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#1
05-01-2007, 07:05 AM
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What makes someone Upper rather than Middle class?
One of my best friends is a mid-30s corporate lawyer who earns $200k+, is married to a barrister on a similar salary, owns a house in London, and went to one of the best private schools in London, the City of London School for Boys, After university and before he went into practice, he taught law at Oxford. He is from an English/American Jewish intellectual family. He says he's middle-class, not upper class. Funnily enough, according to the English view of the class structure I know what he means.
Another friend of mine, another corporate lawyer in his mid-30s, does not own any property - he rents a flat and lives alone. Until recently he was off work for two years off work due to alcoholism; during this period he had no income. Though he would never say it, he is clearly upper-class. He went to Eton and Christchurch College, Cambridge, and comes from a family with links to the military and to farming / landowning. He speaks incredibly slowly, with dignity, and a clipped upper class accent; even in his cheap clothes, you can see he has the bearing of an Etonian. My view of what makes you upper class is very much based around where you went to school (in England that doesn't mean university), whether you have connections with the aristocracy, the right parts of the military, or your family were large landowners. It's not to do with how much money you earn in your current job. Alan Sugar will never be upper class, and neither will the billionaire Philip Green, or Liam Gallagher. Tony Blair himself is middle class. I can see the problem here. I have another "upper class" friend whose grandfather was an Earl and whose mother is a Lady, whose father comes from a banking dynasty and still owns several country houses and lots of land. But she herself has little money; she lives a bohemian lifestyle living with an artist and their baby in a two-up, two-down house in a poor area many miles from the city centre. In so far as she earns a living, she makes and occasionally sells vases. There's a trust fund she can dip into to buy big things. But does it really make sense to call her upper class, and say that a successful corporate lawyer isn't? I just wondered how this kind of thing works out in America. What's the distinction between being upper middle and upper clasS? 
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#2
05-01-2007, 07:36 AM
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Re: What makes someone Upper rather than Middle class?
What's the distinction between being upper middle and upper clasS?
It seems to be whether or not any of the people you know make more than you.
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#4
05-01-2007, 08:38 AM
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Re: What makes someone Upper rather than Middle class?
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.
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#7
05-01-2007, 09:09 AM
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Re: What makes someone Upper rather than Middle class?
[ QUOTE ]
Okay so 50 Cent is really seen as upper class, and not just a working class / underclass guy with money? [/ QUOTE ] We have a separate class for them.
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#8
05-01-2007, 12:27 PM
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Re: What makes someone Upper rather than Middle class?
[ QUOTE ]
Okay so 50 Cent is really seen as upper class, and not just a working class / underclass guy with money? [/ QUOTE ] By whom? By his banker and according to common sense, he's upper class. By his cultivated image, he may still claim ties elsewhere. But class is more economic in America than in England, on the whole. Yet despite that it is more perhaps more straightforward in essence, in America, the whole concept of class is a very uncomfortable one that we don't grapple with as honestly or well as people most everywhere else do commonly. Americans generally both deny class exists and scramble to describe themselves and nearly everyone else as middle class. People making half a million a year being in the same class as people who make $16,000 a year doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense, but there it is.
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#9
05-01-2007, 09:28 AM
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Re: What makes someone Upper rather than Middle class?
[ 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.
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