Zonie63
Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
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quote:
ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1
When I was a kid, "working class" were those that did the manual and factory work and farmers, regardless of what they earned.
The "upper class" were those born, or bought into, the echelons of the aristocracy. Those people that had big mansions and acres of land and (usually) posh cars and fancy titles.
Everyone else, like office workers and managers etc, fitted into the "middle class". These people didn't do hard manual labour or 'dirty' work with their hands but didn't have posh titles either.
These days, "class" is a little harder to define.
We don't really have "titles" of that sort here in America, although we still seem to have our own skewed forms of "nobility" and "aristocracy." But "middle class" also can get defined in other ways, sometimes cultural as well. People might think of middle class as being the Average Joe, just a regular down-to-earth kind of guy who drinks beer, goes bowling, that sort of thing. Upper class people are more snooty and join yacht clubs and things like that. Upper class people go to fancy restaurants and have to wear fancy clothes, whereas middle class people can just go down to the mom-and-pop diner in t-shirt and jeans.
I don't know if it's a matter of actual income in some cases. Some people might be living well beyond their means in order to give the appearance of being "upper class." People want to "keep up with the Joneses," so to speak. While people aren't inclined to state their actual income, they still like to show off and impress their friends and neighbors. I don't know if that's a different form of class warfare or not.
If one is actually "born" into a particular class, that might create a different perception than under a system which purportedly allows greater class mobility. After all, if one is born into a lower class, then it's just a matter of the dice roll which doesn't reflect badly on the individual. In the US system, theoretically anyone can succeed and move up into the upper class by individual achievement and ingenuity. So, those in the upper class are clearly those who deserve to be there, while the same is said for those in the lower class. It's not due to luck, probability, birthright, or any other external factors, but simply due to the individual's own drive to succeed.
The real difference between "upper class" and "middle class" might be best summed up from this quote from the movie Goodfellas:
"For us to live any other way was nuts. Uh, to us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean they were suckers. They had no balls. If we wanted something we just took it. If anyone complained twice they got hit so bad, believe me, they never complained again"
In case anyone is wondering why some people are rich and a lot of people are poor, that's usually how it happens. All we do is find more sophisticated and elaborate ways of doing it, but it still turns out the same. But history has shown that there are times when the "goody-good" people actually do fight back and they may not even be that "goody-good" after a certain point.
< Message edited by Zonie63 -- 11/27/2014 11:36:55 AM >
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RE: Class Warfare - 
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