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?

Not a lot of what you seem to have gleaned from this thread is actually true.

People choose to live in HOAs. The rest of us are happily living in areas where we do our own thing.

The assumption that tumble dryers have a decisive impact on the environment is a curious one. The dryer I use takes about 35-40 minutes to get a huge load dry - towels, bedding, jeans, sweatshirts, etc, all bunged in at once, and set to 'low'.

"The US" does not get a uniform number of sunny days across the board. The Pacific Northwest, for example, is notoriously damp and chilly. Additionally, some parts of the US are too cold to make outdoor drying of clothes practical in winter. Many people dry clothes on a basement rack.

As well as having several different climates, the US has several different cultures and hugely different environments, beginning with the basic urban-suburban-rural divide. Bigger metropolitan areas tend to have public transport and thousands of people who do not drive because they don't need to in their daily lives. The idea that people get looked askance at all over the US for walking or taking public transport is just plain silly.

You would be thought incredibly foolish if you were to walk somewhere in the current heatwave in the south west, or through the hills of Appalachia where you might be sharing the road with bears. Many parts of the US have snakes and/or alligators living in close proximity to people. Many have incredibly dangerous urban neighbourhoods.

Even aside from extraordinary heatwaves or wildlife or urban gangs, the humidity experienced in huge swathes of the US in summer is something Britons generally don't appreciate. Nobody likes to venture out and have their clothes soaked with sweat and stuck to them in minutes, and in winter the cold can be brutal across all but the southernmost states.

If you have the choice of a car, it's a practical alternative to weather-related unpleasantness. All the same, people do walk places, go out jogging, biking, walk their dogs, do yoga in parks, kids play in playgrounds and on tennis courts and pitches, etc.

I think you need to think again.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html#6.07/37.53/-83.38

There's a Simpsons episode where the joke is "The Big Book of British Smiles" :-)

Well the electricity use of the dryer can't that low if it dries a load of washing in 40 minutes.

It's also completely unnecessary if you have outdoor space, the weather is right, are able bodied, it isn't pollen season, don't work long hours while caring for people with SEN who don't like line dried clothes. I can't believe we have whataboutery about putting the washing out. The collective impact of the fraction of all those millions of loads that could be line dried will be enormous.

Just for comparison, this picture illustrates my heritage as far as hanging washing out is concerned. You see it hung across the streets of back to back housing in northern England, which opens straight out into the street at the front and there is another property at the back.

So, while no-one does that any more, it's not in my upbringing to see lack of outside space or perfect weather as a barrier to hanging outside.

I'm also sure that plenty of people are able to walk short distances without getting attacked by bears, alligators or urban hoodlums nor freezing or boiling to death. Sometimes it will be nothing more than laziness that prevents them from doing so.

But I'd like to thank the poster who recommended the Sprung show, I've now watched most of it, and it's been great.

Fantastic post. Very insightful.

Agree about Sprung! Thank you to whoever recommended it.

My children have very bad hayfever so I have been told to dry their clothes inside or tumble dry them

Which is a shame as I love the smell of clothes that have been hung on the line.

Years ago I was reading a Michael Connelly novel ( his books are set in LA) which depicted a man hunting for a missing prostitute. He was searching her home which was described as a bungalow and it sounded quite spacious from the description.

I have family who grew up in a high rise on a notorious scheme plus my own background is also very 'working class' so reading this description of prostitutes living in bungalows (a bungalow is a sign of affluence in these parts!) boggled my mind. Then I watched some American tv prog showing run down bungalows crammed together and understood better.

American living in UK here. Yes, of course. America has really deep poverty, like unlike anything you see in the UK. It’s very obvious when people are poor.

But you don’t generally see tv shows with poor or working class people in the US, not like you might with more working class people here, like various soaps. Americans, even poor ones, are aspirational. They don’t like to think of themselves as poor or see that represented in film. There is a tendency to be obsessed to thinking you are more middle class than you are. Hence, why poor whites think Trump is just like them.

I grew up quite middle class, but come from a very working class family. My working class family members would never have called themselves ‘working class’ (even though they worked at Burger King or in a factory floor and lived in a trailer park or tenement housing). They would have seen themselves as middle class and watched tv and very much aligned with the middle class characters in it because that’s the ‘life’ everyone is taught to aspire to (even though generational poverty means none of them will likely ever leave the shitty areas we grew up).

For white people particularly, the divide is educational, rather than straight income.

Black Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Latinos and Asians are a bit more complicated.

Some Americans will literally back away from anyone who says they got here by bus. (Not applicable in New York).

I can confirm this: I lived there for two years and don’t have a driver’s license. People would look at me as if I had said I didn’t speak English or I had a sexually transmitted disease when I revealed that. It was so far outside their frame of reference to meet an educated person who didn’t drive that they thought you were crazy.

