Friday, 12 October 2007 20:51 (Yesterday) Link

i didn't know any "old money" until i went to fancy ivy league school. there, my friend J__ said, completely seriously, that she respected teachers, but could never be one because "that would be beneath us." (us = her family). swear to god she's an alright gal, though, just totally and utterly clueless and prone to kicking her foot into her mouth like a lot.

but yeah, to echo what burt said upthread: the only thing that matters to 99.9% of america is the color of your money. that being said, the "old boy" network is alive and well.

also, w/r/t old money: i have an old schoolmate that opted to go to my "less prestigious" ivy and not harvard, where his family's got names on buildings apparently. his pops and granddad were NOT pleased, nor have they been happy with his subsequent bumming around the west. he's lived out of the back of his truck for weeks at a time, lived very close to the margins, etc., but he still sounds patrician and will dress like he owns a volvo for the rest of his life.

i don't think most americans have any idea what class they are: the signifiers that work well in the UK to indicate one's economic strata are so muddied and complicated by racial, professional, geographic and educational concerns that any US conception of'class' doesn't exist in much of a meaningful way except for - say - the top/bottom 5% of the earning range.

eg. if you get a scholarship to a small new englandy liberal arts non-ivy school, take out cripplingly high loans to attend an ostensibly prestigious grad program, and work in a variety of careers (both 'high' and 'low'), perhaps drift cashless for a little but ... it's quite possible to feel entirely alien and phony in both rich and poor circumstances, in spite of the fact that you exist in them both in some kind of weird simultanaeity.

^^^^^ OTM

what class is overeducated/underemployed

I think most people in America don't know anyone with "old money"

I think most people in Britain don't know anyone who would be described as 'upper class'. They probably make up about 0.1% of the population.

If you make upper class money, you're upper class.

See, there's another difference, because I would say in Britain you only really become upper class by marrying into an upper class family. Also, I don't think upper class people 'make' money as such, they just live off their vast wealth.

the comment about $15 and $30 entrees just re-shifted my sense of class, haha - i started to feel very spoiled and entitled when i stopped freaking out about dinners over $10.

the only place i've even heard about "old money" in the us is from novels (specifically, jane haddam murder mysteries, in which half the characters are crazy rich main line people and the other half are armenian immigrants). even the people i'd been to college with who went to prep schools had parents who were lawyers or teachers at said prep schools, not "old money."

you shd visit providence

One of my best buddies in college was a 7th-generation legacy (along with his sister). He is currently a private-school teacher.

undereducated, underemployed represent

One of my favorite anecdotes about class:

Girl meets boy, through mutual acquaintances, at a bar in Portland.

She hails from a blue-collar, beer cans in the broke-down pick-up truck, rural Minnesotan family. He is East Coast old-money. She is a talented artist with a dynamic intellect, and swears and drinks like a sailor. He is a fifth-generation ivy-leaguer who sails.

They bond over erudite conversations about literature and music, but on the cab ride to his apartment he confesses that he initially had reservations about her. She inquires and he replies that, "The way you spoke, 'fuck this' and 'fuck that', I thought you were working class."

She loses her shit and is laughing so hard she can't talk through the tears. Upon regaining some composure, she says, "As opposed to what, leisure class?"

They get to his massive loft and he explains that he took a job at Microsoft because he wants to earn his living by, "working a real job."

He further explains that while he is finding his own way, in rebellion against his family, he has shed himself of most of his possessions in order to live a more austere, normal life. In his loft, there is only a desk, a mattress on the floor, and a grand piano.

Made uncomfortable once again by her hysterical laughter, he explains that there is nothing so simple and universal as music.

They became great friends, but, according to my friend, he never quite understood why she found him so amusing.

The comments above about class in the US remind me of a NYTimes article a while back on already super-exclusive resort hotels offering even more super-exclusive perks for the super-super-rich. An agent at one of the hotels was quoted saying something like, "I'll usually offer the perks to our more refined guests, for example if they have a platinum Master Card."

New money is the new old money.

I think in the US, the East Coast is much more fixated on wealth as signifier. On the West Coast, it's more individual and gluttonous and personal.

