Subtle differences between the US and the UK that baffle me/you/us. - by SubJeff
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 14:38
Quote Posted by demagogue
I definitely believe that too, and if I didn't mention it in my last post it was from stuff I cut for space. People from broken families or certain backgrounds don't go to college because they're not brought up to have that ambition. I just don't think that has much to do with any sense of "class". They're just put off going to college or don't get the ambition because they're brought up thinking it's not right for them maybe, or they don't know how to get there from their current place in life if they did.
Cost also features quite highly. Apart from exceptional scholarship cases, how many poor kids make it to Yale or Harvard? How many high-paying employers prefer applicants from more prestigious Universities? How many jobs are filled by people whose parent(s) know the right people?
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Re: the class rhetoric that does go on in politics. I heard all that, but I never knew who they were actually referring to. What could be a more arbitrary number than the 99% vs. the 1%. What about the 62% or the 13%? What are these numbers supposed to even mean?
I admit it is kind of arbitrary, hence you need to read between the lines. I'd say that there are those who get fucked by the system and those who benefit from it. The former category contains orders of magnitude more people. Basically, if you plot a graph which shows increase in cost of living vs. increase in annual income, those whose annual income curve grows faster than the cost of living curve during their lifetime (probably fewer than 1% realistically) are those who benefit.
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Upper class people think they're entitled to vacations to the Bahamas for entertainment, and working class people watch more King of Queens, so there's this vast gulf of cultural misunderstanding?
2 attributes is hardly enough to make any kind of observation, even if it is just for example. The reason these topics can tend to be so opaque is that the complexity of humanity defies standard conversational complexity.
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More to myself, am I supposed to feel low class because I grew up in a trailer & duplex or upper class because I couldn't have been more obscenely wall street lawyer establishment?
Nope, I grew up in a 4 child family to Northern Irish parents who worked low paid jobs (police constable & shop assistant), but I tend to be classed as middle class by my peers on account of my high level of education, complex use of vocabulary and willingness to discuss things like politics / science / economics / philosophy etc.. casually, but with a level of depth which goes beyond the news. That's not my definition, that's literally a mash-up of what I've been told. That said, most of my drinking buddies are completely culturally different to me (care about televised sports, don't understand politics past what papers say, drunkenly flirt with any woman in the vicinity who is above 6/10 etc...) because I enjoy the quick-fire wit and banter and crass humour which seems lacking from when I mix with fellow University people. In fact, the one person whose company I enjoy the most is my ex-PhD supervisor who has a remarkably similar background to me. With him, I get the intellectual stuff and the smoky Irish pub humour.
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The whole concept there's some natural social strata people just fall into that determines the kind of person they are & their prospects in life just doesn't click with me at all, and anything scenting of Marxism has always seemed like the most alien thing ever.
I think we have found where the misunderstanding lies. The class notion in the UK has nothing to do with natural orders (depending on who you speak to - I've no doubt some very wealthy people believe in "good breeding"), but are more tied to privileges not enjoyed by ordinary people. For example, the middle class is seen to have access to better higher education than the working classes due to the ability of middle class families to support their kids during University whereas their working class equivalent might have to work in their spare time, which could impact on their study (I worked as a systems testing analyst during my BSc and only got a 2:1). A very rich person would be able to get into whichever university they like (attend a conference in Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard / Yale to see this in effect) and freed from any financial worry, be able to focus on their study. I also wouldn't be surprised if privileges extended to being able to secure better grades also.
If I thought class were somehow natural, I wouldn't be focussing on social mobility as a measure of anything.
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It's referring to society on some other planet I can't recognize. "Sorry my good man, you're just not well-bred enough for this college/career. Careful you don't starve to death on the patio" wtf? It's not some conspiracy. Anyone really can go to college, if just they get the resources in their area, good schools and mentors encouraging them to have the ambition (sans mental illness issues, which isn't a class thing).
Yes, see I don't know many people (only one in my whole life in fact, who clung to some odd colonial notions too) who think that class is anything to do with "breeding". This is a very outdated concept. Also, how do these people pay for their education without getting into masses of debt? This is where class / strata / whatever makes its biggest impact. When I graduate, I have over £20,000 to pay back. My rich counterpart does not. That's £20,000 less I'll be able to put into a house, or use to help my kids through University etc... It has knock-on effects. Whereas the rich slide through lubricated by their assets. This is why they are perceived as belonging to a different class.
Thirith on 8/1/2013 at 15:00
Very much agree with what you say, faetal, especially this:
Quote Posted by faetal
I think we have found where the misunderstanding lies. The class notion in the UK has nothing to do with natural orders (depending on who you speak to - I've no doubt some very wealthy people believe in "good breeding"), but are more tied to privileges not enjoyed by ordinary people. For example, the middle class is seen to have access to better higher education than the working classes due to the ability of middle class families to support their kids during University whereas their working class equivalent might have to work in their spare time, which could impact on their study (I worked as a systems testing analyst during my BSc and only got a 2:1). A very rich person would be able to get into whichever university they like (attend a conference in Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard / Yale to see this in effect) and freed from any financial worry, be able to focus on their study. I also wouldn't be surprised if privileges extended to being able to secure better grades also.
