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>> No. 449487 Anonymous
5th February 2022
Saturday 12:56 pm
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What are things that middle class people know that poorer people are generally unaware of?

If we take university as an example, I know plenty of people with a similar background to myself who were put off university because they were worried about the debt and didn't know it was effectively a graduate tax. Likewise, I've known quite a few working class parents doing things like cashing in their pensions or remortgaging to pay their children's tuition fees even though it's a financially terrible idea.

When I was in school, during the New Labour years, it was drilled into us that we had to get a degree or we'd be left behind, but nobody ever took the time to actually explain the importance of what to study and where to study it. I feel like middle class parents, through being more familiar with the system, are able to have this conversation with this children as well as giving them more steer in terms of "what do you want to do when you're older?" and setting out a road map of how to achieve this; I remember reading in the Graun a few years ago about how middle class parents have been gaming the clearing system to get their children on more prestigious courses than they'd initially accepted.

There's bound to be other areas where people who aren't middle class aren't even aware they don't know about something.
Expand all images.
>> No. 449488 Anonymous
5th February 2022
Saturday 1:38 pm
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The power of asking. Working class people often don't realise that what's being offered to them isn't the only thing on offer; if you ask, you might find that you've got more options than you thought.

You can just get in touch with people out of the blue to ask them for advice or work experience or a job and sometimes it'll work. You don't need anyone's permission to just pick up the phone or fire off an e-mail to ask what A-levels you need for a particular degree or what degree you need for a particular job. You can apply for a job that you aren't really qualified for and sometimes you'll get lucky. You won't get hunted down by the Class Police and fined for having ideas above your station, you'll just get a polite "no".

Being willing to stick your neck out and try your luck can reap huge rewards, but it's something that a lot of schools and families systematically knock out of kids.
>> No. 449489 Anonymous
5th February 2022
Saturday 1:56 pm
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>>449488
>You can apply for a job that you aren't really qualified for and sometimes you'll get lucky.
My mum did this in 2020 after an unfortunate series of events (she followed my advice) and instantly, almost anyway, doubled her yearly income. I'm not going to derail the thread, but your post also made me think about the background hum of shame and embarrassment you can develop from a poorer upbringing, even when the very real causes have passed or been overcome.
>> No. 449490 Anonymous
5th February 2022
Saturday 2:30 pm
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>>449488>>449489
I think I'm guilty of this. I'm helping my girlfriend job hunt at the moment and because she's had a few years out to look after our kids I've been automatically discounting any jobs with a salary over £25k because I've assumed she's no chance of getting it.

When my dad retired about twelve years ago he was working in a factory on about £22k after overtime and working night shifts, so I always saw breaking £20k as making it. I don't think I earned above that amount until I was 25 and now the challenge I set myself is for my salary to be higher than my age, which I managed a couple of years later and have been ahead of since.
>> No. 449491 Anonymous
5th February 2022
Saturday 2:58 pm
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Honestly I think the old adage "it's not what you know, it's who you know" is highly applicable here.

People generally don't like to admit it because we all like to think we got where we are as a result of our hard work and effort, whereas everyone else just got lucky and didn't work nearly as hard as we did; but if you take a step back, it's the connections rather than some sort of secret social code poor people can't pick up on, like an inverse version of the glasses in They Live.

Going to uni builds a group of friends and acquaintances from all over the country, for example, and having people who you can reach out to if you ever move to another part of the country is invaluable. This means people who attended university are more comfortable moving for opportunities, instead of facing the prospect of being all alone in a new city. If you already came from a middle class family you can add to that the fact your mum and dad will have a wider circle of mates from different professions, and they will ask them for advice when young Tarquin expresses interest in becoming a radiographer, or whatever. That kind of thing.

The thing is a lot of poor and working class people aren't thick. They "know" all the things middle class people "know". They know it's worth a shot applying for a job above your level, they know it's worth a cheeky ask. This isn't some profound knowledge a wealthier upbringing teaches you. But what they don't have is the confidence that there's someone in their position who did the same thing, and had it work. They don't have people they can ask for interview tips, other than the boilerplate STAR stuff you get at a recruitment agency.

Most of the middle class people I've known have been exactly as dense as the majority of the povvos I hung about with in my youth. I think it does social mobility some amount of harm to encourage the idea that middle class people have a leg up because they know something povvos don't, it's very much more about the social environment I think.

