What Social Class Do You Belong To?

What class are you? Upper class? Middle class? Working class? Are you part of the "under-class"?What do these things even mean?The other day my father accused me of being middle class. Now I suspect that to our American cousins the idea of being "accused" of being middle class sounds rather weird because (as I understand it) in the US the term "middle class" refers to pretty much everyone who isn't either a member of the much maligned 1% at the top or some sort of ghetto gang-banger at the bottom.But here in the UK the term "middle class" has all sorts of other connotations.So I wondered - What class do you think you are and what is it that qualifies one as belonging to a particular social class?

I guess that all depends on which yardstick you happen to be using.Some are pretty easy to quantify; income, height, weight, position in a hierarchy, eye color, sex; others less easy, education, knowledge, wisdom, empathy; still others change depending on milieu.

I consider myself to be working class mainly because I work in the construction industry, after everything is said and done, blueprints read, job laid out, materials purchased ect.... I still have to use my hands and tools to complete my job. My experience and skill using tools is probably almost as important as my knowledge of building codes, print reading ect... Edited by fearandloathing, : spelling

I reckon it's more complicated than that now - the three class structure was pre 1950s. The 60s allowed more of a meritocracy to develop which confuses things. For example, my background is working class, my mind set is working class but my income and education would put me, well, beyond working class.Similarly, much of the old upper class are knackered; they're living off 19th century inheritance in country mansions that are bleeding them dry.And the traditional working classes don't exist anymore; the factories and mines have closed and been replaced by MacJobs and benefits - there's no pride in being poor if there's no community to make you feel better about it.

During World War Two, which at that time was called, "the war," the Canadian Army spent a lot of time hanging around Britain and, being Canadian, they naturally gravitated toward the beer.Apparently, the British had a quaint custom whereby the officers, who tended to be of a higher class, stood at the bar while the enlisted men, who tended to be of the lower classes, sat at tables and had to go up to the bar to get their drinks.The Canadians, never missing a chance to exhibit their ingenuity (and laziness) soon figured out that the service was better at the bar, so they elbowed their way in amongst their "betters", the officers.I'm not sure how the British reacted but during bombing raids, some supposedly complained that the Germans were doing, "almost as much damage as the Canadians."So anyway, my class is Canadian.Edited by ringo, : Added a comma for clarity.

I used to be middle middle class, with comfortable income, setting money aside for retirement.Now I'm retired and some of those comfortably accumulated retirement funds have been scraped out of my accounts by the Wall Street Bandits.In the "new reality" it seems that if you are not on welfare then you are middle class.Enjoy.

I'm in the "Cool" class. It doesn't have much to do with economics. There's just some weird cool factor and either you have it or you don't. My best friend and I noticed it many years ago when we would meet at dragonfly conferences. There were a group of younger entomologists who wanted to hang out with us. Over the years our "crew" became about a dozen or so people who wanted to go where we went in the field and to dinner, at evening discussions in rooms where we talked about biology, entomology, evolution, etc. And of course drink beer!

Mammalia.

I suppose by income I am pretty firmly in the middle class. However, because I am self employed I have managed to reduce the # of hours that I work down to about 1000/yr. As I value my time way more than I value my money I consider myself to be far better off than someone earning $250k/yr who has no time to smell the roses. At the same time, I know some people who would be considered below the poverty line but who live a life of nearly complete freedom. Bob lives in the mountains on Vancouver Island in a cabin that he built for himself. He eats rice and potatoes and fish and walks were he needs to go. His time is almost completely free.Also, I like to remember the fact that I probably have a better standard of living than most of the kings of history.

I guess I belong to the class of people who don't pay any attention to class stratification.

I don't have the money to buy off politicians, so in the USA I guess that makes me an untouchable.

I have been told I have no class so in my case it is difficult to tell. I'm curious as to what those other connotations are.

While able to save a little, we are otherwise living from wage to wage with a few niceties here and there. So I'm working class, white collar. I aspire to the middle class, but I don't want to become one of them. As with all connotations, it's difficult to really pin them down. this 'spoof' article might give you a picture:

quote:

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What was once simply called the "Middle Class", is now known as the "Middle-Middle Class". This group no longer has its own identity and heritage, but is now sandwiched between the two new groups of Upper and Lower Middle Class (obviously that's "sandwiched" with the crusts cut off, sliced into triangles, and with the proper sized cup of tea available - milk in first.) The Middle-Middle Class retains its aura of weary patience, owning of Ford Mondeos and its insistence on Doing The Right Thing, even when that thing is pointless and outdated.

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All Middle-Middle Class people live in Surrey, causing a problem of over-population there which is such a shame because its such its such a nice neighbourhood, and a serious shortage of ironing ladies. The dangerous terrain of Surrey means that they need to drive four by fours in order to ensure Felicity gets safely to ballet classes, and little Tobias to his Bright Baby Group. Middle-Middle Class people know that these are the important things in life. The up-coming generation is the future. Although, admittedly, that future will be just as pointless and outdated as the present.

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Education actually counts for a lot less than you might otherwise think in the middle-middle class. Literacy is measured by the amount of outrage expressed whilst reading a copy of the Daily Mail. Productivity is measured in the amount of other sections, sub-sections, micro-sub-sections, sub-micro-sections and sub-micro-sub-micro-sub-sections of society that are "threatening" what the middle-middle class refer to as "the traditional British way of life" (referring to the aspirational existence shown in repeats of Jeeves & Wooster.)

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Pushily aspirational. Overly obsessed with house prices, living in the right area, getting kids into the right school and that sort of thing. Overly conventional. A bit dull. Either hand wringingly liberal or self-righteously conservative. Polite to the point of ineffectual. A bit obsessed with the minutae of social mobility because there is neither the drive to "get out" that the working class are supposed to display or the presumed-right-to-rule of the upper classes. Being middle class suggests a life of routine commuting from the suburbs into the city to work in a rather dull office. Knowing exactly which train to catch each day (the 7:47 from Paddington) in order to both get to work on time and give one-self the best chance of getting a seat. Living a materially comfortable but rather uninspired existence.Something like that.........

To this day some British pubs have a "public bar" and a "saloon bar". Although the old distinctions of the saloon bar being middle class in the sense of being carpeted with chairs and tables and slightly higher prices whilst the public bar was more spit and saw-dust have pretty much vanished. These days the "saloon bar" is more where people eat rather than just drink.So is Canada a classless society then?