why do people describe themseleves as working class or middle class etc?

[beachlover]

what do most pople think the difference is between wc and mc?

do you have to be a proffesional to be mc?
if so what sort of professions fit the bill?

do you have to have x amount of money? if so how much ?

at the moment im a sahm, live in a 3bed semi in a suburb, dh is an accountant, but he has to work for us to survive, shop from ocaddo, so where do we fit in personally i see us as working class as we need to worh to live

or is dh mc
and im wc ?

Middle class I think were professional folk ie. professional status can sign passports etc.

Working class - people who work in other jobs

What about those who do nothing by choice? Those who aspire to nothing more than claiming benefits when they could work?

Don't think this class system is applicable anymore.

"under-class" is a term I've heard!

I asked this in a thread a few weeks back and got no consensus at all

Why - because people feel the need to define themselves and others. They need to know once they own their own home, have 2 cars and 2 holidays a year they have Made It.

I'm Class A, like the drug, highly toxic, extremely dangerous but guaranteed to give you a good time.

I'm Standard Class.

I have no class

Can't define the 'classes' ( assuming you accept that they do exist).

Can't be money because there are some people with shitloads of money that you would not call 'upper class' - think some celebrities. There are also some very posh people from very posh , 'upperclass' backgrounds who have no money, but you wouldn't refer to them as working class.

Can't be "breeding"...because we have social mobility now (don't we?), plus people marry 'outside' their class all the time.

All I know is that I'm totally fanclasstic

actually, it seems that the class system has been replaced by something called the National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification, I guess for consistency with Europe

www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/ns_sec/default.asp. So we are all guilty of outmoded thinking

The user guide is actually quite interesting reading... raises lots of great issues such as whether there is a difference between salary earners and wage earners (apparently still yes) and whether its' appropriate to choose a "reference person" on the basis of whom to classify the household (also yes)...

I'll probably get flamed for this but here goes...the middle class folk I know (and love in some cases ) would be pleased to be categorised as such- they "wear" their class like a badge. But then this could just be I notice the differences because of the juxtaposition of their lives and mine. (ooh I used a big word! Probably in the wrong context and now I have outed myself as particularly un-middle class )

Luckily I'm forrin so can't be categorised...

I have no idea. All I do with my life is work work work. Yet I think I would describe myself as middleclass.

I think your family needs to have 'walked the walk' of a middle/upper class family for a few generations before you can categorise yourself as mc/uc.
I think you can slide down to wc in a year or two...