Social Class in America: Three Ladder System

[Ed Anger]

I don't fit into any of his classifications. Fuck all bloggers.

[crazy canuck]

It does leave out one thing that Church outlined and which resonated with me as well. One of the keys, I thought, of the ladder system was that of values.

For the labour ladder the notion of success was tied to and derived from doing more work, basically. If you recall, he posited the pinnacle of the labour ladder to be someone who's running a successful plumbing business or restaurant or series of same. He's the guy who learned to be a plumber, worked hard, was smart, and now he's got a large plumbing business that services the whole state or whatever.

Contrast that to the pinnacle of success he posits for his gentry class - Jon Stewart (or Rush Limbaugh, to pick someone on the other side of the political spectrum); there the ideal is to generate value from ideas, advancement, and/or culture.

Finally the pinnacle of the Elite class is to exercise control, where the specifics of what is being controlled is less germane than the control itself.

I think the tension between these different value values (ahem) describe and explain a lot of the conflicts we see across the American landscape (and elsewhere as well), and I think that's interesting. Perhaps it's a mistake to attach them to class definitions though...

That is actually where I disagree with him most.  Success in any field is generally tied to doing more work - either generating it and doing it; generating it and giving it to others to do; or doing the work generated by others.  All of that takes time and effort although Church seems to think that the only people who "work" are his labour class.  Most everyone in each of his other categories - with the exception of his E1s and perhaps a lot of E2s necessarily need to produce work of one sort or another.  Its just that some people are better at marketing their work or are fortunate enough to do work which is highly remunerative.

[Malthus]

There's a small underclass and a small upper class.  But a large majority of us are in a big squishy middle (effectively classless), despite all the OMG THE MIDDLE CLASS IS DIEING rhetoric we hear.

Mmm.. not if you listen to most statistics. There's a pretty good chunk of the population that are below povery level. I think it's at around 15% now. That doesn't include those who are just above that level, barely scraping by.

That's a pretty high number, especially compared to recent history. The Middle Class is shrinking.

I think there is a very, very large difference between the poor and the underclass that you are missing.

The poor might be poor, but their social class and culture allow them to have a reasonable shot of becoming not poor, and it isn't generational. Their kids might be poor, but might not, and have a pretty decent opportunity to become not poor if they have a reasonable amount of intelligence/ambition/hard work, etc.,

Being poor sucks, but it isn't any kind of permanent sentence.

The underclass in America are the poor who for a variety of reasons are generational poor. They are poor, and quite likely their kids will be poor as well, because their social "class" is one that lacks the very things that give mobility to other poor Americans. Familial stability, appreciation for and access to education, etc., etc.

I agree with all of that, of course, but I have another point to debate, and it is this: that the average costs of both being "not-poor" (in terms of perceived necessities of life) and having enough money to ensure your kids have all they need to be not-poor as well, and in addition having sufficient cash to retire on, is rising faster than the average income; and that this is harming generational social mobility for people who are not in the 'underclass'.

[Jacob]

No, you probably don't, Seedy.

Believe it or not, there were no insinuations intended.

I expect that when you speak of the resentful, self-defeating underclass you're thinking of the people Church described as generationally poor and third-generation unemployed, no?

but who do you mean when you say snobby elites?

Those with extreme generational wealth.  I have to admit I don't know them very well.

Okay yeah... so the 0.01% or even 0.001%. Just checking, because I thought you might be throwing some liberal ivory tower snobs into that category as well, but evidently you didn't

[Jacob]

The underclass in America are the poor who for a variety of reasons are generational poor. They are poor, and quite likely their kids will be poor as well, because their social "class" is one that lacks the very things that give mobility to other poor Americans. Familial stability, appreciation for and access to education, etc., etc.

Those were the people I thought you meant, derspiess.

[crazy canuck]

I agree with all of that, of course, but I have another point to debate, and it is this: that the average costs of both being "not-poor" (in terms of perceived necessities of life) and having enough money to ensure your kids have all they need to be not-poor as well, and in addition having sufficient cash to retire on, is rising faster than the average income; and that this is harming generational social mobility for people who are not in the 'underclass'.

Yeah, when I look at my own social and economic mobility and reflect on how hard it would be for me to do the same thing in todays enviornment, it makes me shudder.

[MadImmortalMan]

I dunno cc. One thing that has really struck me as I "grew up" was that all that stuff people tell you about how if you play by the rules and do all the things you're supposed to do you'll be successful is just garbage. Or a mundane definition of success. I'd say that as a general rule, life does not reward work. It rewards risk.



Sure working hard your whole life might earn you a fine living of an average type and a happy retirement, but that doesn't get you to the pinnacle of any so-called ladder you might be on. That plumber who built a statewide plumbing business took risks to get that. He threw himself on the tracks and risked being a great big failure. Maybe he did fail the first time or the first ten times. That's not unusual. When you play it safe, you wall yourself off from both ends of the bell curve, but you can't open the right side without opening the left as well, if you know what I mean.

[crazy canuck]

Not sure why you assume there is not a bell curve for hard work?  My observation is that a lot of people do what they need to do but not much more.  It is those people that do extra that tend to get ahead.

The smart money actually does the opposite.  The smart money tries to limit risk.  Simply saying one needs to engage in risky behaviour to be successful misses the main component of being successful.  Hard work. 

[Ed Anger]

Break your leg at work and get a 7 figure settlement.

PROFIT

[Malthus]

I dunno cc. One thing that has really struck me as I "grew up" was that all that stuff people tell you about how if you play by the rules and do all the things you're supposed to do you'll be successful is just garbage. Or a mundane definition of success. I'd say that as a general rule, life does not reward work. It rewards risk.



Sure working hard your whole life might earn you a fine living of an average type and a happy retirement, but that doesn't get you to the pinnacle of any so-called ladder you might be on. That plumber who built a statewide plumbing business took risks to get that. He threw himself on the tracks and risked being a great big failure. Maybe he did fail the first time or the first ten times. That's not unusual. When you play it safe, you wall yourself off from both ends of the bell curve, but you can't open the right side without opening the left as well, if you know what I mean.

Success has a number of different components - hard work, smarts, luck, skill, risk-taking. The proportions vary of course.

In certain careers success is not defined all *that* much by risk. In general, the professions are not "about" risk as much as (say) investing is. A person who wants to become a heart surgeon isn't going to get there by risk-taking as much as by skill, hard work, smarts and luck.

[crazy canuck]

Break your leg at work and get a 7 figure settlement.

PROFIT

I would counsel against that kind of risk taking

[CountDeMoney]

Break your leg at work and get a 7 figure settlement.

PROFIT

I would counsel against that kind of risk taking

Speak for yourself, pal.

[Ed Anger]

It was only 7 months of agony.

[Malthus]

I agree with all of that, of course, but I have another point to debate, and it is this: that the average costs of both being "not-poor" (in terms of perceived necessities of life) and having enough money to ensure your kids have all they need to be not-poor as well, and in addition having sufficient cash to retire on, is rising faster than the average income; and that this is harming generational social mobility for people who are not in the 'underclass'.

Yeah, when I look at my own social and economic mobility and reflect on how hard it would be for me to do the same thing in todays enviornment, it makes me shudder.

Yeah, us poor folks did pretty good. 

[Ducks, runs for cover  ]

[crazy canuck]

Break your leg at work and get a 7 figure settlement.

PROFIT

I would counsel against that kind of risk taking

Speak for yourself, pal.

Ok, you can counsel people to take that risk - then you can pay out part of the settlment