What do you consider middle class?

[pinkytoe]

I wonder where higher education fits into the term.

[ToomuchStuff]

I wonder where higher education fits into the term.

In the debt category!

So if no "higher education", does that make plumbers, electricians, assembly line workers, etc. not middle class?

[iris lilies]

In the debt category!

So if no "higher education", does that make plumbers, electricians, assembly line workers, etc. not middle class?

Traditionally this is working class, which does not address the income or wealth these household have.

My richest uncle was the plumber.

[ToomuchStuff]

Traditionally this is working class, which does not address the income or wealth these household have.

My richest uncle was the plumber.

Working class is middle class. Not having a job would have put you either in the poor or richest classes, depending on means.

[early morning]

Working class is middle class

Again - depends on how one uses/interprets those terms. I grew up with blue collar work = working class, white collar work = middle class - even though incomes and allocation of resources could vary widely within those groups. Class can be more than economics - I think we all know a few hi-income and or family money people who have no class at all.

[Tradd]

Again - depends on how one uses/interprets those terms. I grew up with blue collar work = working class, white collar work = middle class - even though incomes and allocation of resources could vary widely within those groups. Class can be more than economics - I think we all know a few hi-income and or family money people who have no class at all.

And then the people who are white trash regardless of how much money they eventually have. I have relatives like this. My father’s sister and brother. And my brother.

I’ve used white trash for years. I picked it up from reading Gone with the Wind in 6th grade. And it definitely fits these people.

[early morning]

Lol, Tradd - I'm related to some major white trash myself.

[LDAHL]

I don’t think class, whether in the Marxist or social sense, has much explanatory power in the US. It’s just a muddle of various forms of status-seeking.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Who cares about status? I care about paying bills, having an okayish standard of living, having savings, and being able to buy a few things I don't absolutely need because I want them. That requires at least a middle class income pretty much though.

[catherine]

Jocular guideline:

If you rent your furniture, you are lower-class.
If you buy your own furniture, you are middle-class or new money.
If you have ancestral furniture, you are comfortably upper-class, even if you are poor.

Perhaps of interest:

"Class: A Guide Through the American Status System", Paul Fussell

"Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There", David Brooks

"White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America", Nancy Isenberg

"The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die", Keith Payne

"Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis", Robert D. Putnam

"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America", Barbara Ehrenreich

"The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class", Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

"People Like Us: Social Class in America", Charles Murray

"Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams", Alfred Lubrano

"Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling", L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy

"Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right", Arlie Russell Hochschild

"Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City", Matthew Desmond

Interesting reading list. I've read a couple of those books. Paul Russell's book is discussed in this New Yorker piece about, not middle class, but the ruling class:. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...fkgsCZLWFH5m4c