How can you tell if Americans are "poor"?

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Like most of us I watch quite a bit of US drama and box sets but remain baffled about the characters based on things like the house they live in etc...

Can American audiences tell that someone is poor or rich (or in between) based on things such as house size, style of house and other things that are part of TV series?

I know (well think I do so not assuming - please correct if wrong!) that middle and working class may mean different things to UK - but can US viewers pick up more based on cultural norms and things that may need explaining to non-American audiences?

An example is I watched some episodes of True Detective and thought the house was lovely and spacious but everything else in the plot pointed to the fact that this was a "poor rundown neighbourhood with substance issues etc..."

Are there any rules of thumb? Do American audiences get confused my things like this when watching UK or European dramas?

"Roseanne was about WC Americans. "

Roseanne's husband had his own business, so wouldn't be considered wc by all classification systems. They had a variable income.
They also had an ensuite in the girls' bedroom and phones upstairs, which I was VERY impressed with growing up, but I think were normal in the US.

Still, watching from across the Atlantic, I could recognise the very ordinary type of sofa they had.

I noticed that Sex in the City is based in New York, but Steve is the only character to have a NY accent. The others are too posh for it, although Charlotte is the only one to be really upper class 'old money'.

Because cosmetic dentistry has been a thing there for a long time.

"I am really shocked to learn that it is unseemly to hang the washing out in USA."

Obviously, washing line in the garden is totally normal in the UK, but when you see photos of washing lines going from a building on one side of the street to a building on the other side, that does seem to evoke some kind of poverty, so I presume those are the connotations in the US.

US Shameless was definitely not aspirational!

Also, if you are obviously foreign, people don't want to discuss politics or criticise the US to you. It was only after Americans got to know me or my DH that they would discuss it with us. It's a bit like family: you defend it to outsiders.

Local accents are fading amongst younger middle class people. So a distinct regional accent in someone under 40 can be a class marker. In an older person it isn't: see Trump. Or if you ever see old news clips from before 1990 or so you will notice how much stronger the accents are.

Mare of Easttown is interesting, we used to live not so far away. It does amp up the working-class aspect a little bit in my opinion. If you drive 5 or 10 minutes from where it's supposed to be set you're in some very posh areas.

Roseanne was definitely working/lower middle class, she worked in a factory and his business was construction. 2 bathrooms is pretty typical and I suspect the show set the 2nd up as an ensuite for set reasons. It's not a real house.

"But back in the UK, no one would call other poor because of the lack of sporting activity in their life."

I don't totally agree with that. I don't think not exercising (my norm for much of my life) means you're necessarily poor, but I think people exercise more the higher up the class scale you go.

"Local accents are fading amongst younger middle class people. So a distinct regional accent in someone under 40 can be a class marker. In an older person it isn't: see Trump."

Trump's isn't very strong to my ears though.
Another example of the NY accent only heard by those of working-class origin is the film Working Girl. I think it's a bit exaggerated for effect there though.

"2 bathrooms is pretty typical "

I know it's normal for MNers, but I didn't know anyone with two bathrooms growing up.
American teenagers also always had their own phones on TV and of course everything, houses, cars, appliances being bigger.

Just remember Fraiser and the 'working class' chair brought over by the policeman father to Fraisier's horror.

" (a bungalow is a sign of affluence in these parts!)"

Where do you live? Bungalows are for old people where I come from. Not posh at all.

With farmers it totally depends. Gentleman farmers in some areas, maybe? Tenant farmers, small farmers in other areas definitely not.

You see that in the UK too. Or just that on the poorer streets there is no space to grow trees.

"It was interesting that the other passengers were either students or elderly people, or obviously poor. I was the only person of working age who was not obviously poor."

This is exactly the same in the semi-rural part of Wales I come from. The public transport is not reliable enough or frequent enough for people to use to go to and from work.

Roseanne and her family were what is called "blue collar" in the US. This term mainly encompasses union members - self-employed or company-employed tradesmen, construction workers, and others who do manual work for a living, such as bus drivers, automotive / factory workers, truckers, people working for utility companies, and more. Blue collar doesn't include large groups of workers in sectors like retail, who tend to have precarious PT employment, and tend to be young or female.

Union membership is a distinguishing element of the blue collar class, and an extremely important element of blue collar success in the US. The ongoing assault on unions by the capitalist class since the days of Reagan is a major factor in current politics. President Biden made a point of supporting striking automotive workers a few years ago.

The term "working class" as it is understood in Britain doesn't really translate into the American socio-economic concept.

