Who do you think's going to win the US presidential election?

[Barrister]

Like I've heard the stories of my parents growing up.  They grew up a couple block from each other in a very working class neighbourhood of Winnipeg - all within sight (and smell) of a meat-packing plant.  My maternal grandfather was crippled from polio and worked in a carpet warehouse.  My paternal grandfather was a drunk and frequently unemployed (plus my paternal grandmother died when my dad was young).

That deeply effected their upbringing, and in its own way, effected mine.  I'm very aware of inter-generational trauma.

But I'm a lawyer making a salary in the top tenth percentile.  If I told someone who truly was "working class" that I was working class I'd get a hearty scoff at best, a punch to the mouth at worst.

[Sheilbh]

But Josq says there a time limit (30 years of affluence at the upper limit) where one can no longer claim an original class. So at what point in time does one switch class?

Oh I'm with you on mainly seeing it as economic (although I think it maybe has something to do with your relationship to production...)

We also have a term for newly affluent. "New Money", I'm sure you have it too. Upper class cash with lower class vulgarity . But I'd never classify them as lower or middle class.

Right but it's not talking about new money or vulgarity really - if anything the opposite. Because they're both kind of trying to be something they're not.

It's more like codeswitching - so you may earn more but you've not changed your culture, your identity, your accent, your worldview. Which in previous generations you would have changed - that was part of social mobility. Although I am dubious on how true this is now and I think it's often more another type of performance - and reflects how our society is now.

I'm not even sure how true it was in the past when there was an actual upper class that was difficult to break into - David Edgerton is good on this and how there wasn't that strong divide between the upper class and trade that we think. The classic historic example was the factory owner who would always be from trade no matter how rich and titled he became, but could by buying the country house, the estate and sending his son to private school move him up the ladder. But as I say David Edgerton very strongly undermines that stereotype.

But I'm a lawyer making a salary in the top tenth percentile.  If I told someone who truly was "working class" that I was working class I'd get a hearty scoff at best, a punch to the mouth at worst.

I think you would in the UK too and it's 99% people uncomfortable with becoming middle class. Sometimes I think because it slides into regional identities but also I think because they don't want to feel a distance from where they came from (and, quite possibly other parts of their family) - but I think actual working class people would react in exactly the same way.

[Grey Fox]

My father grew up in a rented apartment that was bulldozed to make room for a bridge where he use newspaper for toilet paper.

I grew up in a suburban house that still exists where I had regular toilet.

In Britain, what's my class?

[HisMajestyBOB]

I can kinda see Josq's point. If Lord Largebottom is destitute or Charles III needs to start selling off islands to creditors, they would still be members of the upper class aristocracy because of their birth. George McDirteater who was born to a long line of chamber pot cleaners, on the other hand, will always be "lower class" in the minds of the gentry, even if he has more wealth than the rest of the country combined.
At least that's what it looks like from my American perspective. 

[Admiral Yi]

I think Shelf touched on something when he mentioned regionalism.  Would a first generation member of the white collar class from Yorkshire react the same as a person from Essex?  The guy from Yorkshire has an unemployed uncle who's drinking himself to death so still internalizes grievance.  Does Essex girl have the same thing?  I get the vague impression Thatcherism was very good for cockneys.

[Josquius]

I can kinda see Josq's point. If Lord Largebottom is destitute or Charles III needs to start selling off islands to creditors, they would still be members of the upper class aristocracy because of their birth. George McDirteater who was born to a long line of chamber pot cleaners, on the other hand, will always be "lower class" in the minds of the gentry, even if he has more wealth than the rest of the country combined.
At least that's what it looks like from my American perspective. 

A big part of it yes. Though that's more tradition than the key factor these days.
These days it'd be more in the words of our lord JC.

Oh, rent a flat above a shop
And cut your hair and get a job
And smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what ever common people do
Never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view

If Lord Largebottom falls on hard times then he just has to call his old pal Charlie from school and he'll put him up in his Kensington flat- it'd be slumming it but one must get by.

Brand new money George (more likely Jenson or the like. George is a pretty posh name) puts it all on Tesla then the inevitable happens however....then he's fucked. He doesn't have this safety net.

I think Shelf touched on something when he mentioned regionalism.  Would a first generation member of the white collar class from Yorkshire react the same as a person from Essex?  The guy from Yorkshire has an unemployed uncle who's drinking himself to death so still internalizes grievance.  Does Essex girl have the same thing?  I get the vague impression Thatcherism was very good for cockneys.

You still get wealthy people down there claiming to be working class. I get the impression its a big part of cockney identity- see Alan Sugar for instance, host of the British version of the apprentice. A pretty successful and wealthy businessman who still identifies as working class.

I think this is on average more of a male thing though, stereotypical Essex Girls absolutely do dream of selling out.
Perhaps part of the whole toxic gender roles thing where the boys are raised on the idea of working hard and making a good life whilst these girls are taught to just marry a footballer?

But Josq says there a time limit (30 years of affluence at the upper limit) where one can no longer claim an original class. So at what point in time does one switch class?