As for urban poverty: I see more of that than rural poverty, and to be quite honest a lot of it looks rather like the UK. There's run down housing estates, run down terraced houses. The architecture is a bit different, but it's recognisably familiar. The Wire was filmed on the streets of Baltimore and although it's 15-20 years old now, a lot of the city looks the same.

I have not doubt some people are living like that in the 330 millions plus country it is. However, not many and some would be poor immigrants that never make it. Where did I heard there was a country with more than half of the population on benefits? 🇬🇧

I suppose here people vote for socialism so that some never get rich or go to private school god forbid. 🤣🤣🤣

You’re the one continuously going on about putting the washing out because of your upbringing as if your way is the right way to do things and everyone else is lazy in your opinion. As you have said, it is not your electricity bill so why does it bother you so?

People do line dry in the States and many people don’t. People have the choice to live somewhere that allows them to line-dries or don’t, and if able, not to if they don’t want to.

I can confirm this: I lived there for two years and don’t have a driver’s license. People would look at me as if I had said I didn’t speak English or I had a sexually transmitted disease when I revealed that. It was so far outside their frame of reference to meet an educated person who didn’t drive that they thought you were crazy.

How is that any different than here in the UK?

Plenty of threads on here where women are told to not date a man who can’t/doesn’t drive, women need to learn to drive and anyone who doesn’t are likely users and expect other people to give them lifts. I’ve gotten the same reaction here when I say I don’t drive and being told I should despite having everything I need within walking distance and have good public transport that gets me all over the UK (and no I don’t live in London).

Hillbilly Elegy book or film shows how the poor neglected white working class live if you are interested.

Hillbilly Elegy is a terrible book that mostly seeks to push JD Vance's political agenda.

My DSis, who’s lived in the US for over 40 years, once told me that hanging washing out is seen as a sign of either poverty or madness.

She’s generally very ‘green/eco’ but still tumble dries just about everything. And while once staying with her years ago, I nearly went mad trying to find an iron (not that I’m a fanatical ironer but some of my summer things are linen and do need it.)

When she eventually came home I was informed that the reason I couldn’t find it, was because she didn’t possess one!

And as regards ‘poor’, again it was maybe 10 years ago when we were attending niece’s graduation from Berkeley - an affluent looking city in California.

Niece had a p/t job in a restaurant where we ate, but at once point DSis and I nipped up the road for a quick fag next to a small public park.

I was amazed to see that the park was full of homeless people with sleeping bags etc. starting to settle down for the night - and a couple of whom came up to cadge a fag.

As Dsis said, ‘Well, at least it’s warm here,’ - unlike much of the year in Massachusetts, where she lived at the time.

There are definitely ways to tell.

Poverty in America looks like: a diet heavy in ultra-processed foods, substance abuse, bad teeth & hair, non-salaried jobs in things like care, food service, or retail, unstable family arrangements, old cars/clothes/furniture, medical debt, obesity, working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet, low educational attainment, ultra patriotism.

I read somewhere recently that part of the reason the poor/lower class Americans are so obsessed with the military is because the military has traditionally been one of the only roads out of generational poverty and/or black-hole small towns without prospects for
young people. I thought that was interesting.

There's definitely some prejudice against hanging laundry out, but there's also been a pretty substantial backlash in response. Partly environmental, partly "It's my yard and I can do what I want in it."

As for homelessness, it's a real issue, but it's multifactorial. California is known, not only by anecdote but statistic, to be particularly bad. It's the intersection of extremely expensive housing, a climate that makes sleeping rough less of a hardship, and poor government policy. And what you see on the streets doesn't show people who are doubled up, couch surfing, etc. New York City, by contrast, has a right to shelter. It's imperfect, but it makes a huge difference statistically.

So it does not depict how poor American people live? I knew someone would jump. However, you can’t deny the facts and he married an Indian woman that may not fit the racist agenda thrown at him.

I also wonder about how many posts lately about America and Americans mostly misleading and criticising. It is obvious to me. Labour is in so a break to bash the Tories. Next goal to stop Trump at all costs. Only a moron would not see this.

Who said anything about race? I disliked the book because it pushes the tired narrative that the reason people are poor is just because of their culture and choices. It purports to provide an inside view of Appalachian poverty for an audience that has never experienced it.

I have seen film (didn't think Oscar worthy but that's another thread) but not read the book - I found the film (as per my thread) confusing given space available - but like others have said this is my UK-centric view. I do recognise what others are saying about run-down urban and rural areas and the lack of industry and job opportunities. On a side note I never intended tis thread to be "poor or US bashing" - just wanted an insight into perspectives seen on TV

I’ve worked as a nanny for 15 years. Not one family have hung their washing up outside, or had the facilities to. One family wasn’t allowed on their street, at the weekends. They all bar one had a tumble drier and all homes could be kept warm enough to dry the washing inside anyway, and had the space to do so. I love line drying! We did get a tumble drier (my first!) about a year ago and it’s easier as it’s on the first floor next to the washing machine but line drying is so much nicer and I love the sight of it- pants n all!