Clinging on to a middle class lifestyle...

[woodburner]

As resources becoming scarce again and the widespread affluence of the second half of the 20th century starts to slip away in the coming decades, the brutal realities of the class struggle will come back into fore.

And you will discover you are working class.

[Little John]

As resources becoming scarce again and the widespread affluence of the second half of the 20th century starts to slip away in the coming decades, the brutal realities of the class struggle will come back into fore.

And you will discover you are working class.

[Lord Beria3]

As resources becoming scarce again and the widespread affluence of the second half of the 20th century starts to slip away in the coming decades, the brutal realities of the class struggle will come back into fore.

And you will discover you are working class.

Although the class system is inherently a fairly subjective thing, your views are stuck in the Dark Ages. We have moved on from the era when a tiny upper class lorded it over a seething mass of impoverished peasants.

To suggest that somebody who owns a house, land and well-paid professional jobs can't be described as 'middle class' just because they need to work is just plain silly.

Most of the aristocrats under that definition (some going back centuries of aristocratic breeding) would be classified as working class as they need to work to sustain an income.

If you really don't rate the concept of class, keep out of the debate.

Or read some Marxism.

[clv101]

To suggest that somebody who owns a house, land and well-paid professional jobs can't be described as 'middle class' just because they need to work is just plain silly.

It all depends what one means by 'middle class'. I would suggest owning a fraction of a house (with an outstanding mortgage) and working a well-paid professional job, which usually implies a high degree of specialisation (that could evaporate at any moment) is really just a 21st Century version of working class.

My distinction between working and middle class is largely one of reserves, physical and social. A middle class person would have reserves, be it personal, family, close friends etc. to not be able to work for an extended period (say a year or more). A working class person doesn't have that luxury. Simply having that 'safety net', even if never called upon has a significant impact on one's outlook, on one's class.

[Tarrel]

I have land so, in Scotland, technically I can call myself a Laird. Therefore I am upper class. I know my place.

On a more serious note, during the Long Descent / Emergency / Omni-shambles (whatever you want to call it), I think it matters less what "class" you are and more how wedded you are to a consuming lifestyle.

Our youngest son got married last weekend, and his Godparents came up to stay with us for the event. They are undoubtedly "middle class". He is a production manager, she is a music teacher. But, they don't watch TV, live in a modest house, spend much of their leisure time running or cycling or involved in community activities, and eat fresh, local food. I can't see them missing too much, apart from them being a bit too grid-dependent.

[woodburner]

To suggest that somebody who owns a house, land and well-paid professional jobs can't be described as 'middle class' just because they need to work is just plain silly.

Most of the aristocrats under that definition (portable duble induction hobnturies of aristocratic breeding) would be classified as working class as they need to work to sustain an income.

If you really don't rate the concept of class, keep out of the debate.

Or read some Marxism.

Debate? is that what you call a discourse where you banish input that doesn't agree with yours or that dosen't meet with your approval?

[kenneal - lagger]

The distinction between working and middle class was blurred when Maggie Thatcher decided that all should have the possibility of owning their own home. Until that point the working class, largely blue collar workers, would live in rented accommodation, be it private or council, and your position in life, and the way that you voted, would be determined by those factors. Maggie had the vision to see that if you encouraged the working class to own their own home they would begin to see themselves as middle class and vote accordingly. It has worked to a great extent, except perhaps on this board where class warfare is alive and kicking!

In feudal days there were three classes which were the landed gentry, yeomen who owned and largely worked their own plot and serfs who worked for the landed gentry. The plague changed that to an extent as serfs became scarce and consequently more better able to bargain for their pay. The feudal system was completely discarded during the industrial revolution when many now ex serfs left the countryside and became industrial workers. In effect they became serfs to an industrialist, who paid their wages, just and sometimes with tokens exchanged at the company owned store, and often owned their housing, instead of a landowner. Things gradually improved for the workers as they became more independent from the initial few industrialists as the sources of work became more numerous.

