How can you tell if Americans are "poor"?

I think this post is a very accurate description of how we generally view class in the US. It's why politicians can talk with impunity about supporting policies to help the middle class.

That was, as I recall, a project of a previous mayor (perhaps Bloomberg?) to increase the availability of fruit & veg in poorer neighbourhoods. NYC is not too bad. The issue in NYC (and for other people as well) is more a money one. Fruit & veg are expensive on a per calorie basis and they are perishable. If your children are picky, they're a risk to buy. On top of that, if you rely on SNAP/EBT you get your payment once a month and many people stock up. There is a programme where you get 2x the value up to a certain point when you use your EBT at a farmers' market and this has been shown to help. Many poor families are also time poor and rely on easier to make foods as a result. If you are a canny shopper there are ways to get fruit & veg cheaper, but that may involve time and travel.

There is some evidence that, even when you control for these things, poverty itself is correlated with obesity. We also know more is involved because of things like the incredibly high rates of diabetes amongst Native Americans. Fresh food is definitely an issue on some reservations.

I don't think there's magical qualities to corn syrup though you'll see a lot of stories about it. I think the real issue is that corn syrup makes it very easy and cheap to add sugar. So far, we don't seem to have conclusive evidence that high fructose corn syrup is worse than beet or cane sugar. (Regular corn syrup is 100% glucose. The most common form of HFCS is 55/45, which is almost the same as regular sugar.)

The CDC data is pretty clear on the correlation itself, though it uses educational level rather than income. It's also correlated with race, with white and Asian people having lower rates, then Latino/Hispanic, and Black and Native Americans faring the worst.

Some cities are much worse on access; I recall an article on Atlanta being particularly bad in poorer neighbourhoods as it's sprawling and has poor transit.

This was not my experience in NYC, there are loads of stalls (? carts) selling cheap fruit and veg ( presumably either from the surrounding farm land or mexico- it was March).

Americans talk about class differently and often confusingly. In practice there's an educational divide as well as a financial one. A plumber who works his way up to owning his own business, for example, might have the same income as a well-earning professional, but there will be differences in lifestyle and class. A grad student and someone working at just over minimum wage will have a similar income, but they're also decidedly very different. The problem is that colloquially, middle class gets squashed to mean everyone from "stable working class" to "upper middle class". The very poor and the very wealthy are excluded but everyone else thinks they're middle class. But tellingly people will talk about the "upper middle class" so they're quite aware that "middle" isn't a single thing.

what social mobility in the United States is supposed to mean, I think, is that except for the very very wealthy, your class status isn't fixed in some kind of ineffable way, but by wherever you happen to be at the time. In practice, the actual mobility is less than it used to be because it's harder to climb the class ladder.

Yes, I switched them around on accident.

Blue is supposedly lower than white, but we all know about labor costs for plumbers, mechanics, and I used to work in aerospace and electrical and mechanical engineers usually end up writing their own ticket, become contractors, travel the world, and retire early. I know many people in that boat. So much for being of a "lower class". 😅

Actually, the former would be the "lower class", not the latter. The latter ones are who the peons (former) are supposed to admire and want to emulate.

But, you are correct that blue collar workers can earn as much as a mid-white collar worker, especially in the trades and some factories.

Don't kid yourself. America has a class system as rigid as the UK's. It's not about class as understood in the UK and not just about money either. Success is more likely if you are clever with beautiful manners and charm and intelligence. Look at the Obamas for an example.

The closest that comes to a class system is when people talk about blue and white collar workers, the latter being supposedly lower on the ladder. Even that is debatable since a trained accredited manual laborer can expect exceptional compensation.

Wikipedia has an article that tries to disambiguate the terminology, but I still don’t hear people use the term “working class”, and I’ve rarely heard “upper class”, either. I’m sure this is for reasons of political correctness and also the lack of any defined social hierarchy, i.e. there are no lords and ladies, etc.

That's much the same in many countries. The British class system is very different to most others, and much more damaging and restrictive in my opinion.

No-one where I live would describe themselves as belonging to any class (well some would maybe, but no-one takes any notice of them!)

No

you can’t just stay wherever you want overnight. Best case scenario you get moved along.

tents are typically restricted to campsites or public lands that allow camping. Permits are often required.

rv’s have to have permission to park overnight which means paying site fees.

there is an entire fringe culture of people who try to get away with sleeping on the road and not getting caught. It isn’t something your average family is going to do on a holiday.

Class is primarily about money in the US. Class in the UK has a lot to do with caste.

I've sat in baseball stadiums eating hot dogs from the vendors with people who run law firms, banks, etc. We all stood up for the seventh inning stretch, sang the seventh inning stretch song, sat down again, and continued eating and slurping the beers bought before the stretch, from red solo cups. None of them ever made any bones about humble origins they might have had, or ignominious starts to their careers. One bank CEO started out as a repo man and had lots of interesting stories. The difference between the people I've sat with and others at baseball games is season tickets and nice seats, but they would have fit in anywhere in the stadium with their shorts and Tshirts and baseball caps and even the odd drop of mustard on their sneakers.

