4 ms·

> how unaware people seem to be of social class Is that not a manifestation of "the american dream", where "if you work enough, you too can be a millionaire"?

> how unaware people seem to be of social class Is that not a manifestation of "the american dream", where "if you work enough, you too can be a millionaire"? It appears to me that too many people believe they are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, blissfully unaware that by design the deck is stacked against them.

WJW 4y ago
That's exactly one of the types of unawareness that GP talks about: just acquiring a lot of money will not get you to a higher class all by itself. The idea that a blue collar worker who wins the lottery would suddenly become a higher class would be laughable in (let's say) Britain. You would still be lacking all the mannerisms, connections, skills, etc that serve as the true barrier to moving between classes. It typically takes a generation or two between for a family that has acquired money to actually become "upper class", often longer.
- mmarq 4y ago
  In my experience Britain is an odd case. The school system’s main purpose seems to be to segregate people by class and to perpetuate the class system. One of the results is that “working class” people develop different accents and manners from people with other backgrounds. It takes ages to relearn how to speak and how to behave.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Britain is an odd case. The school system’s main purpose seems to be to segregate people by class and to perpetuate the class system. One of the results is that “working class” people develop different accents and manners from people with other backgrounds. That's not a result of the school system. It's how things naturally occur everywhere.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      The British school system is explicitly classist. To the point that what they call "public schools" are actually among the most private and exclusive by any reasonable standard.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        So? If you take a phenomenon that occurs everywhere, add a classist school system to it, and observe that it still occurs exactly the same way as before, how do you conclude "This is a result of the school system!"?
        mmarq 4y ago
        It doesn’t happen everywhere. People in Italy don’t talk about the “working class” like they do in the UK and I’ve never heard anybody claiming they were a member of the “working class”, let alone people claiming that as if it was something to celebrate or to be proud of. There isn’t a “working class” accent in Italian, the closest thing is marginally educated people that can’t use half of the verb moods and tenses. Romans speak more or less homogeneously, likewise in other cities. Children are not segregated by class, so the child of a doctor may be in the same class of the child of the mayor, of a child that gets free meals and of another that lives in a squatted flat. They mix and they don’t develop different accents. Instead in the UK people debate this class idiocy ad nauseam almost daily. They spend a significant amount of time and money to ensure their children don’t go to the same school as children from lower social classes (and as soon as you make a child, they’ll bombard you with their insanity). This is of course never stated explicitly and I suspect they are not conscious of that. This is a country where even the supermarket where you buy groceries will be used to infer your class status. For instance, while I don’t know what my class is supposed to be, I’ve been told that I’m at least middle class because Waitrose is the cheapest place where I buy food. I’m posh and whatnot class because I occasionally go to the opera. Once I recognised the Thieving Magpie and told a colleague the name of its composer, that earned me the accusation of being megaclass. Once I was rented a flat, the landlady told me, because she could tell from my manners that I must come from a rich family (in fact I don’t). My girlfriend (that earns minimum wage and whose parents are cleaners) was suspected of being from the upper middle class because of how she holds cutlery (not as well as she should, if you asked me).
mjfl 4y ago
there are around 20 million millionaires in the united states, that's almost 10% of the population. It's not an unreachable status. To say that it is, in fact, is quantitatively delusional.
- refactor_master 4y ago
  I’m actually more surprised by the number of millionaires in European countries with high income taxes that typically go north of 50% way before you hit “millionaire” status https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_millionaires https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    From the list, it seems like the top 3 are Switzerland, Australia, and the USA. Switzerland has low taxes relatively speaking but also offers deals to rich people that move there. Australia is more surprising.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    You're confusing wealth with income, two very different things. Those are income taxes, not millionaire taxes. Income taxes are paid by the working class, while millionaires are rich because they own valuable assets which are often tax free if inherited in most of Europe (the rent seeking class). They didn't become millionaires because they paid 50% tax on their €50k/year 9-5 job, but because someone down their family tree lucked out economically decades/centuries ago and left them a nice inheritance of appreciating assets or businesses. Wich is why most of Europe's millionaires come from wealthy old money families with inter-generational wealth that has been rolled over for centuries, often tax free. The richest families in Europe are rich since at least 50 years, to hundreds of years. The US is a lot more progressive than Europe here since it has inheritance taxes on wealth to prevent the formation of such feudal families, wile most for Western Europe has policies to protect the wealth of the old rich families.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I don't believe I said it is unattainable, only that the deck is stacked against them. As we speak, the 20 million millionaires are just 6% of the population of the states. Being a millionaire alone doesn't really make you "upper class". I know that regardless of how much I make, in my heart I will always be a prole, and that will never change because I lack the mannerisms and the connections said people. I grew up in a different world, and even if I were to spend every waking hour with them, things wouldn't change, and frankly I am not interested in it either.

