Affluence and Class - Linked?

[deviladvocate]

Prompted by thread in chat regarding being middle class, I was startled at how many posters were offended by the suggestion that being middle class was defined by income.

AIBU to think that affluence and class are inextricably linked? Doesn't being able to move beyond simply providing food and shelter for your family mean that you become middle class - by virtue of being able to focus on the nice-to haves and not just on the essentials?

complete mug - A lovely home, good ecuation, but no tv, no or cheap car and no/few electronic gadgets has been a recognisable sub set of middle class for years.

Has it? I always thought it was because my DH is a tightwad
And as for the TV, the bloody dog knocked it off the cabinet (he's a red setter with a mindset of a missile) and we've been too lazy to replace it with anything half decent. In all honestly, I could well live without it apart from Monday nights and Doc Martin

lesley I take your point about William and Harry, but to be honest they are adults not DC, and no doubt due to their situation completely out of touch with how th world is moving.

The younger generation seem much less interested in class signifiers.

Ten years ago wearing sports wear was the preserve of the working class, but these days all DC have trackies and trainers. If you saw the boys at my DS' prep school on non-uniform day, it is a veritable sea of football tops (Arsenal and Chelsea firm faves) and hoodies.

At DD's school for naice gahls they all adore the X Factor and read Twilight.

These young people will enter a world of intense comeptition for few resources. You won't get your share by speaking with the right accent and they know that.

I grew up in a very poor working class area in the midlands, my parents are not from there so i never felt it was 'home'. We didn't have much money however i managed to get to uni (first in my family) and moved to london to work. Once married and planning children made the move out of town to a lovely village in a very affluent area - i have a nice house (although can't afford to furnish it!) and am a sahm who shops at waitrose. So am i working class affluent or now middle class? If the latter I wonder why that's perceived to be a bad thing?

I notice that children's friends parents have a higher disposable income than us, and seem to drive super-duper huge new cars. They've got Wii-Everything and talk about gadgets that I've never even heard of! I don't mind either way. Money and affluence aren't always connected

I've often thought Class in Britain often seems to be about how much distance you put between yourself and anything New or New-Fangled.

at "I've often thought Class in Britain often seems to be about how much distance you put between yourself and anything New or New-Fangled."

quite right, although it's made me think - when i met dh he wouldn't even wear a watch, now he has everything apple have ever invented - oh no is he becoming a chav...?!!!

"I'm not sure I get why class is supposed to be significant anymore".

Very good point. This marks the complete triumph of Thatcherism and a free-Market approach. Instead of aiming (as old Labour did) to improve the lot of the working class (and thence of the whole community) as a whole, there was a swing to individual improvement - praise for the hard-working and aspirational, which continues today (possibly even more with Labour than the Conservatives,if you look at Blair's rhetoric and Miliband's latest on helping the "deserving").

In the first generation money has nothing to do with class. However in subsequent generations money can change your class - usually to do with the schooling that money can afford.

whatmeworry class often does have to do with how you embrace change, something the middle and upper classes find hard.

But the younger generation embraces all things virtual and technological with abandon, whatever their class. These new fangled things are part and parcel of their shared community and future.

when i met dh he wouldn't even wear a watch, now he has everything apple have ever invented - oh no is he becoming a chav

Oh no, whereas technology is a bit, well, you know, Apple is very genteely acceptable ( follow the link, it's brilliant satire )

Edith yes, yes, yes.

An inflatable sense of community was indespensible, often life saving among previous working class generations but when the mines and heavy industry were abanadoned, these tight knit communities were no longer as necessary, often now viewed as stifling.

Many working class children quickly saw the writing on the wall: there would be no traditional working life for them so they had a choice of dole or elbow their way into the middle class arena.

That middle class arena is now full to bursting with people from all backgrounds and places. Yes, the trad middel class now use their signifiers to show that they are the true middle class, different in so many ways to these arrivistes but the reality is that the interlopers don't care, they're far too busy enjoying themselves and planning for their DC's future.

And the DC of the current MC don't give a monkey about the signifiers. They meet up with their pals in Nandos, wearing their footie tops and don't feel it means anyhting. It just is.

Whether all this is right or wrong, is a moot point, but one thing is for sure, it is here to stay.

often class has to do as much with other people's reactions as with your own

somebody with a middle class accent and a middle class education is not necessarily going to be accepted as "one of us" by working class friends just because of being poor

a child with middle class interests can easily end up being bullied in a school where this is not cool; an older person may feel it is polite not to talk about their own interests or job because other people find them snobbish

I can do a good local accent and I'm no richer than other people around, but I have occasionally felt people pull away when I've mentioned my job (nerdy academic), so I tend to cover that up if I feel people would find it off-putting

My mother's family owned land and mixed with the poshest in the county but were surprisingly down to earth and hands on when they weren't jaunting up to London. My mother was a ballerina but after 3 marriages has spent a great deal of her money but that was her perogative. I'm the classy one.