Yes, they can afford the sort of lifestyle many would envy - houses, trips, any car they wanted, ability to write a cheque to their children's universities and no worries about financial aid or taking out loans. But they might not give a toss about opera or the sort of furniture the Crane brothers liked.

Money buys whatever lifestyle you fancy. Nobody will turn up their nose at you because you grew up in a modest house and your parents struggled.

I live in the US.

I'm aware of the difference in petrol prices between the UK and US. It is still expensive in the US for people on a low income. It's currently $4.25 a gallon in the area where I live. Maybe that's cheaper than Dublin prices per litre, but it's still expensive to fill up your jalopy if your American income isn't high.

You can not park up in a Walmart parking lot anywhere near where I live (major urban area). Walmart security will call local police and you will be moved on. No cars, RVs, or semis can park overnight. Whether you can spend the night in a Walmart carpark depends entirely on local regs and on the policy of the individual Walmart.

You would have to have a tent in order to put one up at a very rare picnic area, and there are precious few picnic areas in many states. Pulling over and pitching a tent would be downright dangerous unless you fancied your chances against snakes or other wildlife. Pulling over at the side of the highway or onto private land and pitching a tent ("boondocking") is also illegal in most states. Pitching a tent anywhere you feel like doing so on public lands may or may not be allowed either. You can sleep in your car in some states - states have their own laws wrt highways, speed limits, etc.

“"People who couldn't afford five days to a week in Jamaica couldn't afford a road trip either - petrol and accommodation along the highway are not cheap."

Petrol in the US is 1/4th the price it is in the U.K.
It is much more affordable.
And poor US families don’t use accommodation on road trips.

• rural area- they pull over at a picnic area and sleep in the car or put up a tent.
• city- they park up at a Walmart and sleep in the car

I have lived in Chicago as well, with very different experiences. It was some time ago, though.

I lived in Chicago for many years and that was definitely not what my everyday life was like. I did live in a completely different area though that had been a bad neighbourhood in the 1960/1970s.

"That'll be because the car-brained Tories were cutting Air Passenger Duty at the same time as hiking rail fares well above inflation."

Only to an extent because this problem is the same in other European countries. Flights are usually cheaper than long/medium rail journeys even when the rail companies are partly state owned.

That'll be because the car-brained Tories were cutting Air Passenger Duty at the same time as hiking rail fares well above inflation. Manchester to London costs silly money at peak time, but Sunak cancelled the project that would have doubled capacity and therefore cut fares.

But then the US has "Project 2025" (who Trump claims not to be involved with, but we all know about his relationship with the truth) that wants to cut funding for public transport in favour of cars.

Frasier is about class to a certain extent, but they are all still middle class. There are differences in taste, for sure, with Martin having what some of us would call "bush league" tastes. Martin's wife was a psychiatrist and their sons went to private school (several references to that in various episodes). The family was solidly middle class, but with different interests and tastes. The divisions are more about intellectual vs. not-so-intellectual, divisions which exist across social class in the US.

Niles married a wealthy woman, whom we never saw, who might qualify as "upper class," but when they separated, Niles had to move into a decidedly down-market apartment.

Ah this clears up my confusion over the larger houses in US Shameless. Obviously they looked run down, and the interiors were cheap but I’d forgotten that land isn’t such an issue in some places.

Thanks to @saltinesandcoffeecups for originally posting the video. A real glimpse into everyday life in the USA, which you don't tend to get in TV dramas (usually).

Many of Chicago's "bad" neighbourhoods were once "nice" areas. They're badly off now because of the effects of deindustrialization and segregation/white flight.

this is true of some of NYC's poorer neighbourhoods, but there, a poor area is more likely to be a housing project or older, lower quality apartment buildings. The ones that were well built and then declined are now gentrifying again.

I also think that that video was so interesting and a real eye opener . The area does look very leafy and the buildings seem solidly built. (can't see inside of course). In London or most large cities that would be a naace gentrified area, and the properties would be ££££!

You can only tell it's not posh from the sort of garish signs on the shops (discounts etc) and also quite a bit of rubbish (trash!) left on the roadside, overflowing bins etc.

Wow, that looks so green and leafy- and well kept!- compared to the scuzzier areas of, say, London- or even Plymouth, the city I know best of recent years. The only signifier of poverty I see there is all the people on the streets (not necessarily a bad thing, depends on what they're doing), and the fact that they are all- without exception- black.

The New York Times seems to agree with those of us who class difference as a big part of Frasier
TELEVISION; Yes, America Has a Class System. See 'Frasier.' - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

"People who couldn't afford five days to a week in Jamaica couldn't afford a road trip either - petrol and accommodation along the highway are not cheap."

That reminds me of some British people who say 'people can't afford foreign holidays' when flights to other countries are cheaper than a train to another part of the UK.