We also have a term for newly affluent. "New Money", I'm sure you have it too. Upper class cash with lower class vulgarity . But I'd never classify them as lower or middle class.

Like most things there's no strict "rules". Its largely about self-identity.

With Bezos it was less about the 30 years as a random number plucked out of the air than that being half his life.
If you've lived half your life as a mil/billionaire and are claiming to be working class, that obviously looks like a very dubious claim indeed.
The more money you have and for longer the more your attitudes drift- I notice this myself as time goes by in stable employment the habits from when I had nothing are increasingly overcome (for positive and for negative).
Though money is such a small part of the equation. Loads of traditionally middle class jobs don't earn very good money at all whilst quite famously archetypical working class jobs such as plumbers can earn great money.
You've also got factors coming in like postcode, hobbies, the company you keep, and so on; see where Cameron and Sunak got their football supporting credentials questioned.

I think you would in the UK too and it's 99% people uncomfortable with becoming middle class. Sometimes I think because it slides into regional identities but also I think because they don't want to feel a distance from where they came from (and, quite possibly other parts of their family) - but I think actual working class people would react in exactly the same way.

It depends who these poor working class people are.
If they're fully bought into the modern Trumpy nonsense then absolutely. In the UK they really make this huge active effort to claim working class identity for themselves and anyone else is an imposter. The second somebody steps foot in university they're out of the club (unless they're a fascist, then thats fine). It helps to dismiss people who can provably think when one of their core tactics being to dismiss anyone who actually thinks as being metropolitan liberal elites.
More traditional working class people though would accept it with more of a "good on you managing to make it"

[crazy canuck]

I think I have retained a lot of the values I  had before I had money, even though I have spent more than half my life with money.

What has dramatically changed is my level of comfort and security.  That is why I would never call myself working class.  Not because I want to have a different identity now, but because I know how much of a struggle it is not to have money.

It may be that what you are trying to say is just that.  It's difficult to forget the time in your life when you didn't have money?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I have no idea what class I am, I used to be very poor (two meals a day poor) and now I'm wll-off. But I do remember what it was like, which many/most people with this level of wealth have not even experienced. So, it is a bit curious, as I get better-off I have started moving further back to the left. Also it has become obvious that once one has a certain amount of money making more is very easy, and as you get more it gets even easier. The always well off like to think they somehow earned it all through merit, I now think it is largely luck.

[crazy canuck]

Here is a case in point of the Dems needing to get back to their core constituents and stop being the party of the educated elite.

From the NYT

It's not always fun to say I told you so.

For two years, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from a rural, red district in Washington State, has been criticizing her party for being too dismissive of working-class voters.

Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, 36, who owns an auto shop now run by her husband, has angered progressives for sometimes crossing party lines, like when she voted with Republicans to repeal President Biden's student loan forgiveness initiative. She argued that it didn't do much for her district, where most people don't have college degrees.

From her interview

The fundamental mistake people make is condescension. A lot of elected officials get calloused to the ways that they're disrespecting people.

People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.

It's a lengthy interview and I highly recommend it.

Gifted link

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/us/politics/marie-gluesenkamp-perez-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YU4.Tsr4.ZwLWgr-36bjf&smid=url-share

[crazy canuck]

I have no idea what class I am, I used to be very poor (two meals a day poor) and now I'm wll-off. But I do remember what it was like, which many/most people with this level of wealth have not even experienced. So, it is a bit curious, as I get better-off I have started moving further back to the left. Also it has become obvious that once one has a certain amount of money making more is very easy, and as you get more it gets even easier. The always well off like to think they somehow earned it all through merit, I now think it is largely luck.

Amen brother 

[garbon]

Here is a case in point of the Dems needing to get back to their core constituents and stop being the party of the educated elite.

From the NYT

It's not always fun to say I told you so.

For two years, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from a rural, red district in Washington State, has been criticizing her party for being too dismissive of working-class voters.

Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, 36, who owns an auto shop now run by her husband, has angered progressives for sometimes crossing party lines, like when she voted with Republicans to repeal President Biden's student loan forgiveness initiative. She argued that it didn't do much for her district, where most people don't have college degrees.

From her interview

The fundamental mistake people make is condescension. A lot of elected officials get calloused to the ways that they're disrespecting people.

People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.

It's a lengthy interview and I highly recommend it.

Gifted link

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/us/politics/marie-gluesenkamp-perez-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YU4.Tsr4.ZwLWgr-36bjf&smid=url-share

Of course from those blurbs it sounds like she is worthy of contempt.

But also no evidence she was talked down to.

[crazy canuck]

What do you find worthy of contempt?

[garbon]

What do you find worthy of contempt?

"I'm a pig who only likes it when politicians are giving me enough free money, not other people."

[crazy canuck]

So let's dig into that. Should the state be subsidizing people who are highly educated and will go on to earn high incomes, or those who are working class.

The Dems' policies spoke to the former and not the latter. That is the point.

[frunk]

It's worth noting that the Democrats did not control congress, so the extent to which they could do anything for anybody was almost nothing.