We have now gone beyond the classic class society and now have the 1% and the 99% although not many people have realised this yet. Anyone with debt and in employment or dependent on a pension, which covers most of the 99%, is beholden to the 1%. There is probably a very small percentage of the 99% who are independent of the system to a great extent but are still not of the 1% super rich.

My thoughts on the matter which will no doubt be torn down now.

[biffvernon]

Not at all, you've summed things up nicely. The traditional class divisions served a descriptive purpose a while ago but are largely redundant now. The distinction between the super-rich and the rest is real enough but I struggle to define my acquaintances as working or middle class. (I don't have enough toffs as acquaintances to make up a statistically significant sample.)

[extractorfan]

I am working class, I know 2 middle class people well.

Those middle class people don't believe there is a class system. My friends (or peers) all think they are middle class but they are wrong, they are working class.

Perhaps it's a simple as, if you believe there is a class system, you are either working class or upper class.

[vtsnowedin]

To suggest that somebody who owns a house, land and well-paid professional jobs can't be described as 'middle class' just because they need to work is just plain silly.

It all depends what one means by 'middle class'. I would suggest owning a fraction of a house (with an outstanding mortgage) and working a well-paid professional job, which usually implies a high degree of specialisation (that could evaporate at any moment) is really just a 21st Century version of working class.

My distinction between working and middle class is largely one of reserves, physical and social. A middle class person would have reserves, be it personal, family, close friends etc. to not be able to work for an extended period (say a year or more). A working class person doesn't have that luxury. Simply having that 'safety net', even if never called upon has a significant impact on one's outlook, on one's class.

Perhaps you need to throw in an age factor. I've worked for wages all my life and have had debts and mortgages but now the house is paid for and the children all have diplomas and degrees aplenty and paying jobs to go with them plus I own land with no mortgage so in many of the definitions used above I am now middle class but I don't think I have changed classes, just matured successfully during energy rich times. How we each deal with the coming energy and food scarce times may well define our class and the classes may number just two, Those that adapt and survive and those that don't.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/900 ... ng-middle/

Today, however, we are witnessing the strange death of the middle class. In Britain, as in the United States, it isn’t just being squeezed — it is actually shrinking and sinking. This is the most disturbing social change of our age and will probably dominate your children’s lives. The lifestyle that the average earner had half a century ago — reasonably sized house, dependable healthcare, a decent education for the children and a reliable pension — is becoming the preserve of the rich. Middle-class pensioners look on amazed at how their children, now into adulthood, seem to have a far harder time

Middle-class people don’t even enjoy talking about house prices at dinner parties any more; it’s just too depressing. But then dinner parties are becoming a difficult expense, given that child care now accounts for a quarter of all spending for the average two-income family. One fifth of people earning over £66,000 say that they cannot afford family holidays abroad. Two fifths of those people are failing to save anything, with their salary being entirely consumed by the basics. The middle classes who can afford to pay for school fees for their children often do so at the expense of all their own luxuries — yet they know it will be money well spent. Nothing defines the life chances of a British teenager more than whether their parents managed to afford fees.

Take Michael Gove, who was adopted by an Aberdeen fishmonger. His father noticed his talent and managed to send him to Robert Gordon’s College, a private school. The Gove family went without foreign holidays and new cars to meet the fees — an investment which paid off spectacularly. But not many fishmongers could afford to do that now. Gordon’s is charging £11,200 a year. That’s a third of the price levied by Eton and St Paul’s. But the average fishmonger earns just £15,000.

Respectable middle-class jobs do not pay what they once did. A number of factors are at play here, but the most significant is technology and competition from abroad, which wiped out large numbers of working-class jobs in the last century and threatens to do the same to middle-class jobs now. When goods and services can be imported at a pittance from overseas, the Brits who used to provide these services see their income squeezed.

