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Workers shlepped off to the salt mines each day while the "middle class," a motley assortment of clerics and professionals, independent in their income but lacking titles and estates, were "middle class"--between the serfs and the lords, the nobility. This petered out to some extent in the late 19th century and died in the 20th when we decided we needed "upper class" to handle some of the heavy lifting. After all, Gates may be upper class, but he's no landed nobility.
The lower echelons were also divided between the poor and the working class sensu stricto. You're a destitute widow taking in sewing and laundry, you're poor. You have a job shoveling shit out of latrines, you're working class. And the class system didn't really include yeoman farmers.
Still, some are very conservative and insist on the old ways. Or they don't see that the terms evolved with the economics. Workers were a sketchy category before the industrial revolution started to kick in, and the industrial economy and its terms fit the countryside but poorly. Marx's straitjacketed thought didn't help matters.
Now the terms "poor, working class, middle class, upper class" are financial and cultural more than anything and they work as financial and cultural terms. Better than as class terms, even though you sometimes run into ambiguity and clashes between the cultural and financial uses.
So take my parents. My father was raised working class; his father worked in a steel mill and made sure his kids all graduated high school and had time for varsity sports. They had a house, sort of (they owned the house but not the land it was on).
My mother was, I guess, "middle class." Her stepfather owned a small neighborhood store. They weren't wealthy--a major profit center was the eggs from the chickens he raised behind his house and behind the store--but he set his own hours and owned his own establishment. He also had his two sons and three stepdaughters working the store when they weren't in school, and took the two youngest out of school when they were 16 to work in the store.
Notice how well the "class" distinction is working here? Working class kids have more stability and freedom and education than the "middle class"? It gets better.
My father was formally management--the lowest rank of management, foreman. He started off working class, but as foreman he still had to go to work, punch a time card, take orders, and had no independence. He just got no overtime. He'd get time and a half if he was scheduled to be on duty on a holiday, but no overtime and he couldn't say "no" to overtime if he was already there. I guess since he was "management" he was middle class. I don't see it that way. He was "screwed working class." My mother worked hourly. His salary was nominally higher than hers. She actually earned more than he did because she'd get overtime pay--and you don't want to be the employer when an employee with 30 years' seniority is working double time on a holiday and *then* works an extra shift. Time and a half x double time. Ouch.
How's that working class/middle class distinction working out? Nice and neat and clean? Oh. Not so much.
So let's just say I grew up working class. In 1981, when I graduated debt-free from college (thanks, Dad!), my father earned around $60k. My mother earned around $80k. $140k? Not bad for working class. They paid off their house that year, a 20 year mortgage in 10 years. They never had a car loan, they each paid cash for their cars. Had a nice built-in pool added at some point. Central air. My mother had a stack of US Savings Bonds. Ah, that working class lifestyle. Then again, they worked hard for that, sometimes 50 hours a week. Which is a bit less than many professionals work. Clear on how essential that working class/middle class distinction is yet?
They retired. My father got $180k as a lump sum distribution in lieu of a pension when he was 59 1/2. It was '82 and he had 38 years' seniority--they just wanted him gone. Interest rates were in the double digits. He put it in an IRA and went back to work driving a delivery van. My mother retired in '85 and got a monthly pension. Both got social security. In 2010 it was $1270 a month, each. On their pensions and IRA disbursements they went (and took their family) to Britain, on a Baltic cruise, a Caribbean cruise, a Mississippi cruise, to San Diego and San Francisco. By themselves they went to the eastern and western Mediterranean on cruises, the eastern and western Caribbean, China, SE Asia, and Alaska. That doesn't count other trips made in state. They moved into a 2200 sq ft house in a new subdivision, continued never having a car loan, and paid off my grad school loans. When they were home they went to movies and dinner every week; I went with them to dinner a few times, seldom was it less than $30/person, not including drinks and wine.
I assume you're working class and recognize their working-class lifestyle? I know I don't.
On the other hand, they were working class. My father insisted on fixing things himself; my mother did her decorating. They never went back for any education--my mother's GED from '66 or so finished her schooling. Their physical surroundings were middle class, they liked dining out, but in their attitudes they were still mostly just snooty working class, workers with pretensions of being upwardly mobile.
They're not unique, either. My mother's sister and her husband died with $3.8 million in cash, stocks, and bonds--and that didn't include their house. He worked as a clerk; she worked as a secretary/administrative assistant. Less managerial and putatively less "middle class" even than my father. And, no, they didn't win the lottery. Those particular workers invested in stocks and bonds from the early '60s until he died. They made their money the hard way: They worked for it. They kept it the hard way: They scrimped and saved. And they got more of it the hard way: They dutifully followed the market, making very conservative investment decisions and planned on holding them for decades.
$3.8 million. Working class. What a hoot.
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