[XXXNoahXXX]

[ QUOTE ]
in USA, i think there are so few "aristocratic" families historically that here the difference isnt so much you family lineage but how much you earn and how much you spend.

[/ QUOTE ]


Yeah, obviously it helps if your name is Rockefeller, but this is true.

My mother grew up lower/middle class and my father grew up lower class. I grew up middle class.

How I define these:

Mother- Never had any money, never took vacations except MA->RI, but lived in a little house in small town.

Father- Lived in housing projects and lived on gov't food stamps, etc.

Me- We took some vacations, I owned video game systems, dressed in decent clothes, played youth soccer, but if my father lost his job we'd be screwed in a hurry.


I am now in a position where I determine the fate of my class. I am in law school, so the range of money I could be making in 2 years is from $30,000 to $160,000. Unless I somehow become a drug addict/things go really bad, I think I've avoided lower class. However, if I become a DA and make $40k per year, I will be a middle class guy. Crunching the numbers each month for rent and loan payments, trying to stick some away for a vacation, driving a Corolla. Or I could go to a big law firm, and make partner in ten years, taking in upper six figures, going to $5000 plate charity dinners, taking trips to play golf, and learning about wine and opera.

So from my father being as poor as there is in this country to me being fully ingratiated into the uppercrust is not an impossibility. Not that I want that, but the social and economic mobility in the US just seems to that much more free than elsewhere.