Then again I think the whole idea of "social mobility" is something we are long overdue some hard conversations about, especially nowadays with the looming issues of climate change, the complete decline of western industry, automation just over the horizon threatening more and more jobs, even the (gasp) middle class ones. For the last twenty years, we've laboured under the assumption that just sending more and more kids through uni will plaster over the class system by making everyone middle class, but even for the most die hard believer in meritocracy, it should be plain to see that's not even realistically possible.

You'll always need some people doing the basic jobs. The question is why shouldn't someone who stands in a factory stamping sheet metal all day get to live with the same dignity as someone who sits on a computer doing spreadsheets all day. You don't even have to be some kind of giant commie to see how that would benefit society and the economy. The more people have more spending power and cultural capital, the more we all prosper.
>> No. 449492 Anonymous
5th February 2022
Saturday 3:19 pm
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>>449491
>Most of the middle class people I've known have been exactly as dense as the majority of the povvos I hung about with in my youth.

I've worked with a few public school kids and they're certainly no smarter than the rest of us, they just have far more confidence and self-belief. Whether that's through their schooling or the safety net from their upbringing I don't know, possibly both.

That said, listening to their conversations was like they were from another planet. Visiting their godfather's ski lodge. Comparing which fancy restaurants they'd dined out at that week. Obsessing over their parents' properties and their future inheritances. It was completely alien.
>> No. 449500 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 2:20 pm
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Price differential between supermarkets. I mean I obviously knew whole foods was more expensive than asda but I had no idea by how much. Like, you can actually feed yourself fine in lidl for £200/month. I had a poverty phase during the pandemic after a life of unthought credit card expensing, I still have the thread up here >>437886

I'm back to making ~£90k or so now but the experience has stayed with me. My dad (who is a 3rd world oligarch) lashed out on me for comparing the kg price of chicken breast somewhere and then trying to price-optimise spotify by getting the subscription in another country, saying it was poor wageslave doom spiral and if you spend your mental effort on that you'll never have enough left to actually increase your income.
>> No. 449501 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 2:32 pm
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>>449500
I think just about everyone who is working class is well aware of not only Aldi and Lidl but also the likes of Farmfoods and Fultons.
>> No. 449502 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 4:30 pm
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>>449500
I mean your dad's right about that but he also clearly failed somewhere along the line for you to be so out of touch and broke with that salary.
>> No. 449503 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 5:14 pm
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>>449502
I was feeding myself on £525.2/month CJRS at the time
>> No. 449504 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 5:19 pm
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Investing your savings in a global tracker. Working class family think my highly and globally diversified investing is akin to gambling whilst they hold hard earned cash that just dissipates due to inflation.

You mention this to middle class people and of course it's a given they all do it and their parents were all doing it for them 20 years ago, they're just shocked you didn't start earlier.

I'm not a financial advisor/expert nor is this financial advice, but I wish somebody would have explained it all to me earlier.
>> No. 449505 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 6:44 pm
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>>449504
My mum will have inherited about £80k when my nan died in 2009 and, apart from giving me and my brother £10k each and however much she's spent on continually redecorating the house, it's been sitting there in cash doing fuck all. They'll have also got a decent lump sum when my dad retired early thanks to his DB pension but again that's just been sat in cash for the best part of a decade. She's retiring next year and their dream was always to buy a cottage in the North Yorkshire Moors, but keeping all that money in cash means they're not going to have enough to do this whereas investing would have made it achievable.

I've also known quite a few middle aged people opt out of pensions because they "don't believe in them" after the markets have had a bad year, even though that dip has meant they've been buying in at lower prices and they're still up on where they were a couple of years ago.

I guess poshos are also more clued up on what you can do with wills and about splitting the tenancy on their houses.
>> No. 449506 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 7:36 pm
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>What are things that middle class people know that poorer people are generally unaware of?

How to ski, a recipe for banana bread, the lyrics to Common People. The insecurity of you lot is just getting ridiculous now. Who gives a fuck what the middle class think?

I also, again, object to the notion that what university you go to has nearly as much impact as you think and that young adults, especially the poorer sort, aren't all too eager to believe in what they can't do. It's like some advanced trope of the mum with a glass of red wine and a packet of B&H in hand who will sneer at her son who just wants to do something they're genuinely interested in rather than become a dental hygienist like all the men in their cavity-town.

If you wanted me to guide the working class to a sunlit upland I'd tell them to read. Hopefully some philosophy but I'm not expecting a miracle. Reading turned my life around as a 17 year old layabout with no GCSEs and it did so in a way that when I finally went to university I could run circles around toffs and people who have never took a moment of self-reflection in their lives. I've attached a quote from a European to this post so that you all know I mean business.

