USA middle & upper mc.. How do they compare to UK & Irish MC & UC

[Merryandbright1]

Big difference for me (have family on the East Coast) is the mc style in the East Coast is very preppy (Ralph Lauren, Kate Spade.. Plus Tommy Hilfigger for the teens), understated. And the children do very expensive activities.

Also, "Americans hate the English" -- Oh please. Americans like ribbing the English. They think our accents are adorable (and can barely tell the difference between Newcastle and London) and we eat crumpets and drink tea all day. I suppose a few Americans might have real prejudice, but compared to lots of other countries, the British have it easy.

Well seeing as how I have no 'social status' to speak of, no it's not something I care about at all. What a weird thing to say.

What I do care about is people spouting absolute nonsense about the US on here, based on their own limited experience or reality TV or whatever, and saying racist shit like most poor people are illegal immigrants.

I'm sorry you hate your life in the US so much, maybe it makes you feel better to think that the whole country is as shitty as your own experience of it, but you're extrapolating things in very inaccurate ways.

I know it’s unbelievably shitting living here because I have a value system not based on money. I value my children having an environment that teaches them discipline and to be respectful of others. It’s one thing to know facts but the reality is learning to work hard and respect those around you will get you further in life.

The world is a beautiful place and the people here are incredibly selfish. There is no community unless you go to a place of worship. This segregates people. It’s common that people want to be my friend because they want something from me, not because they like me for who I am. That’s not a friend and it’s why there are so many issues here with mental health. God forbid you have a friend you share a problem with. They run the other way, that’s what a therapist is for. I have lots of what Americans call ‘friends’ here. In the Uk we call them acquaintances.

Give me the UK any day of the week where most people are genuine. The shift of culture as a result of austerity is awful to watch.

But the whole country is not living your life. What you describe sounds nothing like my life, or my family or friends, probably in large part because New York is so totally different from Texas.

And no that's not because we're wealthy, far from it (we're all well within your 'destitute' category).

Every country has good and bad things, good and bad people. It sounds like you're a trapped expat and you hate it and you're succumbing to this black-and-white view where everything in the US is shit and everything in the UK is amazing.

You can hate your life, it does sound pretty awful, but to say that Americans are all selfish and fake and horrible, to make up bizarre 'facts' about American society, is not on.

It’s common that people want to be my friend because they want something from me, not because they like me for who I am.
Strangely enough, that was precisely my experience of living in the UK.

If Mumsnet is anything to go by, a lot of working class and "poor" in the UK also carry ridiculous amounts of consumer debt.

Of all the tourists we get in NY, Brits are the best received and liked, until they do something like not tip in a restaurant or complain about a museum admission free because they don't have to pay them at home. The French and to a lesser extent, the Germans don't get the same benefit of the doubt.

We do think the accents are adorable, and Brits will noticeably "posh up" their accent when talking to us, which I find really cute.

But it's incredibly low class to wear flashy designer labels and talk about money or to show off how much money you have? I don't get it 🤷‍♀️

Consumer debt is higher in the UK than in the US.

https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/households-debt-to-gdp

Oh there you are with your facts again @MissConductUS 😁

These threads are always bonkers

We New Yorkers are like that. 😁

It was some bloody Yank named Brandeis who said "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants", but I think he was from Boston.

Of all the tourists we get in NY, Brits are the best received and liked

Are Irish tourists not greeted as well liked as the British ones?

In NYC, Irish tourists are considered visiting family. 😀

@MissConductUS I've always been struck by how friendly and helpful New Yorkers are, from my first visit

And there in lies the issue.

That is debt as a percentage of GDP, not debt as a percentage of income. You get a very skewed result when you do that because of the income distribution in the Us and higher taxes in Europe/UK (I separate out Uk, Norway and Switzerland because they are not EU).

When I have run regression analysis using data from various sources, the household debt at the bottom levels is mainly unsecured debt, so think credit cards and student loans. Upper income levels are secured debt, such as mortgages. Your household debt carry costs look very different between the groups.