Oops. I didn't read Hurting's post. Maybe this is all the NYT.

where can i find seriously rich girl who aims marriage?

"I'll usually offer the perks to our more refined guests, for example if they have a platinum Master Card."

pish. you get stores closed down for your personal shopping when you have a black amex.

i dont get fluffy bears story.

FB's story is basically "lol stupid richie rich" which, in honesty, is never not funny.

my (mom's, and to a lesser extent my dad's) family is east coast "old money," but we have about as much money as every other upper-middle class suburban family out there, which is to say less than most "nouveau-riche" families

but which is also NOT to say that we're poor

just that being from a "name" family isnt a guarantor of wealth or anything; that being said, my grandparents have sort of attempted to willfully pass down all sorts of prep-school-WASP cultural behaviors

the ones that stuck mostly involve drinking heavily in the mid afternoon

dud: "but we have about as much money as every other upper-middle class suburban family out there"

as a canadian i think i am just allowed to remain confused about class

as a Canadian you're too polite to ever refer to class

I think most people in Britain don't know anyone who would be described as 'upper class'. They probably make up about 0.1% of the population.

It seems like British people LOVE talking about them though.

lol polite stereotype

kinda true tho

i am mostly amazed at people who own cars that are less than five years old and actually drive them all the time

and amazed that actors can become so rich and influential when, generalizing here, actors are srsly some of the most messed up narcissistic people out there

but i'm gonna go all anthony freakin robbins on this shit and say you are what you believe man and that's how you 'transcend' 'your class'
but at the same time then we're talking more about material wealth there and 'things' representing class, vs the 'aura' of class e.g. how someone with seemingly no possessions (lol grand piano in empty loft story) still remains upper class.

i mean what is class built on anyway? probably your ancestors dicking over people

Also, I don't think upper class people 'make' money as such, they just live off their vast wealth.

-- Nasty, Brutish & Short, Saturday, 13 October 2007 18:34 (Yesterday) Link

er, no.

there's a lot of mobility between the upper-middle class (would be called bourgeoisie in european countries) and 'aristocracy', it's how the latter (which is tiny) keeps going. idea of families going back to the norman conquest is total fallacy. it is always after new blood. the point (i'm paraphrasing) is the british 'bourgeoisie' as a result never had a distinct 'bourgeois' identity formed in distinction and against the aristos. (and arguably, up to a point, vice versa.) in france and germany this wasn't so much the case.

It seems like British people LOVE talking about them though.

nowhere near as much as working and middle

Is there a single genuine Brit aristo on ILE? I can't think of anyone who comes close.

Sunny, I made the story too long.

"I thought you were working class."

"As opposed to what, leisure class?"

Followed up by, "I want to live like normal people do with my grand piano and my fantastic loft, and my crappy mattress and no furniture."*

*not actually a quote

But, yeah, basically lol @ richie rich and his naivety.

My college kept a copy of the Social Register in the library and it was interesting to see that three out of 10 of the girls who lived on my hallway were in it. Not me, although my paternal grandfather's clan are namechecked as party guests in The Great Gatsby; one of our party at Frieze this week asked me if I was related to a woman sharing my surname who'd been photographed by Cecil Beaton - he claimed was the spit of me. Possibly, I'll have to check. I will say that the one branch of my family not to arrive on the turn of 19th and 20th centuries to the US arrived to colonies in 1620. Beat that, pilgrim!

Mark, I know one with the correct ancestors but who is not even a little bit Honourable (clue: it isn't me). I also grew up with a neighbour (English) who was at pains to explain what it meant to be UPPER CLASS, to wit - Americans don't understand the whole concept of 'posh' which is more about connections and education and manners than actual money.

All Americans in salaried employment and with a mortgage can and do claim 'middle class' status.

I have a friend who is somewhat of a hobo/gutterpunk type (to get back from the east coast to the midwest he hopped trains the whole way) despite his parents living in an upper-middle class suburb. But, that's nothing compared to some of the friends he's made while hanging around a lot of east coast ivy league towns.