>>449488
As the following posts on this have already pointed out, it's really more of a gender and race thing. Being a white man gives a certain degree of cockiness to you that means you'll apply anyway even if you don't hit all the requirements and it works because everyone loves cock.

I work in a STEM area and the push toward industry is to now change how job advertisements are done because it's screaming for applicants and has the standard diversity problem.

>>449491
There's absolutely nothing wrong with kids getting an education you shifty older boy hanging outside the school gates and it is absolutely necessary to have some basic computer skills to prosper in the modern economy. It's something we should even be encouraging people in work to do as part of a continuous cycle of development.

>The question is why shouldn't someone who stands in a factory stamping sheet metal all day get to live with the same dignity as someone who sits on a computer doing spreadsheets all day.

Neither deserve any dignity for their jobs. Break out of your serf mentality towards work.

>>449504
>You mention this to middle class people and of course it's a given they all do it and their parents were all doing it for them 20 years ago, they're just shocked you didn't start earlier.

I think you're overestimating the exposure the middle class have to financial markets. The middle class put money in the bank and housing, historically bonds as well.

If you wanted to educate the population you'd need to first teach them to budget, maybe instil a basic sense of delayed gratification to first create a nation of savers if we're talking about the proper poor.
>> No. 449507 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 7:47 pm
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>>449506
>The insecurity of you lot is just getting ridiculous now. Who gives a fuck what the middle class think?

Nothing in this thread to me seems to be about envy or insecurity. It reads to me as 'these people have had a head start on me, what do I need to know so I (or my children when I raise them) can catch up because there may be things I don't even know I've missed out on?'
>> No. 449508 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 8:08 pm
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>>449506

I don't think all that reading did you as much good as you think it did ladmeight. Christ.
>> No. 449511 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 10:47 pm
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>>449505
>continually redecorating the house
This is a tediously working class thing to do, and I can't make sense of it. The idea that every year or two, you simply have to change the colours of the walls in every room, with every other iteration also coming with an investment in a new "suite" so you can be a little more drastic in the colour change.

This isn't to say that if they'd pick a colour and stick with it, they'd have ascended to the glorious heights of whatever the fuck middle class means, but it's still frustrating to watch vast swathes of people obsess over their "feature wall".
>> No. 449512 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 11:10 pm
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>>449511
At the minute the feature wall has peacocks on it.

She's got plans to redesign the kitchen, although it's only about 10 years since it was last done; the units still look alright, it just really needs a new hob and oven but she wants to completely overhaul it. There's been a fair bit of renovations over the past 15 years, but as well as that she gets itchy feet and gets compelled to redecorate at least one room every couple of years or so; it's a never ending cycle.
>> No. 449513 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 11:47 pm
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>>449511

Is it? I think we all know squarely where the blame lies.
>> No. 449514 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 11:51 pm
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>>449504

When my grandad died, we found my grandma was now sitting on around 200k. He had some of it in bonds, but that was it. When I suggested to my mum that we put it into a tracker fund and go from there, she looked at me in horror and said "but what if she loses it all?!" her expression was as if I'd suggested putting it all on black at a casino, because for all she knows, it's the same thing.

I've tried to explain it to her, even showed her my own Vanguard account, but she just can't get her head around it. I guess my grandad didn't either - I looked through his money briefly when he died, he had so much spare capital that just did nothing for him. They had a nice house and never wanted for anything, but it's a bit sad that with even the tiniest bit of consideration a few decades ago, they could have been cash millionaires.

People say personal finance needs to be taught in school, but it's deeper than that. If you expect to live your life paycheque to paycheque, then the idea of investing is simply alien and unreachable to you, and that thinking will usually persist even if you do start making a bit of spare cash.
>> No. 449515 Anonymous
6th February 2022
Sunday 11:55 pm
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>>449511

I think it's a part of the 'buy cheap, buy twice' adage. If you spend £2k on an entire kitchen renovation then yeah, in five or ten years it's probably going to look outdated or ratty; your formica is peeling, the lacquer is coming off the cabinets, your basic white good fridge is out of warranty and not really sounding so good.

Whereas if you drop a big chunk on proper granite surfaces, real wood cabineting, a smeg fridge and so on, then really it's going to stand the test of time, and a lick of paint might be all you need to refresh for the next decade or two.

