To be confused about the classes?

[eleusis]

Maybe I'm just a dumb foreigner. But I can't quite work out the difference between working and middle class. Don't middle class people work? And don't people who work generally fall somewhere in the middle of the class system?

I was accused of being upper class yesterday, which I'll have you know has amused me to no end.

I refer you to my post of 17.10, eleusis

Upper class equivalent = second generation Ivy League type
Working class equivalent = Bruce Springsteen type
Underclass equivalent = all those people in America we never see on TV unless they are in some kind of sports stadium after a catastrophe.

I think maybe it's starting to change, eleusis, but might be 50 yrs b4 most people would feel comfortable about the idea they were born to one class but have shifted to another.

Bogtrotters are the Irish, btw - lots of peat bogs in Ireland

Ooh, good post, madameP.

eleusis, what class were the Kennedys? They didn't fit into the US upper echelons, because they were Catholic.

I agree Eleusis, it's stupidly old-fashioned and lots of class-based terms are often used to try to keep people "in their place". Nouveau riche/chav/snob they're all generally based in class.

French translation

Upper class equivalent = person owning entire house in 7th arrondissement
Working class equivalent = ? I think France still has a manufacturing industry
Underclass = see any metro station.

I forgot the middle classes - this is everybody else.

Charming!
I remember being told by an Irish woman about the old signs in hostels 'no blacks no dogs no Irish'

thought it was something of the past really how awful

In France they have the bourgeoisie, MadameP - terribly terribly middle class, and rules???

It is of the past, sfx.

The Kennedy's? I can't comment on those scoundrels because I'd have to say something really nasty that would spoil this thread. Although, I do dlike Rose. But her offsring are a bunch of spoiled brats.

However, if being President of United States doesn't catapult you into the upper class I can't imagine what does.

They were not in the proper Boston *Cabots speak only to God" upper class though, were they? Because they were (are) Catholic.

There is a class structure in America too...

And look at Donald Trump - he's working class...

Well, being Prime Minister definitely doesn't make you upper class - I would say Tony Blair was distinctly middle class, despite having been to public school?

What does anyone else think?

I don't think being Catholic makes you of a lesser social standing in America. Cetainly not in Boston or Chicago where there are many Irish and Itallians, not to mention Polish. I hear this said often, but in my experience it isn't true.

Class is not about being better than anyone else...middle class is not "better" than working class! There are just different values.

Got to go... Will check in later...

Ugh, Donald Trump is also half-Scottish, his mother was an immigrant from Lewis who moved to the US to work. He's been shown proudly waving his British passport [vom].

I don't think of class at all nor do I fit in any one class.

I think the classes have all merged into one spectrum with no particular separation between them and that is why it is so damned difficult to say who is in what class and what the criteria are.

Are we all that hung up on class as a country? The only place I come across such discussions of it is on MN!

Americans don't even use the words "working class" or "upper class". Well, maybe they did in places like Detroit when motor industry was big, or East Coast Ivy league types might think that way, but not nowadays. We have poor/middle/rich, instead. It's purely income based, and how you live now, not how you were raised or what your parents gave you.

Most Americans consider themselves middle class. There's lower middle and upper middle and middle middle, but relatively few Americans claim another class identity.

Bruce Springsteen is rich! His origins and fan base may mostly be 'lower middle class', but he's firmly in the rich elite now, no American would say otherwise.

I agree with Niecie(although I do find discussions on class fascinating!)

I think foreigners assume that the British are hung up on class, simply because we acknoledge it exists, and everyone would probably be able to tell you what they were, but we aren't actually hung up on it. I don't think I have ever found myself affected by it.

And I think those from other countries conveniently ignore their own class systems, simply because they are not acknowledged as such. America certainly has a class system, and it also has another system based on wealth, which is rather more unpleasant (and which I think we are rapidly adopting here)

Agree OHT that it's the academic view. I should make clear that my posts only really outliines one academic view at that. I don't think even sociologists would agree on a true definition for each class.

Sfxmum 'bogtrotter' is how DH overheard FIL describing me to one of his posh friends. As in 'My son has married a bogtrotter' .
But I say I'm Irish and proud of it!

Out of interest, how did your DH dispose of the body?