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?

Thank you for proving my point. I know very few Americans who actually believe the nonsense about "the greatest country in the world." To suggest that all Americans believe that is a silly, ridiculous stereotype. Of course, some people do. But you'll find that everywhere. You need look no further than MN to find many people who are convinced that the UK is far superior to anywhere else in the world.

I googled 'wife eater' and apparently there's a professional wrestler who calls himself that!

Accent, teeth, clothes, weight, address, hobbies, education, same as in the UK. Cars not so much.

But why is that the side of America that is shown to the rest of us. I mean, even we know that most Americans don’t believe it. So in that way it is so bizarre, if it doesn’t represent the people.

I’m not from the UK and I do agree that some people on MN turn very hostile when they find out. Covid really highlighted it, when the British were in lockdown and we weren’t. Our country had a different approach. Like it’s a competition, instead of thinking we can learn from each other. It’s not a competition.

My American grandparents were poor. Neither of them finished high school. My grandmother was 16 when she got married. They were the finest people you could imagine. Despite his lack of formal education, my grandfather read widely and was always writing letters to the editor of the local newspaper about issues he was passionate about. My grandmother was one of the most intelligent people you could imagine. She was a brilliant photographer and gardener. They were not religious or politically conservative. Their appearance wasn't unusual in any way. They certainly didn't wear the clothing described in some posts, they just wore ordinary clothes. I could go on. But the point is that I simply do not recognize either of them in many of the posts on this thread.

Oh yes. My train ride in Atlanta was perfectly fine and pleasant, but my 11pm bus ride along Market Street in San Francisco was eye opening.

That is great. My parents and grandparents are like yours, you describe it well.

But they are certainly not representatives of America. It’s a different picture being pumped out to us, how America is the greatest country on earth. And we, still, can see that it is quite obviously not.

Almost everyone in the US identifies as "middle class," which doesn't mean what it does in the UK. The self-identified middle class in the US includes people barely making ends meet as well as professionals living an extremely comfortable lifestyle.

This is a very accurate statement. I think one of the main misunderstandings by British people about the class structure in the US is that working class and middle class in the US are not mutually exclusive. I remember a thread on MN where a poster was talking about the sitcom Frasier and saying that Frasier and Niles were middle class because they were doctors and that their father Martin was working class because he was a policeman. Wrong. All three men were middle class.

However, discussions of middle class in the US do often separate groups into lower middle class, middle middle class, and upper middle class. Income is a major determinant of which group a person falls into.

I do cringe at the stereotypes of drinking in the middle of the day and not keeping up the garden. Yes, a lot of people like that will be poor, but most poor people work, often quite hard, as long as there are jobs to be had. In the very poorest areas like the Mississippi Delta or rural Appalachia, the problem is a lack of jobs to get.

Roseanne's house was realistic I would say, given its setting (Lanford was based on Rockford). The Bundys less so but remember it was nearly 40 years ago and property was much much cheaper relative to income.

A show like My 600lb Life does show genuinely poor people, but that kind of exploitation reality TV also looks for the most shocking examples, the sort of people who put Mountain Dew in their kids' baby bottles.

I live in a "right to dry" state. This means that HOAs can't enforce rules that prohibit drying on a line outdoors. However, I don't know anyone who does. I haven't seen clothes drying on the line outside for many many years. I wouldn't necessarily think that someone who does is poor. I would more likely think it a bit quirky.

Around here I would assume quirky/environmentalist. But that is because if you are poor here, you probably can't afford a house with a yard to dry things in.

Your last two paragraphs are so accurate. When people on this site marvel at how anyone can vote for Trump; how Americans can believe the garbage spewed by Maga types; why they’re so beholden to cars, fossil fuels etc, they betray an ignorance about what daily life is like for many millions of Americans (which is fair! I don’t know anything about Hebridean life or Northern Irish life for example!).

That America is rarely seen on TV. The closest glimpse I’ve seen is True Detective, first couple of series. These places are remote; probably had industry and/or agriculture and/or fossil fuel exploitation as their core source of income until some decades ago; probably southern or north western or mid western; probably have churches of whatever denomination to center community. Since those industries died, these places and the people in them have been forgotten in the rush to make $$$$ out of financial services and then tech. Incomes are low, educational aspirations extremely low, employment rates low, quality of life low. These people are exploited by pharmaceutical companies, the military mine them for human fodder, churches bleed them dry. Drug and alcohol addiction are rife. Life’s heyday was back when white people ruled the country, the Cold War was on and communists of whatever colour were the devil, when work was abundant, standards of living could be expected to remain stable or rise. Patriotism was a duty and defined Americanism in such places.

That America has nothing whatsoever in common with the America of Sex and the City, Real Housewives, the America people see on TV.