I can't be arsed to find the Discworld quote about the boots, but it's that.
>> No. 449517 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 12:09 am
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>>449514
You need to convince her to meet with a financial adviser. Even if the returns aren't as good as what she'd probably get with a risk appropriate tracker fund, it'll do a shitload better than being sat in cash.
>> No. 449521 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 8:39 am
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>>449513

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/of-course-young-people-can-afford-a-home-just-move-somewhere-cheaper-says-kirstie-allsopp-dpt9q3v3c
>> No. 449522 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 10:24 am
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>>449521

Kirstie and Phil are so emblematic of everything wrong with this country's out of touch "aspirational" middle classes that I suspect neither of them are actually real people.

They are beings of pure psychic energy, manifested by one generation's fervent religious committent to the idea of property just magically becoming more valuable every year as their ticket to wealth.

Their execution would be very public and very gruesome, to be made an example of. Reason shall not prevail until the heathen practice of property worship is outlawed and eradicated from these lands.
>> No. 449524 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 10:39 am
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>>449522
It's not a very sensible ticket to wealth, it doesn't matter if your house is valued at 10k or a million if all other homes cost relatively as much and you need one to live in. You need a minimum of two, or a plan to retire to somewhere much cheaper.
>> No. 449525 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 11:30 am
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>What are things that middle class people know that poorer people are generally unaware of?

Great thread. All sort of related, and I wish I could be more concrete about it, but I've not got much time to write up a better post at the moment. Here are my thoughts, anyway:

- More awareness of the inherent unfairness and arbitrariness of our educational system. Working class parents will generally be more deferential to institutional authority, and will be more inclined to go along with the say-so of doctors and teachers. They often don't have the knowledge or means to "game" the system, like moving for a particular catchment area, keeping up well-to-do appearances for biased teachers, the importance of a well-worded busybody complaint, or advocating directly for the child's interests at school. Middle class parents are better at understanding the terms of engagement when it comes to challenging big bureaucracies, because more often than not, they work for one. Middle class parents also take a more active role in teaching their kids through extracurricular activities, which can give them a massive advantage.

- A general sense of "cultural capital". Where working class people will see things in more black and white terms of "degree" versus "no degree", or "qualified" versus "not qualified", someone more familiar with tertiary education will understand that there's a lot more wiggle room for what counts as "qualified" in many broadly defined white collar jobs. They'll also know that there's a deeply ingrained hierarchy to our universities and the (perceived) quality of education we receive there. Something similar applies to all of the "intangibles" that employers, who in many fields are overwhelmingly from middle class backgrounds, look for in their candidates. Little indications of "cultural fit" like shared sense of humour, accent, dress, etc..

- Financial literacy. This one is almost too obvious, but working class people often have an entirely different attitude towards money, and are far less inclined to speak about money with their kids, perhaps because it's a source of worry or embarrassment. I had no idea how much my dad earned until I asked in my mid-20s, and even then he was hesitant to give an exact figure. I have no idea how much their house costs, or whether they have any savings, or their retirement plans, and I have a horrible feeling I won't know until it's too late. I'll share my own anecdote: this happened to my mother, whose parents failed to sell their house before going into care. Shrewd people sell their house and give the money to relatives before going into care, and then receive help to pay for the care home regardless. If you fail to do so, you can be forced into a position where you sell the home just to pay for your care until you hit the savings cap of about 20 grand: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/social-care-and-support-guide/money-work-and-benefits/paying-for-your-own-care-self-funding/

As always, I recommend The Class Ceiling by Sam Friedman and Respectable by Lynsey Hanley when it comes to good modern reading on how class works in the UK. The former deals with the statistical evidence that your background influences your career and future earnings regardless of your hard work and achievements. The latter is about the lived experience of class, especially those who have the mixed fortune of breaking into a middle class crowd from a poorer background and the resulting sense of alienation.
>> No. 449528 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 12:08 pm
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>>449522
>manifested by one generation's fervent religious committent to the idea of property just magically becoming more valuable every year as their ticket to wealth.

If it works, it works.

>>449524
What you do is you release some of the equity from the rise in property prices to use as a deposit on a buy-to-let and when that goes up in value you release some of that equity for another deposit until you've got a little property empire.
>> No. 449529 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 12:13 pm
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>>449524

Yeah, that's why I hate them so much. It's not just because I'm a bitter millennial struggling to get on the property ladder, it's because my parent's generation were a load of thick bastards who bought into a pyramid scheme and that's why I am struggling to get on the property ladder.

