I think a large part of the point of that statement was to question to utility of the term "middle class". Once upon a time, it referred to merchants and skilled workers, the class between the nobility and the peasantry; is that still a useful grouping, and if not, do we want to draw the lines in three groups? Note that almost all Americans (I don't know much about the rest of the world in this regard) will say they're middle class, regardless of income, background, or whether they work for someone else.
It's tempting for me to think of "rich" ro "upper class" as "I never need to work again to maintain a relatively comfortable lifestyle", if I wanted to make a lower/middle class edge I'd be tempted to look at whether someone was able to save money for a rainy day, for retirement and stuff, but given the number of folks who have enough money to do that and live comfortably but instead pay up for fancy cars but don't manage to save a dollar so they won't be asking if I "Want fries with that?" when they're 80, it can be hard to find an good clear boundary for that point.
(Note that I'm using a financial-only sort of look at class here, where class can also be a lot more complicated.)
I also worry a little bit about getting too ... well, labelling with class terms. I think it's important to talk about wealth differentials and class differentials, but the danger of any simplified way of talking about people is that it gets overgeneralized and/or overcompartmentalized. Tricky. *shrug*
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Date: 2006-07-05 06:31 pm (UTC)It's tempting for me to think of "rich" ro "upper class" as "I never need to work again to maintain a relatively comfortable lifestyle", if I wanted to make a lower/middle class edge I'd be tempted to look at whether someone was able to save money for a rainy day, for retirement and stuff, but given the number of folks who have enough money to do that and live comfortably but instead pay up for fancy cars but don't manage to save a dollar so they won't be asking if I "Want fries with that?" when they're 80, it can be hard to find an good clear boundary for that point.
(Note that I'm using a financial-only sort of look at class here, where class can also be a lot more complicated.)
I also worry a little bit about getting too ... well, labelling with class terms. I think it's important to talk about wealth differentials and class differentials, but the danger of any simplified way of talking about people is that it gets overgeneralized and/or overcompartmentalized. Tricky. *shrug*