Blue collar is a term in the UK too. However, as for being unionised, Roseanne ended up working more in services later on didn't she? It didn't seem particularly secure. They all quit the factory and in the end she was working in a cafe in a mall or something. I seem to remember a hairdresser or something in the middle too.

Dan had his own business that was very up and down so not very secure either.

I imagine you're not from New England

It's their cultural references.

There's lots of car crash style youtube footage of this kind of situation. You could spend weeks down a rabbit hole of that kind of material and never see the same footage twice

And I don't know if it's still running on some channel somewhere, but the (reality?) show Cops from many years back featured skid row types and their problems with The Law. The issue of stereotyping of all kinds was rightly pointed out in the heyday of that show.

The late Maury Povich had a show featuring the same sort of demographic and paternity testing, etc, again raising questions about exploitation, stereotyping, and the like.

It sounds like your brother has a history of bad choices, sadly, and possibly also is misinformed or was given bad advice. If he’s completely unemployed he qualifies for Medicaid which will cover his medical and dental costs now. It’s Medicare that he needs to be retirement age for.

He also should probably have been less picky when it came to finding work—he could have acquired a job at Starbucks or one of the many other big companies that pays over minimum wage and offer benefits. It’s not luxurious but it sure beats living in a camper!

Yes, the fortunes of the Conner family mirrored a downturn in the sort of industries that had provided secure jobs at union rates for millions up to the era the show was set in. The precariousness of their later non-union employment was a reflection of a changing economy/ globalization.

Union subs for tradesmen and construction workers and others skilled or even manual laborers provided group health insurance and also retirement / pension schemes, plus some unemployment protection.

There is a dark side to unions too. They had a role to play in the exclusion of African Americans from blue collar prosperity - in most cities it was nigh impossible for a black man to get a union card for many decades, while city aldermen or their relatives could give a white teenage son of a friend/ cousin/ reliable precinct worker/ someone who knew a guy who could lay his hands on Cuban cigars, etc, the introduction to the union that would result in a union card, the golden ticket to a summer job, for example, schlepping bricks at union rates.

It does mean poor in some parts of the US.

I lived in a gated community there and hanging out washing was banned. You weren’t even allowed to have a wet swimsuit and towel hanging by your private inground pool. It was a $500 fine if a neighbour snitched on you.

This was same community where you weren’t allowed to do any gardening yourself as that was for our grounds crew. We were only allowed to have a few decorative potted plants. It was a very posh place.

“The saving grace is that he will be able to draw his state pension now, at 62, and it's around double what he'd get here, which really surprised me. (Apparently you only need to contribute for 10 years to get this, unlike the 40 years in the UK.) Once he has his pension he will be entitled to use some kind of Medicaid.”

No, that’s not the case. Social security adds up and averages the 35 years of your highest income. If you worked fewer than 35 years, then a 0 is averaged on for every year you did not work. So if you worked. For 10 years, you’d get those earnings plus 25 zeros all divided by 35. So your average is reduced by not working.

Then if you take your social security before your full retirement age which is 65-68 depending on year of birth rn, (62 is early). Your pension is reduced by a certain % for each year below full retirement age you are.

He may be surprised at how little he will get.

Once on social security, you are then eligible to pay for Medicare health insurance which is several hundred dollars a month. Medicaid is for low income (below poverty level) working age Americans.

Here in the U.K., similarly you can claim some state pension with only 10yrs of NI contributions, however you get a prorated amount instead of the full state pension if you have less than the 35 years of NI to get full state pension. The calculation is they take full state pension weekly £ amount divide it by 35 and then times that by the # the yrs of NI you have between 10 and 34 and that gives you your smaller state pension amount.

In my experience the writers of shows don't always worry about whether that family could really afford that house, they just want it to look lovely on screen unless they are going for the gritty side of us life. In reality Ive known people living in trailers held together with duct tape, no hot running water, people raising grandchildren because of drug addiction living hand to mouth, cars held together by aforementioned all purpose duct tape (no mot's there), and 2 hour commute ma because due to Amazon they got kicked out of their decent low rise housing in Seattle for "redevelopment" when i visited a whole neighbourhood of homes and small businesses like car repairs had gone.

I absolutely agree. He's made some terrible choices over many years, long before he went to the US. I'm not criticising the US systems, but realise his situation would be different here.

I think anyone who can work and needs money should work, even if it's not at their chosen profession, but not everyone agrees. TBH, I think here it can be too easy for people who should work but choose not to, and that upsets me too, but that's a whole different thread.

Please encourage him to look into Medicaid! He doesn’t need to needlessly suffer. I’m sure losing his job and the breakdown of his marriage impacted his mental health, and there are resources he is entitled to. Good luck to him!