K&P should be hung drawn and quartered, along with The House Doctor too (remember her? Don't need her help to sell your house nowadays do you!)
>> No. 449530 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 12:18 pm
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Christ, your parents own property? My best bet is seducing an elderly widow.
>> No. 449531 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 12:19 pm
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>>449525
>I'll share my own anecdote: this happened to my mother, whose parents failed to sell their house before going into care. Shrewd people sell their house and give the money to relatives before going into care, and then receive help to pay for the care home regardless. If you fail to do so, you can be forced into a position where you sell the home just to pay for your care until you hit the savings cap of about 20 grand:

That's at risk of being classed as being a deliberate deprivation of assets.

It's more common for couples to sever the tenancy on their home and have their 50% share passing either directly to their children or an interest in possession trust so the surviving spouse has the right to reside there. Doing this also provides things like certainty of beneficiary rather than, say, your dad remarrying and everything passing to his new wife and ultimately her kids on his passing.

>>449529
What about Sarah Beeny and her robust chest?
>> No. 449533 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 1:43 pm
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Similar to what >>449525 said, I think that conscious career planning is something that the poor and lower classes both don't have the resources to do and often don't give much thought.

When you talk to lower class people and ask them how they came to be a waste technician bin man or a factory worker, they will tell you that they were out of school and needed to do something to pay their bills. So they took up the first job that came along. They likely had no career advice from their parents, who either didn't have the money to fund their kids' professional or vocational training, or just didn't care because they had the same kind of menial, dead-end jobs.

Members of the middle class and above, on the other hand, will often tell you that either their mum or dad was a business owner or a barrister or doctor and influenced them to go in the same direction, or that they researched their career opportunities extensively long before their A levels, to the point that they readily moved halfway across the country to get the best university degree in that field.

There's no point in moving to Bristol just because their Tescos have the best shelf stocking jobs in the country.
>> No. 449538 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 3:30 pm
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>>449506
>The insecurity of you lot
From scrolling past this thread and refusing to read it on principle, I have been inclined to make a Four Yorkshiremen joke about this entire site. But this thread probably is just four literal Yorkshiremen, and the joke won't work.

I continue to stand by my usual points that it's okay to be middle-class, the generalisations are so broad as to be worthless, and class doesn't really matter anyway. But then the Marxist will remind me that any middle-class upbringing I might have had is a lie, and that I'm actually drinking mild at the dog track with my flat cap and Woodbines irrespective of the fact that such a stereotype is totally alien to me. But anyway, the epitome of middle-classness to me is skiing holidays, like in the OP picture. That's the only thing I can think of where there really is a class divide.
>> No. 449540 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 4:09 pm
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I think it goes like this:
Lower Class (Dolies): Skegness
Working Class: Spain/Tenerife/Lanzarote
Lower Middle Class: Greece/Turkey
Middle Class: Italy
Upper Middle Class: Dubai
Upper Class: Literally wherever they want but more often than not, none of the above
>> No. 449541 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 4:11 pm
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>>449540
What's that got to do with this thread?
>> No. 449542 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 4:12 pm
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>>449541
>But anyway, the epitome of middle-classness to me is skiing holidays, like in the OP picture. That's the only thing I can think of where there really is a class divide.
>> No. 449543 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 4:14 pm
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>>449542

You can buy skiing gear in Aldi now.
>> No. 449544 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 4:21 pm
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>>449543
Yeah, I know people who definitely aren't middle class who go on skiing holidays. They'll go to cheaper destinations like Andorra or Slovenia.
>> No. 449547 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 5:32 pm
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>>449538

So you've waltzed into the thread, not read a single thing, and declared that all observations in it are without any value at all?

>I continue to stand by my usual points that it's okay to be middle-class, the generalisations are so broad as to be worthless, and class doesn't really matter anyway.

What about generalisations based on population level data? I would argue these can be useful in trying to work out whether a particular characteristic "matters". It sometimes goes by different definitions depending on the field, but in medical and economic literature, someone's socioeconomic status has strong associations with a load of things, ranging from health outcomes and susceptibility to disease to lifetime earnings (even when you adjust for university, degree subject, and grade).

If statistics don't do it for you, then what about generalisations based on observation? There's plenty of great writers out there that were convinced of the phenomenon of class, from George Orwell to Raymond Williams and others. If not classics on the subject, then what about the lived experiences people have shared here? Even this thread alone has a few anecdotes I find really interesting.

