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Originally posted by leo:
Before the advent of credit cards, I would have said 'delayed gratification'.

And even then, working class people saved up to buy things.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Like everything else, there are going to be problems about attributing a values system to a large, and diverse, group of people. You either thin it down to an incredibly short list of values, probably poorly defined. Or, you end up with so many exceptions that the classification is meaningless.

And, that's assuming you can even define the group you're talking about. What, exactly, is the "middle class"? How do you decide if someone is in or out?

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Well that's what I'm trying to figure out.

There used to be fairly defined systems of class in many societies but lets stick to "British" or "Western" for the purposes of this example that might today be considered cliche.

Do the old cliches no longer hold? Are there new cliches that we might notice?

Is it only monetary wealth that now defines class? Are there new characteristics of such differences in monetary wealth that might be noticed?

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a theological scrapbook

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Originally posted by Boogie:
These sound like essay questions Evensong

I love 'middle class values' as I think they are what my parents had. Delayed gratification, saving for a rainy day, good manners, politeness, gentle ways, 'sensible' routines, clean house, tidy garden etc.

Of course I rebelled loudly against them at the time - but, as I age, I am beginning to see their value.

On the 'saving for a rainy day' front I am grateful I took this one on board. I always have money 'in case the roof falls in'. A few months ago the roof DID fall in (not an insurance job-pure wear and tear) - we needed a whole new roof - £10,000! Thank goodness for the rainy day fund, it will take a while to replenish.

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Originally posted by Evensong:
Some of my reading suggests delayed gratification is indeed a marker of a middle class - work hard for the future and it will pay off. And that lower classes aren't that interested in it.

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Originally posted by Boogie:

I love 'middle class values' as I think they are what my parents had. Delayed gratification, saving for a rainy day, good manners, politeness, gentle ways, 'sensible' routines, clean house, tidy garden etc.

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Originally posted by Anyuta:
There have been studies which show that (in the US) a vast majority of folks consider themselves middle class, including people who might reasonably be considered to fall into the lower or upper class bracket.

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Angaleena Presley’s excellent 2014 album American Middle Class suggests the complexity of how country music politics represent the limits of white political consciousness. How often do we see an album of any genre dedicated to dissecting class in any conscious way? Very rarely. So from a political perspective, this is already interesting. Songs like “Pain Pills,” “Grocery Store,” and “Knocked Up” tell well-crafted stories about the white working class that show great sympathy and sensitivity for everyday people.

But that her album is titled American Middle Class and not “American Working Class” says a great deal, for not even Presley can escape the divisive politics that undermine class solidarity in the United States. The album’s title track opens with Presley’s father, a Kentucky coal miner for thirty years, talking about life in the mines. He explains the hard work, how the companies “make thousands and thousands of dollars” while the workers get almost nothing. He closes by saying “It ain’t no life really.”

How on earth is a poor Kentucky coal miner middle class? The answer is that in this song, as in much of America, middle class actually means “white.” See how Presley frames her father’s words in the song:

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Now daddy can’t get his pension or Social Security
worked thirty damn years in a coal mine feeding welfare families
struggle hard and hide it well, you sure ain’t rich and you sure as hell ain’t poor enough to get one little break
’cause everything would collapse
without the hardworking God-loving members of the American middle class

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“Worked thirty damn years in a coal mine feeding welfare families.” This line says so much about the problems of class and racial solidarity in the United States. Of course Presley doesn’t mention race directly. No mainstream singer would in 2014. The politics of overt racial resentment are too toxic today. But the lightly obscured politics of race are as powerful as ever. “Welfare” mostly means “black people cashing their welfare checks while rolling up to the store in their Cadillac and then ordering a t-bone steak” has a decades-long history by now. It is worth noting of course that in much of the South there is also a white underclass that also receives the welfare stigma from society and she may well mean those people too, but there’s no way to define coal mining as a middle class job.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
]“Worked thirty damn years in a coal mine feeding welfare families.” This line says so much about the problems of class and racial solidarity in the United States. Of course Presley doesn’t mention race directly. No mainstream singer would in 2014. The politics of overt racial resentment are too toxic today. But the lightly obscured politics of race are as powerful as ever. “Welfare” mostly means “black people cashing their welfare checks while rolling up to the store in their Cadillac and then ordering a t-bone steak” has a decades-long history by now. It is worth noting of course that in much of the South there is also a white underclass that also receives the welfare stigma from society and she may well mean those people too, but there’s no way to define coal mining as a middle class job.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

Point is, it's easy to save 50p if you've got another 50p to spend, and feel you're being thrifty that you didn't spend the whole quid. It looks a bit different from the viewpoint of the poor bugger with only a tanner to his name. Thrift is a luxury of the well off, ironically.

