In monetary terms what constitutes 'middle class'?

[Monkeytrousers]

DP thinks it well over 50k a year and that 50k a year is still aspirational middle class.

I think liberall using fuck day to day precludes me from any aspirations, despite an ongoing Boden habit...

The gap between the rich and poor is growing - that is a fact and it is this 'unfairness' that stratifies and harms societies.

I'm not sure what you mean by mentioning people with mental problems though.

Poverty amongst the disabled community is 30% higher than amongst the rest of us. In Dicken's time, before the welfare state, that might have been expected, today it's a disgrace.

could you live on minimum wage?

Xenia, (and everyone else to) please read this and then go and buy the book and read that too. It's not very long.

but oyu are a scummy brwonhills chav

cod your vile sometimes

i think youll find that is a J>O>K>E

Cod, I think you shold consider using emoticons!!!

fioand i are in that level of intimacyw here she gets VIIIIIIIIIBes

MT, thanks for the link to the Polly Toynbee piece.

(Mind you it makes me want to go and punch somebody )

Cod can't use emoticons because they don't work if you can;t spell.

MT. Just read the Polly Toynbee piece and found it had the same effect on me as the programme last night with Anne Widdecombe on the North London estate. Why is any of this tolerated - why does it not get more publicity that so many people are being shafted? I am looking forward to the TV programme tonight about the City workers who have reaped huge bonuses this year. I am sure that will make me angry in a quite different way. Still not convinced about the financial boundaries of class though. My MIL (from a middle class upbringing) was a dinner lady and worked in a factory. I myself spent some years as a stable girl, and whilst I was looked down on by the majority of horse owners, my family have always been what would be referred to as 'middle class'. I had a private education, ponies and spent at least two months per year abroad (Skiing in Austria, at our second home in America, travelling in Europe) My Dad is a property investor, and my Mum was a housewife who worked bits and pieces for my dad. Both are highly intelligent and political and we always were more than comfortable financially. But I went to work for over 60 hours per week for a take home pay of £140. Where would that put me in the class system? I have also worked for a company which employs vast numbers of Indian staff, and their caste system is very apparent between themselves, even when they are all doing the same job. They carry with them a very definite notion of where they figure in the pecking order based on their background, not their present position. It is often forbidden for members of a particular caste to directly address the member of another. At least ours is a bit better than that. It's more that the imbalance of wealth distribution needs addressing, rather than concern ourselves with notions of class.

nh, some people can';t cope with life and never have been able to. Sometimes it's mental health, often it's also cannabis (or the mental health issues caused by that) or cocaine or alcohol. There have always been people like that except now compared say to the late 1800s they are better off and have better food and housing. Even in the 1800s they were better off than before there were workhouses and places to go for the poor.

There is an interesting issue of whether poverty should be relative or absolute, isn't there? I presume a lot of people on this thread would prefer a Swedish model with confiscatory tax levels at the upper end (which causes people like the Rausings to flee to England) and everyone around the middle level. One of the best things the Conservatives did was reduce tax rates and thus increase the tax take amazingly (!) but also give an incentive for those who wanted to earn more.

Aren't we just seeing a free market with this contracting out? Amusing that a lot of it has been done under Labour, isn't it? They only got in because they stole Conservative policies. When wages and standards of living are better in Romania than here we will flock over there. We do have large numbers of British emigrating and always have done.

I read the Polly T link, thanks.

The problem I have with the term middle class is that it implies a superiority complex. Dh and I are both degree educated, live in an affluent part of the country, I'm a SAHM and he earns a six figure salary yet I prefer to think of us as a fortunate working class family as defining us as middle class would, to me, suggest that I thought we were somehow better than 'whatever comes below the middle' IYKWIM. The phrase also, for me, brings to mind people with a very narrow outlook on life.

I think some of the positive connotations associated with being middle class such as working hard, respecting your surroundings, having high aspirations for your children etc are virtues to be found across a very broad spectrum of people.

Just because you bring your kids up on a council estate or on a seriously limited budget that does not mean you don't aspire for yourself and them to do/have better. Likewise, just because you live in a nice detatched in the Home Counties that does not mean you give a damn about anyone other than yourself.

My mother in law told my dh to put some books on show as every good middle class family would. He now wants to buy a bookcase for the livingroom. Apparently the one in the study is not good enough because we don't necessarily take people there!

"fortunate working class" - sounds like a middle-class euphemism for..er.. middle class

No, Pointydog, it wasn't a turn of phrase. I was describing us as a fortunate, working class couple. I wasn't bringing a whole new sub-group to the table!
Clearly a well placed comma would have avoided that misunderstanding!

I am sure the middle classes are regarded as fairly inferior by a lot of people. In fact it's a term of abuse used by some.

The bourgeoisie - would that translate as Mail reading Tory/UKIP voting middle englanders here?

It's quite hard to split people precisely. Those who market to people I think have some of the better divisions but I can't remember all the classifications. abc1 etc. At least it's more changeable than the Indian caste system.