There is certainly a limit to how much we can place on it, and sometimes the interaction of class with other things gets quite complex, but that doesn't mean it's not a useful framework for discussion. I don't think we can write this off as insecurity at all, but it seems to be a real and tangible thing that has an effect on our lives.
>> No. 449549 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 6:11 pm
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>>449540

I see a lot of older poshos go to Tenerife, I don't know why, I don't care enough to find out, but they definitely do.
>> No. 449552 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 6:51 pm
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>>449547
Well I've obviously read the thread now, more or less, because I've quoted a post in it and I am responding to it.

Generalisations based on population-level data are the most insidious of all, because on the surface they are right and so their fans won't be told there are times when their generalisations don't apply. If 80% of people watched Game of Thrones and 20% didn't, then when I tell them I didn't watch it, these are the people who insist that I actually did. You get it a lot in adverts, when you're wondering about the Countdown teatime teaser in your rented home, aged 25, and Michael Parkinson orders you to sell him your house so you can enjoy your retirement. I find it very offensive, but I do get the impression nobody else gets as angry as I do about it.

Anyway, the overwhelming majority of class discussion in this country is seen as an excuse for everyone to boast about their own poverty. Nobody ever sticks their head out and says they are middle-class, even though plenty of over-30s on obscure internet communities undeniably will be. But they take it personally when you say this, because to be middle-class is to be vile and revolting and unwelcome. So there will be self-reporting errors when you try to extract data from this thread.

Those writers who were very passionate about class came from a time when it was entrenched enough to be worth discussing. That is no longer the case. I can't count the number of people I know who say they grew up on a council estate but went to university through their own innate intelligence and brilliance. They all think they're the only one, even though many of them know each other. Some are rich and some are poor, but they all consider themselves to be the same social class. Their lives are so different that if they share a social background, then nothing can reasonably be extrapolated from that.
>> No. 449553 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 6:55 pm
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>>449525
>Working class parents will generally be more deferential to institutional authority, and will be more inclined to go along with the say-so of doctors and teachers
This has been pertinent during the pandemic, and I notice it a lot in the language that my parents use. Everything is "we can/can't" do this or "we have to" do that, or worse still "we're not allowed". Using their own judgement and common sense has gone completely out of the window in favour of outright doing what they're told to the letter.

That said, often the reason they follow the orders given to them or defer to any authority is that there's a threat or a latent worry of a monetary penalty for breaking a rule, which is obviously a lot more of a concern for some than others. I was told the horror story of a family friend who went on holiday to New York, and mixed up the time zones when booking their return Covid test and missed the 48-hour window by an hour and a half, then having to take a re-do test in JFK Airport for the eye-watering fee of 200 US Dollars. This has been the talk of the town for 4 months, but... it's 150 quid.

>working class people will see things in more black and white terms of "degree" versus "no degree", or "qualified" versus "not qualified"
This too is spot on. My friends seem to be endlessly pursuing which magic qualification will rocket them from being a day labourer to an overnight millionaire. My friends that did go to university are endlessly the subject of chatter among the parents about needing to find a job that "uses their degree" - as though a BA in Media from Lincoln is a degree with an obvious ladder to climb.
>> No. 449554 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 7:32 pm
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>>449552
>Anyway, the overwhelming majority of class discussion in this country is seen as an excuse for everyone to boast about their own poverty.

This is the odd thing about British culture, if you ask someone what class they are then I fully expect you'll get a lot more of them thinking they're working class. The opposite being true in the US where everyone is supposedly middle class. The sense of shame in itself is probably an inherent part of being middle class in this country, born of self-depreciation and a deliberate unwillingness to recognise that the working class can be just as ghastly if not more so.

It's an odd sight to see when people make a big deal on the difference when I grew up working class and ended up middle. I've never felt like I didn't fit in or that I've been treated differently and from the stories I've heard private schools are full of some serious bullies so I don't think attending one would've improved my outcomes.

>>449553
It remind me of the observation that as a society we rely on fines and sin taxes but in reality a fine is only a law that applies to poor people.
>> No. 449555 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 7:34 pm
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>>449552
>If 80% of people watched Game of Thrones and 20% didn't, then when I tell them I didn't watch it, these are the people who insist that I actually did.