WJW 4y ago

That's exactly one of the types of unawareness that GP talks about: just acquiring a lot of money will not get you to a higher class all by itself. The idea that a blue collar worker who wins the lottery would suddenly become a higher class would be laughable in (let's say) Britain. You would still be lacking all the mannerisms, connections, skills, etc that serve as the true barrier to moving between classes. It typically takes a generation or two between for a family that has acquired money to actually become "upper class", often longer.

mmarq 4y ago
In my experience Britain is an odd case. The school system’s main purpose seems to be to segregate people by class and to perpetuate the class system. One of the results is that “working class” people develop different accents and manners from people with other backgrounds. It takes ages to relearn how to speak and how to behave.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > Britain is an odd case. The school system’s main purpose seems to be to segregate people by class and to perpetuate the class system. One of the results is that “working class” people develop different accents and manners from people with other backgrounds. That's not a result of the school system. It's how things naturally occur everywhere.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    The British school system is explicitly classist. To the point that what they call "public schools" are actually among the most private and exclusive by any reasonable standard.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      So? If you take a phenomenon that occurs everywhere, add a classist school system to it, and observe that it still occurs exactly the same way as before, how do you conclude "This is a result of the school system!"?
      - mmarq 4y ago
        It doesn’t happen everywhere. People in Italy don’t talk about the “working class” like they do in the UK and I’ve never heard anybody claiming they were a member of the “working class”, let alone people claiming that as if it was something to celebrate or to be proud of. There isn’t a “working class” accent in Italian, the closest thing is marginally educated people that can’t use half of the verb moods and tenses. Romans speak more or less homogeneously, likewise in other cities. Children are not segregated by class, so the child of a doctor may be in the same class of the child of the mayor, of a child that gets free meals and of another that lives in a squatted flat. They mix and they don’t develop different accents. Instead in the UK people debate this class idiocy ad nauseam almost daily. They spend a significant amount of time and money to ensure their children don’t go to the same school as children from lower social classes (and as soon as you make a child, they’ll bombard you with their insanity). This is of course never stated explicitly and I suspect they are not conscious of that. This is a country where even the supermarket where you buy groceries will be used to infer your class status. For instance, while I don’t know what my class is supposed to be, I’ve been told that I’m at least middle class because Waitrose is the cheapest place where I buy food. I’m posh and whatnot class because I occasionally go to the opera. Once I recognised the Thieving Magpie and told a colleague the name of its composer, that earned me the accusation of being megaclass. Once I was rented a flat, the landlady told me, because she could tell from my manners that I must come from a rich family (in fact I don’t). My girlfriend (that earns minimum wage and whose parents are cleaners) was suspected of being from the upper middle class because of how she holds cutlery (not as well as she should, if you asked me).

mjfl 4y ago

there are around 20 million millionaires in the united states, that's almost 10% of the population. It's not an unreachable status. To say that it is, in fact, is quantitatively delusional.

refactor_master 4y ago
I’m actually more surprised by the number of millionaires in European countries with high income taxes that typically go north of 50% way before you hit “millionaire” status https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_millionaires https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  From the list, it seems like the top 3 are Switzerland, Australia, and the USA. Switzerland has low taxes relatively speaking but also offers deals to rich people that move there. Australia is more surprising.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  You're confusing wealth with income, two very different things. Those are income taxes, not millionaire taxes. Income taxes are paid by the working class, while millionaires are rich because they own valuable assets which are often tax free if inherited in most of Europe (the rent seeking class). They didn't become millionaires because they paid 50% tax on their €50k/year 9-5 job, but because someone down their family tree lucked out economically decades/centuries ago and left them a nice inheritance of appreciating assets or businesses. Wich is why most of Europe's millionaires come from wealthy old money families with inter-generational wealth that has been rolled over for centuries, often tax free. The richest families in Europe are rich since at least 50 years, to hundreds of years. The US is a lot more progressive than Europe here since it has inheritance taxes on wealth to prevent the formation of such feudal families, wile most for Western Europe has policies to protect the wealth of the old rich families.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I don't believe I said it is unattainable, only that the deck is stacked against them. As we speak, the 20 million millionaires are just 6% of the population of the states. Being a millionaire alone doesn't really make you "upper class". I know that regardless of how much I make, in my heart I will always be a prole, and that will never change because I lack the mannerisms and the connections said people. I grew up in a different world, and even if I were to spend every waking hour with them, things wouldn't change, and frankly I am not interested in it either.