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?

They weren’t all from NYC.

Carrie and Charlotte were from Connecticut.

Samantha unknown but moved to NYC in the late 1970s and was from a working-class background.

Miranda was from Philadelphia, which I can only guess is Pennsylvania.

As an ex-pat that’s lived in the US for the last 2+ decades, I can tell you that you should largely ignore what you see on TV. Houses don’t tell an accurate picture for the most part. Poor people don’t all live in the projects or trailer parks or ramshackle rundown houses. It’s totally possible to earn a median salary and own or rent a decent sized house in excellent condition. I have a friend who scrapes by using the money her husband left her when he died. Her house is valued at $1.2MM. My ex-wife lives in a 5,000 square foot home and is only just able to make it work with her salary. I live with a bunch of guys and rent a room. I retired at 52 and I have a nice nest egg tucked away. Until the 2000s, it was totally possible for someone earning a median wage to get a reasonable mortgage and own a home and several cars.

There is no working class in the US, per se. Nobody uses that phraseology in daily life. There really isn’t a class system like that, or at least not one that is ever discussed. Middle class is how most people will describe themselves; a weird situation, but there you have it.

You can’t even be totally sure that “homeless” people are what they appear to be. Once you consider that they may simply be panhandlers with some sort of home, or travelers, or even “Trustafarians” (teenagers with rich parents that choose to rough it for extended periods), it becomes hard to know which are truly homeless. Of course, the majority you come across actually are, but you see my point?

Television and movie production, for the most part, love to use interesting homes for their settings. They’re usually always too perfect. You can tell something’s up for other reasons. Parents sometimes seem to go for long periods without their kids, people don’t ever seem to work, and much of a normal daily life is absent. People really do lock their cars (sometimes obsessively) and you can’t order a “beer” in a bar without giving a hint as to what you actually want.

Having said that, some stereotypes are actually accurate. The very first thing I saw in the US was two police officers drinking coffee and eating donuts outside of a coffee shop in their vehicle.

To be clear I meant 2 bathrooms is typical in the US, not the UK. California is fairly generous with Medicaid, so he should definitely check into it.

10 years/40 quarters is the minimum to qualify for SSDI or retirement, but as a PP says it will be taken based on a longer view. You get a reduced pension if you take it at 62. However if he was a high earner his reduced amount might still be reasonable especially compared to the basic state pension.

Medicare Part B is $150 a month. If you choose Medigap and Part D (Pharma) that is more. You can also get Medicare Advantage (Part C) which bundles everything and is cheaper than traditional Medigap (politically it's another story but that's not relevant here). If your income is low, then you are dual eligible and Medicaid pays your Medicare premiums plus the cost share and additional services.

" I think here it can be too easy for people who should work but choose not to, and that upsets me"

Come to where I live if you want to be resentful of people with no job. No need to prove you're looking for work, benefits in line with previous income, not required to take a job below the level of your previous jobs.

"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."

That was always the complaint about Friends, that the apartments were better than people in those jobs could afford, but it was explained with 'belongs to grandmother and NY rent control'. People make the same complaint about Eastenders.

OK, but they didn't have any perceptible regional accents from those places either, at least not to my uneducated ear.
If Samantha moved to NY in the 70s that would have been in her teens presumably so she might have picked up the accent...

"There is no working class in the US, per se. Nobody uses that phraseology in daily life. There really isn’t a class system like that, or at least not one that is ever discussed. "

I've heard it used on American TV. I know they don't use it as often, but it must be used sometimes or I wouldn't have heard it, and they use middle class to mean ordinary people and upper class often just means rich rather than posh.

I never thought she had a NY accent tbh. She is a decade older than the rest. She met Carrie in the mid 80s when she was a barmaid.

I can place residents of NY by social class according to their accents, because I lived there for five years. And, to a degree, southerners. But I can't place Californians at all by accent. California is now the US equivalent of received pronunciation, and unplaceable.

When I think NY accent, I think of Lillian from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt because it reminds me of my visit to NYC and listening to true crime documentaries about the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz.