The same trends will apply in the UK. The Us consumer debt ratios get a bit out of whack when you use raw credit card balances outstanding. You have to look at credit card balances past due. Everyone here uses a credit card for their purchases because of banking laws. When you strip back the data to balances past due you see the common trend of lower socioeconomic groups having much higher consumer debt.

Hmmm yeah ok you don’t get what is really going on.

New Yorkers are not nice but kind. When a New Yorker is nice it means they are about to fuck you over.

bizarre thread / Usa is the States/The Americas comprise 35 countries
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-in-americas
drives me crazy
mc in the states is any body that works for a living
uc defends it could be from dad and mom/ working for a living but makes lot of money lawyer doctors etc
winning money

As much as I agree that the UK had significant youth sub cultures the movements you mention are from the 90s and before. The idea that the USA doesn’t have a “huge range and history” of street movements which includes music styles, clothes and sub-culture is just incorrect.

If we are going back then Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll, Soul, R & B, Glamrock, Funk, Disco, and Country which were all massively influential in the UK, all came out of the USA and had street subcultures, as has Hip Hop, Rap, EDM, House, Techno, Trap, Grunge and Ambient. The UK is still obsessed with American popular culture and music.

I would still question your idea that street culture was coming from the British Middle Classes as in my experience the MC in the UK always got it from the streets or other sub-culture groups that were wearing/listening to something first. There may have been MC kids involved but generally street culture comes out of the working class and and always has. I would agree with @mathanxiety

The Teds, Mods, Heavy Metal, Skinheads, and Punk all had working-class roots.

This doesn’t have to be a competition, all styles and sub-cultures can be recognized. The UK is about as big as California, the USA is a much bigger nation with a range of sub-cultures, racial and ethnic groups and street influences with big regional differences.

Scene is from the 2010’s. I never said it came from the MC.

MC tend to adopt certain styles, like the ones l mentioned. Indie is very much alive today. My 16 Dd is into it. I don’t see that many mc into Grime. I said mc take over certain styles.

And l was talking about clothing styles not music. However you try to put the styling of the sub groups you are talking about is not as dramatic as the U.K. ones. Which did mainly come from a working class background. I however was talking about the ones that were particularly picked up by MC kids.

Well, from my purely personal experience of growing up in the US, you knew one of your peers was UMC if:

• their family went skiing AND on other holidays in the same year
• they were 1) on a paid traveling sports team (if athletic), 2) did a sport that you had to be a member of a club to participate in, or 3) were in the more exclusive youth orchestra (which would have required extra lessons beyond what the school offered and a more expensive instrument than a student grade rental)
• they went to places like Hawaii or Europe on big family vacations instead of Mexico or Disney
• their parents had them learning French or Chinese instead of Spanish
• their parents bought them a nice car for their 16th instead of a jalopey
• they aimed for out-of-state universities because cost wasn’t a factor

I'm UMC. A little bit of that UMC list applies to me. Thinking about my best friend in high school whose family maybe was on a threshold between poor & middle class. I don't see how our values or tastes are different, I really don't. Just some of our opportunities. That said, friend may have grown up in an over-crowded house (her parents did own) & no purely for fun holidays, but she did try going to Uni, now does some holidays for fun, owns her own home, has steady income, spoils her grandchildren.... 2 of her kids have done financially fairly well (own homes, steady income).

In the US, the middle class is vast. There are definitely quite a few gradations, especially within UMC. That list above is interesting. My family ticks some of those boxes but not all, so maybe that makes me "lower UMC" or maybe "upper MMC."

I think education (and how far back in your family people went to university) also plays a factor in addition to income.

Low class according to the standards of which country though?

The British definition of class doesn’t translate universally.

All true in my experience too. My husband’s family is UMC and ticks these boxes. Michigan, incidentally, and in that state the UMC will have a family residence downstate and another ‘up north’ where they’ll spend summers, and in some cases another in a southern state such as Florida or South Carolina for use in winter.