Reply #39: Perception [View All]

I have a friend on Long Island whose family owns (shares ownership with mortgage co?) a large house on a large lot in an affluent neighborhood complete with a home theater (not just a tv with surround sound, a full partially sound-proofed room with a large screen tv and this was 10 years ago when large screen tvs were not as widely available and cost a lot more). They own a boat and used to have a vacation home in Pennsylvania (which they, admittedly, had to sell a few years ago although well before the housing slump). She insisted they were middle class but I consider them lower-upper class without a doubt.

My brother used to have a friend in high school whose father is a lawyer. They lived in the "rich" part of town and we lived in the "middle-class" part of town. My brother once asked my mom what class we were. Her answer was the following - in terms of income, we were middle class. In terms of education (my dad has a Ph.D.) we were upper class. I've known other people who made this distinction (people within about 10 years of my mom in terms of age). I think this potentially reflects some of the perception issues of defining class.

I think there was a time when there were the poor, working class (blue collar?), middle class (white collar?), upper class (advanced degrees?), and rich (pink collar falls between working and middle class). Education often played a key role in the class structure until you got up to the rich and those people mostly got lucky, cheated/stole, or inherited their money (we have some disgustingly aristocratic-level rich in the country who don't deserve it). As income and education became less tightly linked (i.e., high school graduates making as much as college graduates, etc), that affected people's views. I.e., if the high school educated construction worker/plumber/grocery bagger who is working class down the street makes as much as I do and I have a college education (middle class), I must not be making as much as I should for my class. Since real estate agents tell you to essentially buy the cheapest house in the most expensive neighborhood you can afford, more and more of those middle class earning working class were moving into those middle class neighborhoods and because we live in a society and promotes and values wealth, keeping up with the Jones became an imperative, especially if the Jones were those pesky "white trash" in the neighborhood. Those middle class individuals suddenly sharing their neighborhood with working class felt compelled to buy up to keep up (because, despite all the mythology to the contrary, we are very much a classist society).

Then real income started stagnating and the rich started getting richer and people saw lifestyles of the rich and famous and got heavily into debt and got convinced they could have a upper-class (rich) lifestyle on their middle-class (upper-class) income and the downward comparison didn't look as good any more and the upward comparison didn't look as good anymore and they couldn't give up their addiction to cheap walmart stuff that looked designer but only lasted as long as the cheapest of the cheap and their debt got worse and pretty soon, they were living paycheck to paycheck.

My husband and I are DINKS and I DEFINITELY consider us solidly upper class. We both have PhDs. Together we make a decent amount over $100 (in a good year, almost $150). We managed to buy a house in what is actually was middle class neighborhood (i.e., 1960's ranch style tract home) before the prices skyrocketed and have no difficulty paying the mortgage. We could have bought in an upper class neighborhood further from the center of town but we wanted to be able to walk to work. We have savings, are saving money for retirement, and a home equity loan but no credit card debt. We can take regular vacations to exotic locations (OK, it does help that we each had a business trip to an exotic location in the past year that work paid for but we could afford for the other to go along and to spend a decent amount of time doing the tourist thing). We do not own a boat nor have we purchased a vacation home. Solidly upper-class but not rich.

So, clearly my perception is very different from my friend on Long Island!

My 2 cents.