Now, that America - and there are millions and millions of people like this - vote for Trump because he tells them he hasn’t forgotten them, he wants to make America great again (ie as it was back in that heyday). That he has a proven track record of doing absolutely nothing of the sort, in fact doing the very opposite, means nothing in the face of such a strongly felt hope and recognition he gives them. He makes them feel heard, and he gives them an identity again. The people you saw on Jan 6 descending on D.C. (the “swamp” (recognisable to southerners), full of “elites” (meaning educated coastal Dem voters) etc) in their pick up trucks and Hulk Hogan moustaches and wife beaters etc, those aren’t the Americans you see in Emily Goes to Paris. They’re an entirely different people, with different values and goals.

Like it or not, Trump has changed American politics for an entire generation or more. There’s no going back from what he’s done. Democrats have forgotten those Appalachians, ex miners, ex car factory workers etc, and so did old school Republicans. Both will pay the price for it. There are many many many reasons never to vote for Trump. But nobody else has spoken to that forgotten slice of society (and neither has Trump in reality, he’s just another billionaire telling them he loves them while he plunders them for their last $5, feasting on their desperation and hopelessness and lack of education, bleeding them dry - and when he’s rinsed them of everything they can do for him, he’ll drop them and retreat to his gilded life. But they’ll still believe him, because he made them feel like they matter).

There's some truth to that but there's also a nice chunk of fairly well off suburbanites who are voting Trump because he nurtures their sense of cultural and racial grievance. And of course, the "forgotten America" mostly applies to white Americans. It certainly doesn't apply to Black or Native Americans who were left behind by economic change; they don't vote for him. The Trump GOP draws together several strands of people.

Yes, I agree. Not unlike Britain’s Tories + Reform who, if they’d stood together, would have received more of the popular vote than Labour earlier this month.

Amusing statement given the near inaccessibility of nhs dentistry.

I have found that American dentists are far more interventionist than even private British ones to the extent that virtually all of my classmates had orthodontics. Yes, having bad teeth is a social marker in America, but most Brits would have ‘bad teeth’ by American standards.

There's definitely a culture of orthodontia (part of which is that teeth are a class marker so middle class and up parents are extra focused on it), but comparing to people I know and things I've heard about other countries, the UK and the US are extremes on a spectrum amongst high income countries. TBH the NHS is overly stingy with orthodontia in my opinion and waits as long as possible, when the treatment is more difficult. (Also the opinion of one of my relatives who is a UK dentist.) Meanwhile Americans who can afford it get orthodontia for minor corrections.

Watch The Middle.
Typical working class family in middle America (Indiana?). Their home and lifestyle would be typical of the working class. Poor and likely living paycheque to paycheque. However, still a step above the truly poor who survive on foodstamps.

I find it fascinating that everyone depicting the poor in the US has illustrated the rural poor. Are we all ignoring the urban poor?

But why is that the side of America that is shown to the rest of us. I mean, even we know that most Americans don’t believe it. So in that way it is so bizarre, if it doesn’t represent the people.

Have you considered that it is because US T.V. shows and movies are made for American consumption and the shows are later picked up by other countries?

There are plenty of tv shows and movies that show the negatives of the U.S. and plenty that show positive sides.

The U.S. isn’t the only country where some of its people view their country as the greatest in the world. There are plenty of other people around the world who view their country the same way, many countries centre their own in their media (why wouldn’t they?) and if you speak the negatives about it, you’ll be told to leave or be told at least we’re not like xyz country (usually the States) which I’ve seen on threads here talking about the UK.

People would find it very weird to hang your underwear outside where neighbors can see if.

I did mention earlier that "Good Times" was a depiction of a poor working class family in the city. The show is from the 70s when you were more likely to find shows about low income people. The late 70s and especially 80s brought us things like Dallas, Falcon Crest and Dynasty so the complete opposite.

Interesting thread.
Not being 'allowed' to hang your washing out, especially when the US gets a lot more sun than we do here, sounds positively Stalinist. Very strange for a country that values individual freedom, not to mention the impact on the environment if everyone is using tumble dryers. I would also hate not feeling free to walk to places rather than use a car, or to be looked down on for using public transport. Not surprising the US has such a high carbon footprint if this is really the case.

On the other hand the sheer amount of living space Americans have (outside the big cities) is amazing compared to the average in the UK and Europe. I remember a scene in Breaking Bad (which does actually show quite a range of rich, poor and middle class Americans) where Walter White and Skyler are buying their first home on a single schoolteacher's salary. It's described as a starter home, but is nevertheless a big suburban home with massive rooms, plus a garden and a swimming pool!

My DM's neighbour has a DD who lives in the US and hangs her washing out, because it is what we do here (NZ). Her neighbours think she is crazy!

I would refuse to live somewhere where I wasn't allowed to hang my washing out - I don't even own a dryer because I have no need of one.

Just the sort of place where I would HATE to live.

I imagine the poor of America to be like in Dopesick.