This is the ecological fallacy, where you try to apply population level data to an individual. Anyone with a basic understanding of statistics (or just common sense if you're lucky) will be aware that they should understand and communicate information like this in proper context, "80% of population x watches Game of Thrones", or probabilistically as "Population x are 4 times as likely to watch Game of Thrones", but never "You are population x therefore you watch Game of Thrones".

People do still commit the fallacy, but I think we're also talking about something slightly different in this thread, which are the instances when people's experiences and observations really do align rather well with the data. It's not that we're ruling out exceptions, or claiming any one experience as representative, but by definition there are going to be more instances when we see that, for example, kids of mediocre brightness and discipline will be more likely to do fine in life if they're backed up by wealth and privilege. Yes, there are exceptions of middle class kids ruining their life and working class kids doing well, but without the numbers we do not know what the exceptions are.

>You get it a lot in adverts, when you're wondering about the Countdown teatime teaser in your rented home, aged 25, and Michael Parkinson orders you to sell him your house so you can enjoy your retirement. I find it very offensive, but I do get the impression nobody else gets as angry as I do about it.

You're right that marketing also uses population level statistics, and I also resent logging into a YouTube account and being bombarded with ads based on the information Alphabet Inc. has stored about me, but the nastiness of it is surely more to do with the aggressive application of data (as well as behavioural psychology) than the fact they know how to read demographics. Statistics can be used to tell you whether you're more likely to be better off taking statins, or it can be used to try and flog you headphones.

>I can't count the number of people I know who say they grew up on a council estate but went to university through their own innate intelligence and brilliance. They all think they're the only one, even though many of them know each other. Some are rich and some are poor, but they all consider themselves to be the same social class.

I think this might be a form of selection bias, though. If you're doing well in life, you're only ever going to meet the working class kids that did well. It may seem like a perfectly common thing to you that anyone can make it through the system regardless of background, but what if for every one of those you met there were ten or twenty more that suffered far less desirable outcomes? Not to be too facetious about it, but you really should count them, and then count the number of those that didn't go to uni. There is still a massive discrepancy that only gets worse when you get to the professional world.

>Those writers who were very passionate about class came from a time when it was entrenched enough to be worth discussing. That is no longer the case.

I respectfully disagree, this is why I'm banging on about studies in sociology, economics, and public health. This framework is still as vital to understanding a society as any other basic demographics like age, sex, religion, and ethnicity. A cursory search in any of the literature will bring up loads of published research, even if you limit yourself to the last few years. I've also mentioned at least one modern writer on class that I really strongly recommend in >>449525. Hanley draws a compelling line between the experiences of Raymond Williams and her own experiences growing up in 1980s Birmingham.

It's worth noting as well that we've repeatedly announced the death of class throughout history, as well, when the wealthier Victorian classes were deposed by the commercial and industrial middle class, with universal suffrage, with Fukayama's 'end of history', but personally I think Richard Hoggart is still correct when he said, "Each decade we shiftily declare we have buried class; each decade the coffin stays empty."
>> No. 449556 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 8:21 pm
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>>449554
This is also exaggerated by us moving towards a more American definition of working and middle class, though, a more materialistic definition of class which is weighted more towards what kind of lifestyle you have than what you can actually afford. "My job pays enough that I can drive a nice German car" isn't middle class if that you can't afford that car if the job disappears. The shame definitely comes into it, but it goes both ways and now you have people saying daft things like "upper working class" to remove themselves from both the dolescum and the gap year implications.
>> No. 449557 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 9:05 pm
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>>449556
The idea of someone claiming to be "upper working class" seems so ridiculous as to make me wonder if insisting that I'm "lower middle class" is unusual, even though it's typically been my reference for where "normal" people are - Always finding your family are few pounds above the cutoff line for assistance, not impoverished but not well-to-do, and oh so many frozen fish fingers for dinner.
>> No. 449558 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 9:09 pm
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>>449554
Americans name their classes differently, though. I remember seeing a documentary about Judas Priest, who can't get enough of talking about how incredibly unimaginably working-class they all are, and they even do so in this American documentary, but the American narrator still talks about them being ordinary middle-class guys from a middle-class area of Birming Ham, England. Meanwhile, the only way to be upper-class over here is to be able to trace your family to the actual Queen, but since Americans don't have a royal family, they've got doctors and lawyers being described as upper-class instead.
>> No. 449559 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 9:18 pm
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>>449557
Nothing about what you described is middle class, describing yourself as "lower middle class" is just as ridiculous.

