03-02-2021, 03:15 PM
Social class as Paul Fussell saw it:
Upper out-of-sight. Very old money whose foundation comes from the nineteenth century or earlier. These families are very secretive. Harriman. Rockefeller. DuPont. Vanderbilt. Rothschild.
Upper. Fortune made before one was born. A grandson of Sam Walton. Families of Henry Ford and Joseph Kennedy might now be on the borderline of the upper out-of-sight.
Upper-middle. Fortune made while one is living: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos. Highly-successful professionals in medicine and law, maybe publishing (unless one is Hefner, Guccione, or Flynt... get it?) Highly-successful people in real estate and entertainment.
Middle. Low-level, typically college-educated professionals. One now needs the sheepskin, have a sizable farm (farmers though are not the uneducated yokels that they once were) or to be decidedly successful in business. Salesmen, research scientists, dentists, accountants, engineers, teachers, clergy
There is no lower-middle class. It consisted heavily of blue-collar supervisors, engineers, cops, schoolteachers, clergy, and clerks -- people often with 'solid high-school educations' or even (before WWII) people with "solid eighth-grade educations". This class raised its qualifications and rose into the middle (engineers, schoolteachers, and clergy) or joined the upper echelons of the working class.
Fussell recognizes three layers of the working class: high proles (skilled workers such as craftsmen, pilots of ships or aircraft, nurses, technicians, supervisors, cops, and prison guards -- skilled workers); mid-proles (semi-skilled workers who operate machines or who do machine-paced work -- assembly-line workers, vehicle drivers... the largest class in America), and low-proles (laborers such as pickers, packers, diggers, cleaners, and orderlies). Work gets increasingly low-paid and unreliable as one goes through from the skilled to unskilled.
Below that are two classes. One is the destitute, people with no reliable income or with no honorable income. Here are people living on family assistance, welfare, disability... or criminal income. Below them are the bottom out-of-sight, people institutionalized or incarcerated because they are too stupid, unruly, or criminal.
Upper out-of-sight. Very old money whose foundation comes from the nineteenth century or earlier. These families are very secretive. Harriman. Rockefeller. DuPont. Vanderbilt. Rothschild.
Upper. Fortune made before one was born. A grandson of Sam Walton. Families of Henry Ford and Joseph Kennedy might now be on the borderline of the upper out-of-sight.
Upper-middle. Fortune made while one is living: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos. Highly-successful professionals in medicine and law, maybe publishing (unless one is Hefner, Guccione, or Flynt... get it?) Highly-successful people in real estate and entertainment.
Middle. Low-level, typically college-educated professionals. One now needs the sheepskin, have a sizable farm (farmers though are not the uneducated yokels that they once were) or to be decidedly successful in business. Salesmen, research scientists, dentists, accountants, engineers, teachers, clergy
There is no lower-middle class. It consisted heavily of blue-collar supervisors, engineers, cops, schoolteachers, clergy, and clerks -- people often with 'solid high-school educations' or even (before WWII) people with "solid eighth-grade educations". This class raised its qualifications and rose into the middle (engineers, schoolteachers, and clergy) or joined the upper echelons of the working class.
Fussell recognizes three layers of the working class: high proles (skilled workers such as craftsmen, pilots of ships or aircraft, nurses, technicians, supervisors, cops, and prison guards -- skilled workers); mid-proles (semi-skilled workers who operate machines or who do machine-paced work -- assembly-line workers, vehicle drivers... the largest class in America), and low-proles (laborers such as pickers, packers, diggers, cleaners, and orderlies). Work gets increasingly low-paid and unreliable as one goes through from the skilled to unskilled.
Below that are two classes. One is the destitute, people with no reliable income or with no honorable income. Here are people living on family assistance, welfare, disability... or criminal income. Below them are the bottom out-of-sight, people institutionalized or incarcerated because they are too stupid, unruly, or criminal.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.