Well also it's a TV show and the actors aren't natives. Unless TV shows are really pushing for authenticity they don't make actors pick up local accents. This is why Dominic West and Aiden Gillen got away with their accents on The Wire. A man of McNulty's age and social class would absolutely have a local accent and a white Baltimore working class accent is quite distinctive. Gillen does better, but not perfectly. (The word "Baltimore" is pronounced "Bawldimer" or "Bawlmer," for example. There's YouTube clips of real ones. Black Baltimoreans have a different accent.) One of the reasons Kate Winslet got so much praise for Mare of Easttown is that she did the accent and did it accurately, Philly/Delco is another hard one.

For most TV audiences @knitnerd90 it's irrelevant. US accents have evened out across the country since I lived there. When I was buying a mailing list from NYC from a business in South Carolina in 1981, I had to ask the sales person to repeat everything. I have rarely felt so incompetent, but it also took me a while to follow Rab C Nesbitt. My posh Scottish friend never managed to find it funny.

One of the reasons Kate Winslet got so much praise for Mare of Easttown is that she did the accent and did it accurately, Philly/Delco is another hard one.

She was amazing with that accent. I lived in the Philadelphia area for several years, and I think that accent is difficult for non-natives to replicate. It is very distinctive and her mastery of it was one of the many things that made that series so outstanding.

@LadeOde , apologies I may not have been very clear. But in Europe and many parts of the world, anyone can play football, as it requires so few pieces of equipment; only one ball. In British Colombia all one needed was a pair of trainers, and so anyone could speed / power walk. Those considered poor were those who didn't even manage that. Playing beach volleyball in the park was another all inclusive sport, akin to football in Europe.

I agree. US shows always show “regular” white people characters living far beyond their means. Ethnic minorities they tend to stereotype.

One way to tell if an American is poor is they have no passport because they know they will never be able to afford a trip outside the US.

"Unless TV shows are really pushing for authenticity they don't make actors pick up local accents. "

Whereas in the UK they're supposed to try at least.
What gets me is when they completely mix it up. In Young Sheldon, some of them have a Texas, or at least southern, accent and some don't. Young Sheldon himself doesn't, which you could sort of explain away by his being 'aspirational' and copying posher accents from TV and radio, but in The Big Bang Theory he does have the accent.

Yes, if they can’t afford a $30 passport card.

There are passport cards and passports.

The U.S. passport card may only be used for international travel by land or sea between the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda.

Regular passport allows international flight.

Before passport cards, one could drive into Canada or Mexico with just a U.S. drivers license if I remember correctly.

It’s not the $30 for the card so much as knowing they will never afford to go even to Canada, Mexico or on a Caribbean/Bermuda cruise ever in their life….holidays that are cheaper than it costs for a U.K. family to go to Benidorm.
So they don’t bother paying for one.

The US doesn’t use passports as a common form of ID like we do here. It’s usually drivers licence.

I remember a news segment when there was a major hurricane heading towards land and people were told to evacuate. Some people couldn’t because they didn’t have enough money for petrol so they had to stay

Before passport cards, one could drive into Canada or Mexico with just a U.S. drivers license if I remember correctly.

It used to be that you didn't even need a driver's license to enter Canada or Mexico. Any form of ID was fine, a school ID or voter registration card or whatever. Alas, those days are long gone.

An American could take a holiday every single year and go someplace completely different, all without a passport. That includes multiple tropical island destinations.

People don’t bother getting a passport until they are taking a trip abroad because they expire.

the standard for ID is a state issued card, either driver or non-driver, and pretty much everyone 16+ has one. My dc started carrying one at 14.

Yeah, the poor ones don’t go far. They might take a road trip. They won’t be able to afford to fly to any tropical islands.

I think it's only since 9/11 that you need a passport for Mexico and Canada from the US.

Definitely are.

I remember when my parents drove my sister and I into Canada through Detroit. It was like going through a toll road. It was a little over an eight hour drive from our home so not far really.