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Originally posted by leo:
There's a set of charts here, according to which I am 'esrtablished middle class' becaue I am into cultural activities, mix with a broad range of people and worked in a traditional profession.

Though I'd be 'trad. working class' in that I own my own home.

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
If we're talking purely about income, the working class spend what they earn, the middle class save what they can, the upper class use their wealth to entrench their children's position at the top.

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Hmmm. Thrift as a middle class value? Of course, the middle classes never take foreign holidays or eat in restaurants, do they?

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Originally posted by Doublethink.:
They seem to have missed out the underclass.

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Originally posted by Boogie:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

Point is, it's easy to save 50p if you've got another 50p to spend, and feel you're being thrifty that you didn't spend the whole quid. It looks a bit different from the viewpoint of the poor bugger with only a tanner to his name. Thrift is a luxury of the well off, ironically.

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Not necessarily. My parents were truly poor for the first years of their marriage. My Dad was at college in London and able to send only ten bob a week home for Mum, his Mum and us 3 kids. Mum went to work at the local jam factory to put food on the table (unheard of in middle class 1950s) She was thrifty in a sense we never see today. She made string form old tights and rubber bands from old rubber gloves!

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Hmmm. Thrift as a middle class value? Of course, the middle classes never take foreign holidays or eat in restaurants, do they?

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Yeah, that was my thought as well.

Middle class to me suggests the sort of person who gets a new kitchen because the existing one doesn't have space for the Le Creuset okra peeler and goldenberry juicer set, and who would always choose filet de morue en croûte with hand cut rustic fries garnished with cyder vinegar and puréed petits pois in preference to fish, chips and mushy peas.

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Originally posted by North East Quine:


Children should be given safe names which have stood the test of time. Names of royalty are safe - George, Elizabeth, Henry, Charlotte, Charles, Anne.

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Originally posted by Galloping Granny:

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Originally posted by leo:
There's a set of charts here, according to which I am 'esrtablished middle class' becaue I am into cultural activities, mix with a broad range of people and worked in a traditional profession.

Though I'd be 'trad. working class' in that I own my own home.

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Is there a key somewhere to the graphics? For instance, do the two 'money' segments indicate assets and income? What about the two segments of the 'social' section?

GG

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Originally posted by leo:
Not that I can see.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The royal handler people looked very upset. No one is better than anyone else is the basic middle class value.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
In Canada and, to a growing extent in the UK. But not, as far as I can tell, in the US. Despite, no because of the myth of mobility, the wealthy are venerated at a level completely at odds with the proclaimed ethos.

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Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
While we use the term "middle class", the other terms upper and working class are not used. The wealthly typically were not in the prior generation. Education has been the key. Everyone aspires to send their children to post secondary education. Which is the main middle class value and key to upward mobility. Most of our educated elite was poor and rural farmers the prior generation.

This seems startling to some immigrants and visitors. I recall seeing Princess Margaret need to shake hands with a Native Elder at his invitation when he walked to her table at a banquet, greeted her "hello princess" and expected and received the usual handshake and conversation expected among equals in Saskatchewan. The royal handler people looked very upset. No one is better than anyone else is the basic middle class value.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
there's a much stronger feeling in the US that important, successful, people are cut a great deal more slack, that there's a feeling that because they are important and successful, they are let off being expected to behave like the rest of us.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Its very common to speak of people being wealthy - the word is rich.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
There were various expressions of public shock in the US about the way that the late Michael Jackson was the subject of quite a lot of mockery on this side of the Atlantic.

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Originally posted by Dave W.:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
There were various expressions of public shock in the US about the way that the late Michael Jackson was the subject of quite a lot of mockery on this side of the Atlantic.

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There were? This seems rather improbable to me, since (a) there was (and is) no shortage of mockery of MJ in the US, and (b) I don't believe Americans are particularly aware of or concerned about European attitudes towards US pop stars.

If such notions as this form any substantial part of the basis for your impression of US attitudes towards "important, successful, people" I would say that you have good reason to doubt the reliability of that impression.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I had the occasion to read a biography of Anthony Trollope this year. Both the Victorian author and his mother toured the US in their day, a generation apart, and both of them complained of a 'lack of deference.' Trollope himself described it as the attitude, from the guy carrying his suitcase, that portering luggage was just a job and did not make him a lesser person than a plump British writer. He found this vaguely offensive. Dickens, who claimed to be a very liberal and democratically-minded man, had high hopes of his visit to the US but discovered that he just couldn't tolerate the egalitarian attitude of the lower orders.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
[QUOTE] Given the stories about Princess Margaret's attitudes and manners, that's a pretty good story, which serves to counter some of the others. Well done her.

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