If I thought class were somehow natural, I wouldn't be focussing on social mobility as a measure of anything.
Outside bad writing and the 18th/19th century, class and its repercussions have nothing in common with "The whole concept there's some natural social strata people just fall into that determines the kind of person they are & their prospects in life just doesn't click with me at all", dema, nor does (neo-)Marxism. It's entirely about things such as what faetal writes: how power, money and privilege correlate and reinforce each other. It's about looking at the universities that are deemed the best and asking why the people who are there overwhelmingly come from families that are rich, and why in turn a diploma from such a university makes it much more likely that you'll get a highly-paid job. It's about looking at the mechanisms that make social mobility not impossible but vastly more difficult, because money/power/privilege beget money/power/privilege, and how the myth of "by your own bootstraps" is insidious because it ignores that depending on your (economic, educational and cultural) background you'll have very different opportunities than someone whose starting position is a better one.
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 15:06
Exactly. The fact that family wealth through support and inheritances plays a large part just makes it look like it is due to breeding. How long has it been since the original Vanderbilts and Rockefellers actually made their fortune? Are we to assume that all of their progeny are just really good at stuff? If so, that way of thinking would be more similar to the "breeding" class view than the one where money grants disproportionate privilege.
Thirith on 8/1/2013 at 15:19
I think that's exactly it, though: in a culture such as the US that defines itself very much as one where anyone can make it if they really try, personal achievement is also more quickly attributed to talent and effort, whereas other, external influences and circumstances are ignored to a larger extent. "I made it because I'm strong/smart/willing", the flip side of which is, "... and those who don't make it are weak, stupid and lacking in willpower - they're failures." I'm not saying that talent, abilities, the will to put in an effort etc. don't matter, but they're one side of the story only, and ignoring the other is naive at best, willfully disingenuous at worst.
Chimpy Chompy on 8/1/2013 at 15:21
Thing about the 99% is, it implies we're talking about anyone who's not a rich business\banker guy or a movie star.
Whereas in Britain... well, I noted faetal seemed to define middle class as mutually exclusive with "ordinary". Makes me think how there is a bit of a different attitude in this country? Like, America is more enthusiastic about the concept of being middle class, people want to join or identify with it. Whereas here the attitude is to be either vaguely accusatory and hostile (you're not ordinary like us people from the terraces and\or council estates) or if middle class yourself, feel guilty (and take up reading the Guardian). Or just be kind of defensive but not sure how to express that, unless you want to distract yourself with a tabloid frenzy about benefits scroungers.
I'm not saying this offsets the clear advantages of a middle class background, just wondering which country has the healthier attitude.
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 15:27
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
... well, I noted faetal seemed to define middle class as mutually exclusive with "ordinary".
Not exactly. I mentioned that class was seen as varying privileges from a perceived norm, but it depends who is doing the perceiving. I'd say that most people in the UK could not afford to put all of their children through University without them needing to work to support themselves. This means that those who can have an advantage. This advantage knocks on to the extent that positive feedback presides over socio-economic situation. There are many "yeah but.." arguments which focus on rags to riches success stories, but as any statistician can tell you - you can't ignore the trend because of stray residuals.
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Makes me think how there is a bit of a different attitude in this country? Like, America is more enthusiastic about the concept of being middle class, people want to join or identify with it. Whereas here the attitude is to be either vaguely accusatory and hostile (you're not ordinary like us people from the terraces and\or council estates) or if middle class yourself, feel guilty (and take up reading the Guardian). Or just be kind of defensive but not sure how to express that, unless you want to distract yourself with a tabloid frenzy about benefits scroungers.
I'm not saying this offsets the clear advantages of a middle class background, just wondering which country has the healthier attitude.
It's an interesting one, but attitude is arguably less important than outcome. I'd say that Gini coefficient and poverty indices make me glad I was born this side of the pond however.
Vivian on 8/1/2013 at 15:32
In england being working vs middle class is just a matter of education, and to a lesser extent, income. But being upper class, being posh, is not. You have to grow up posh to be posh. So even if i made a million quid a year doing.... uh... science .... and moved to chelsea and bought a horse i would not be upper class. But my kids might.
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 15:38
Yeah but better income correlates with better education, so I'd say there's an interaction between the 2 effects, which reinforce each other over time. Being super high class just protects against punctuation events better. For example, I'd bet that the recent credit crises made many middle class families into working class ones (by income definition alone), which may impact their socio-economic profile in the future if they don't recover, or their kids don't escape the effect of the event.
Chimpy Chompy on 8/1/2013 at 15:58
If we ever make a TTLG drinking game, "faetal breaks out the gini coefficients" has to go on the list.
faetal on 8/1/2013 at 16:20
It's the most used income inequality metric. It's not like I'm busting it out in the Hobbit thread.