>>449558
I'd argue that the emerging American equivalent of an actual aristocracy is the generational celebrity families. Think the KardaMi'kmaqns and Jenners. People already obsess over their offspring as though the infants themselves have done something worthy of celebrity, and they'll only grow up to be married off to someone in that social stratum (e.g. the Baldwin niece that married Justin Bieber). The stories you hear about how their various aides and assistants are treated definitely harks back to the servitude more so than work.
>> No. 449560 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 9:23 pm
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>>449556

> "My job pays enough that I can drive a nice German car" isn't middle class if that you can't afford that car if the job disappears

Exactly. I think it's not really necessarily middle class to buy a snazzy new German car on credit, but it's the perception by upwardly mobile members of the lower classes that that is what middle class means. That you have access to those kinds of material goods, even if you technically don't own them because they are collateral for the loan that you took out to buy them. Just look at all those music videos by wannabe gangsta rappers from the lower classes. It's all about top of the line Mercs and BMWs and gold watches, and other insignia that the lower classes believe to be markers of middle- or even upper class personal success in life.

I grew up at the lower end of upper middle class, and my mum and dad taught us that there are few ways you can waste your money as pointlessly as by buying a brand new car, on credit or otherwise. We always had really decent family cars, but my parents emphasized value for money, despite not always being forced to do so by income and budget constraints. My parents just felt it more worthwhile to spend money that wasn't wasted on fast-depreciating material goods on things like travel. They took us to places like Sri Lanka, the Caribbean or Los Angeles, at a time when that cost shedloads of money for a family of four, and I think it really was money well spent. Most of my friends could count themselves lucky if their parents went on a package holiday to Majorca or Tenerife with them.

I guess my point is, people who want to become middle class think they've made it when there's a shiny new VW or Merc in their driveway. While if you grow up middle class and both your parents have always been middle class, your focus is on different things. Intangible investments will have much more importance and significance than a new car to impress your neighbours with, and to convince yourself that you're well and truly middle class despite all the niggling doubt in the back of your head.
>> No. 449562 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 9:47 pm
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>>449560
>other insignia that the lower classes believe to be markers of middle- or even upper class personal success in life.

I had to drive through one of the local council estates yesterday and I lost count of the number of e-scooters I saw.

>I guess my point is, people who want to become middle class think they've made it when there's a shiny new VW or Merc in their driveway. While if you grow up middle class and both your parents have always been middle class, your focus is on different things.

I've worked with three people of a similar age I'd class as coming from wealthy backgrounds and every single one of them drives a car their parents bought for them. I guess material possessions don't hold as much value when you're used to being handed them on a plate.

Anyway, this thread has gone off in a bit of a weird direction after it was derailed.
>> No. 449569 Anonymous
7th February 2022
Monday 11:00 pm
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>Upper Working Class
Ah yes, Deano and Smiffy, the proverbial lads, as it were.
>> No. 449573 Anonymous
8th February 2022
Tuesday 12:06 am
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>>449562

> I've worked with three people of a similar age I'd class as coming from wealthy backgrounds and every single one of them drives a car their parents bought for them. I guess material possessions don't hold as much value when you're used to being handed them on a plate.

It's that whole thing of basic needs being met. Having your own car, or at least access to a car, can feel like an unattainable basic need if you grow up poor and your dad can barely afford a basic family car to go to work in every day.

I got our hand me down family car when I was 18, it was ten years old and had the best part of 120K miles on it, with some slightly dodgy looking rust spots, but it was there for me anytime I needed it, just parked outside. My parents even paid all the running costs for me. And it never really occurred to me how lucky I was, not even with all the comments I always got from the other kids at school. Sure, I wouldn't have wanted to be without my car, but as a material possession, it was much less the apple of my eye than it probably should have been for an 18 year old kid with no income who was living with his parents and was just given a free car to use as he pleased.
>> No. 449574 Anonymous
8th February 2022
Tuesday 12:29 am
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>>449573
>> No. 449684 Anonymous
14th February 2022
Monday 8:59 pm
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>> No. 449703 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 6:33 pm
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My mum is having 'beans on toast pizza' for her tea, which is where my dad cuts her toast into centimetre squares before pouring beans on top so it 'looks like a pizza'. This is the most council thing I've heard in quite some time.
>> No. 449704 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 6:45 pm
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>>449703
That's not "council" that's DDLG RP.
>> No. 449705 Anonymous
16th February 2022
Wednesday 7:16 pm
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>>449704
There is absolutely no chance whatsoever of my dad being a dom.

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