I remember him dropping by with his friend who, apparently, was trying not to be too obvious because the last time he'd been in town he'd been busted stealing boots from Wal-Mart. Apparently this same friend also interned for McSw33ney's and had parents with a big old house in San Francisco.

http://uk.gizmodo.com/ricky%20gervais.jpg

^The upper class of Reading.

All Americans in salaried employment and with a mortgage can and do claim 'middle class' status.

-- suzy, Sunday, 14 October 2007 15:42 (35 minutes ago) Link

This is damned ignorant, and flat out wrong. As the current US housing credit crisis might suggest, the application/receipt of a mortgage line is/was basically available to anybody at all, including those that had no hope (/intention/chance oin hell) of repaying their commitment. While there's this historically-based aperception of 'home-owners' as somehow affluent, somehow more financially abled than their renting, temporary-housing counterparts -- it's a totally wrong idea. Adjustable rate mortgages, especially, are set to soar really soon and there are a lot of very valid non-alarmist predictions for a tsunami of foreclosures and looming evictions that'll result from the unscrupulous & poorly-considered mortgage programs that've been peddled for the past decade.

remy, that's not the point. Owning your own home, whether you can actually afford it or not, is a middle-class signifier. That's all I read into Suzy's statement.

if you've got a mortgage you can't pay, you don't own it.

and determining class by property 'signifiers' or whatever we'll call them in microecon 101, is a really clunky, imprecise, and antique way of deciding status.

well duh!

the cleaning lady at my old school, making +/- $27,000 annually and a buy-in health benefits program she couldn't afford to take advantage of, who supported 4 kids, held a mortgage on a 3-room broken-down condo in an otherwise empty building 20+ miles from work, lived off food-stamps and occasional alimony payments from her deadbeat ex-husband = suzy's description of middle class.

upper working class

bomb-shelter aristocracy

Basically, in America, 90% of the population thinks of themselves as middle class. When we try to define it, we define it by economic indexes. There are cultural signifiers of class in America, but they're very mixed up and muddled.

"I'll usually offer the perks to our more refined guests, for example if they have a platinum Master Card."

pish. you get stores closed down for your personal shopping when you have a black amex.

i dont get fluffy bears story.

-- sunny successor, Sunday, 14 October 2007 02:36 (15 hours ago) Link

Wait, I think "black amex" was the actual detail from the article - I was paraphrasing from memory.

http://www.gomog.com/images/Kingralph.jpg

'lineage' is bullshit, cf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_I_of_Great_Britain#Accession_in_Great_Britain

I know people who are privileged and try to "slum it" in an effort to be more "real" because they're useless, uncreative, spoiled pieces of shit who think living among the "lower class" will make them more relevant, even though they always have two independantly millionaire parent escape lines.

Oh come on, no one who lives around the Bedford stop is even fooling himself anymore.

Remy, the ad-hominem above was not only completely unneccessary, it was the kind of emotional response which kind of precludes any logic in your argument. But that's okay, I don't expect you to know everything or remember that I'm not a Britishes.

FB 'got' what I meant - home ownership, which normally you need salaried employment or a small business to qualify for, whether the result of a sub-prime mortgage or not, gives most Americans a kind of middle class signifier to point to and damn straight most of us are happy to do so. And DUH of course the bank owns the house until the mortgage is paid off.

I've always thought of it like this:

You have a mortgage - welcome to at lower middle class status, where if you are most Americans you are allergic to the term 'working class' and don't use it to describe self. You will probably never inherit anything from anyone. To be accurate you don't really like the 'lower' part either because you are aspirational.

You have a mortgage and a down-payment gift from parents (or inherited from a grandparent) because you are marrying and starting a family of your own - solid, middle-middle class, especially between the coasts where this is still more achievable.

You have a mortgage with a massive parental downpayment or your home is bought outright for you by a parent in the 'professions' as a shrewd investment regardless of whether or not you are fixing to breed - upper middle class.

This is really not difficult or controversial.

Yeah, everyone knows the Bedford stop is -the- new SoHo. I think you meant to say: Bushwick. Word from some private sources is that white kids are flooding the area like never before, and rents are skyrocketing as far out as the Jefferson and Dekalb stops.