The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(08-16-2021, 09:46 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(08-16-2021, 04:11 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The social critic Paul Fussell would have put you neatly in the "high prole" category because you lack the "right"  professional degree (typically law, medicine, or architecture) and you occasionally do real skilled work. You are not a pure white-collar worker, and in view of your limited education, if you did pure white-collar work you would likely have one of those jobs in which you dress like an executive yet starve... or you clerk in a convenience store. Skilled workers can have above-average incomes, but they generally do so many faux pas when they get to see the real middle classes in a social setting they show themselves too boorish to fit in.

PB, your inner blue prude is revealing itself again. I lived in a working class neighborhood. I grew up with middle class people. I went to school with middle class people. The bulk of my friends were the sons and daughters of middle class people. The bulk of my school friends are upper middle class wage earners today.

Did I say that any class is superior to the others? Class has little to do with money. A gangster who makes his money off criminal enterprises may be rolling in dough, but as a rule criminals -- even successful ones -- have much in common with the unemployable. They are often barely literate and highly superstitious. Their language (if you have ever heard wiretaps of mobsters) is full of F-bombs and racial slurs. They have very short time frames; they do little planning, and they spend wildly. Their kids typically do badly in school because their homes do not promote learning.  Contrast a Protestant pastor in a small town who earns little. Most likely he has a college degree. He well knows the difference between religion and superstition (well, that is his line of work!). It takes extreme pressure to get a vile word out of him. He must plan his outlays of money for anything. His kids strive for good grades because that may be how his kids get into college or a high-quality trade school. If his consumer spending is on the low side, it is not for lack of knowledge of what the status symbols are. 

Not knowing what the status symbols are? Advertising  well establishes what those are by brand name. 

The mobster typically thinks more like the chronic welfare recipient (someone lower in class than the unskilled worker) than like people of similar income. The Protestant pastor is typically middle-class in values.

That is extreme. 

I didn't make this up; Paul Fussell established this about fifty years ago. Among those who actually work for a living the classes are:

3 (and I start here because I am ignoring the super-rich who work little, if at all)... the upper-middle class of highly-successful professionals and business owners. This is as far as anyone can get through his own efforts in the American class system. The professionals are attorneys and physicians, maybe high-end scientists, architects, maybe college professors. They are making big money. Tens of millions strive for this class, yet only a few hundred thousand make it.              

4. Middle. These are the not-so-successful professionals socially (dentists, veterinarians... they often resent physicians), engineers, accountants, computer programmers, salesmen (low-paid retail obviously excluded) and sales managers, oil-field geologists. Maybe many independent farmers left from before the great consolidation. Teachers and preachers generally came here from the old lower-middle class. They may not earn as much as many highly-skilled blue-collar workers, but they live in a very different cultural milieu. 

====== THERE IS NO LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS ANYMORE! =====

That lower-middle class that took pride in having a "solid high-school education" has mostly been shoved into the category of semi-skilled workers. That is now the abode of the clerks, people who do the typing and data input, operate a cash register, or answer phones. Those in such jobs typically see them mostly as transitions to something better, which may mean being the wife of someone successful enough to be middle class. But I will say more in another group. 

5. High-prole (really, skilled labor)... people with trades of crafts. Even the lower end economically (like barbers and carpenters) will tell you that they are not mere laborers. If they operate something, then it might be something extremely complex, like a power plant, an aircraft, a boat, or heavy equipment. They are the installers and set-up men. (Fussell did not much discuss blue-collar supervisors, but he did have police and firefighters here). They typically have some initiative on the job and may give orders -- but not to white-collar workers except for perhaps safety warnings. If the middle-class and upper-middle-class dress up for work, these people dress up (compared to their work clothes) for leisure. Installers and repairers of very complex machinery are in this class (this sounds like you, Classic X'er, at least from what you tell me. Nurses and flight attendants are in this class. 

High-prole and middle-class people may have similar incomes, but their spending habits and attitudes toward formal education are very different. Middle-class people are fussy about grammar and diction even to the point of prissiness, and high-prole talk is much more earthy. 

6. Mid-proles (or usually semi-skilled labor)... this is the largest class in America, and it does machine operation (drivers of trucks or cabs) or has work that machines pace (assembly-line work. As I suggested above, much of what used to be the once-respected clerical work is now in this category. They do not have much discretion or initiative on the job; the system or a customer flow paces the work. There may be a slightly-tricky machine to operate, but one can learn that quickly. Unlike the classes above them they are subject to lay-offs. They often hate their jobs (Fussell cites someone telling Studs Terkel in Working that his job is "too small for his spirit", something that I have often seen among people doing such work). This class has much resentment. To fit into such work requires that one be broken in like a draft animal. 

(I would argue that a completed, but bad, high-school education prepares one for such work). 

7. Low-proles (or unskilled labor). These are the people who do the back-breaking and often dangerous work of digging, loading and unloading, and picking or the demeaning work of domestic service or cleaning.  This work is often seasonal, as with farm labor. Many are stupid enough to have dropped out of high school. The work is acceptable to officials such as parole officers. 

Below that are classes that don't do real work 

8. the destitute -- people dependent upon welfare, disability payments, aid from family members,  or who have questionable ways of making a living (such as numbers rackets or bootlegging) who can avoid being institutionalized.

9. the bottom out-of-sight -- people institutionalized or incarcerated long-term, if not permanently, for the safety of themselves (as for the stupid or insane) or danger to society (prison).  

In general it is far more likely to go down the scale than up. 

Creative people fit into a very different category. 

... the big difference in class is generally how one gets treated.