DH comes from a line of miners and people in service and his parents became an engineer and a teacher and have stacked up the cash and now probably have more than mine. They are very very chippy and not confident mixing across society and imo typically lower middle class.

Together a bit of my class has rubbed off on DH over the many years we have been together. As a partnership DH has become very very affluent but we couldn't have done it without each other so yes, I think class and affluence are interlinked in our case. Having said that no-one would look at us on holiday or in a restaurant and think they've got money. We don't drive flash cars, have flash clothes, flash jewellery or do flash things.

It's very strange isn't it? I'm middle class; my dad is working class; my mum was, idk, posh, upper middle. What's a... okay: no need for family research, you can just look it up on thepeerage.com or wikipedia, but no money at all: even poorer than my dad who grew up on the poorest council estate in the north. So it shakes out their kids meet in the middle:we're middle class. My DP is working class and our upbringings were completely different: We spent our holidays in other people's summer houses in France, wore ancient clothes and read second hand books and had a terrible old van that broke down all the time. He had brand new everything and stayed in hotels. This makes no sense at all, but is clearly recognisable as a class difference.

I suspect the difference is in oldness, in connections: part of performing class in Britain is in asserting your right (to rule) of the land: you somehow perform your ownership with talismans of age: inherited furniture and hand me down clothes represent your embededdness. You are rather unsubtly asserting your connectedness. Oh, this country, how stupid we are!

I have no money or education but I couldn't pretend to be working class, just like I couldn't pretend to be upper class; it would be ridiculous and unconvincing. You are what you are; class movement is the work of generations, I think.

Edith I'm not sure in my case that my lack of interest in class has anything to do with Thatcher!

I'm from an immigrant family, my DH from a forces one, we might easily fit into 'class definitions' but we've never had the supposed community that goes with it so I find it pretty unfathomable. I have no idea what a class based community is supposed to be like, I know what forces communities are like and I know what my home countries community is like and neither of them are structured around class.

So I just don't understand why it matters.

acumenin I think you have articulately set out how and why the MC use the class signifiers that they do...as you say it is to dispaly their right to position and influence. To set themselves apart from the interlopers.

But the reality is that the neither the working classes nor the millions of immigrants that have come to the UK recognise that right any longer.

They wanted the money, the power and the influence, and boy have they taken it.

The trad middle classes now find themselves in a world that they don't recognise. They can't afford a nice house in a nice part of town on a teacher/local solicitor's wage. They can't afford school fees. They can't afford anyhting much. And their DC do not have the keys to sweet shop simply by dint of their MC credentials, they find themselves having to battle it out with kids from all backgrounds, from all over the world.

There was a documentary not so long ago called IIRC Who Gets The Best Jobs and Tony Parsons made the point that the MC need to wake up and smell the coffee, cos it aint them any more.

There was a documentary not so long ago called IIRC Who Gets The Best Jobs and Tony Parsons made the point that the MC need to wake up and smell the coffee, cos it aint them any more

That's a much bigger issue....if someone in Asia can do the same job at 1/10 th the cost it's not just the UK's middle class that's at risk.

The English class system is traditionally defined by cultural capital rather than economic capital. You are MC if you have extensive cultural knowledge and skills (which take years, even generations, to acquire and hone), not if you have economic clout. But since acquiring and maintaining cultural capital requires money, there is something of correlation between cultural and economic capital. But think of it more as a Venn diagram than a straight line!

Adversecamber - what does Kate Fox say about people's views on m and s and what they mean? (can maybe guess but not sure?!)

"They can't afford a nice house in a nice part of town on a teacher/local solicitor's wage."

wordfactory - no, because the middle-class jobs of yesteryear which were locally/regionally based are not part of the globalised economy. If you want your DC to be MC, you had better ensure that they end up in the globalised rather than the local/regional/national economy. That is why immigrants have done well in recent years - they are often well-connected to the global economy.

Languages and the ability to travel are key drivers of middle-classdom for the future (in addition to specialist technical skills, of course).

I am middle-class with a degree, listen to Radio 4 etc.

But I have no money!

wordfactory, oh I think it's most certainly a better thing that people stop recognising it, but I'm not sure that class mobility is increasing particularly in the UK (beyond the post war shakeup).

this is quite an interesting report by the OECD

I think I must be "middle-class-done-bad" if there is such a thing as "wc done good!".

My family contains colonels, judges and the such and all went to boarding schools. I didn't got to boarding school but went to Oxford. I happily entered teaching as a profession. After a disastrous (middle class, married in an Oxford college) marriage I am now married to someone on a very low income. We live in a very basic house with no disposable income but seem to have very different values to those around us! We don't fit anywhere now!

Just to get a little personal I read today that Davie C from number 10
describes himself as middle class. The PM is less than candid when hunting for Middle class votes. But politics is not a candid profession.