Jaron Lanier, the Silicon Valley philosopher and author of Who Owns The Future?, has shown how technology and the free-flow of information are removing secure, middle-class jobs. Far from being egalitarian, the digital revolution has reduced financial rewards for those in the middle — and concentrated wealth at the very top. While outsourcing of clerical work is hardly new, it has started to affect the middle office — not just the back office. Once, it was production-line workers who found themselves laid off and their jobs shipped to the Far East. Now it’s research chemists, paralegals and clerks who are finding their jobs outsourced. Firms such as Microsoft, Pfizer and Philips increasingly carry out their research in China.

Stephen Overell of the Work Foundation has warned of ‘an ongoing hollowing-out of the middle ranks in the British job market’, as managers and administrators are being replaced by software. Michael Boehm, an academic at the London School of Economics and author of a paper on job polarisation, says that technology and ‘offshoring’ mean that the average American income ‘has not increased since the 1980s, and Britain is similar’. His conclusion: ‘The middle class is shrinking, in terms of jobs and wages.’

In his book The Decline and Fall of the British Middle Class, Patrick Hutber identified ‘thrift’ as a definable middle-class virtue. But in today’s Britain, it is actively punished. The individual savings account — or Isa — seemed to have been invented in homage to thrift, allowing people to save cash tax-free. But Treasury policies have now floored savings rates, and the holders of all normal cash Isas must accept interest below the rate of inflation. So savers lose money, year after year, due to official Bank of England policy. It is as if the government is now at war with the very notion of thrift.

This changes a country. Children will no longer grow up watching their deposits grow in a Post Office bank account, and will struggle to understand the point of delayed financial gratification. In today’s Britain, putting cash into a savings account is a mug’s game. Instead, we seem to be nurturing a winner-takes-all economic model — middle-class children can be forgiven for adopting the ‘get rich or die trying’ ethos of gangster rappers. They grow up pinning their hopes on the scratchcard, the rollover jackpot or The X Factor. It seems impossible to save your way to a comfortable life.

Even work is essentially pointless if the aim is to live as our grandparents did. Unless they can get a job in finance, the next generation will find it very hard to live in the gentrified suburbs their parents still inhabit. Even the NHS cannot be relied upon as it once was, but private healthcare is out of reach. Little wonder that emigration levels are running so high in Britain, now at 400 a day, with Canada and Australia among the top -destinations. The exodus is ignored, due to our obsession with -immigration, but a disproportionate number of the leavers are from the skilled middle class, looking for good schools, decent houses and safe streets that seem beyond their reach here.

A powerful article which explains much better than I ever managed to explain what I was trying to get in this thread.

[the_lyniezian]

How about we all agree that the whole idea of class is just another means of putting human beings into arbitrary boxes, and be done with it?

[fifthcolumn]

(lurking but just *had* to throw in my 2p)

Not that anyone's opinion is wrong per se on exactly what defines the middle class/working class etc but it seems to me that most of you are relying on a marxist-esque definition and completely forgetting that there is an alternative yankish/canuckish definition:

Middle Class is that great group of people who are "middle income".
Lower Class are those below the Middle Class in terms of income and Upper Class are those above in terms of income.

They don't use the term working class because they all work.

Anyway: I will just go about my business once more and stick my head back in the (oil)sands...

Nice chatting y'all.

[emordnilap]

De-lurk, please.

[Little John]

(lurking but just *had* to throw in my 2p)

Not that anyone's opinion is wrong per se on exactly what defines the middle class/working class etc but it seems to me that most of you are relying on a marxist-esque definition and completely forgetting that there is an alternative yankish/canuckish definition:

Middle Class is that great group of people who are "middle income".
Lower Class are those below the Middle Class in terms of income and Upper Class are those above in terms of income.

They don't use the term working class because they all work.

Anyway: I will just go about my business once more and stick my head back in the (oil)sands...

Nice chatting y'all.

Define "middle income" please. Are you talking about median, mean or mode. Or something else.