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The UK has seven social classes. In reading one of the many Jay-Uzi debates, it did strike me of how much our British friend mentioned the idea of class, which has always played a larger role in their society, e.g. I've never heard an American comedian make a "so middle class" joke.

DesertFox- wrote:

The UK has seven social classes. In reading one of the many Jay-Uzi debates, it did strike me of how much our British friend mentioned the idea of class, which has always played a larger role in their society, e.g. I've never heard an American comedian make a "so middle class" joke.

your wording is misleading. pretty much every single western advanced democracy has those 7 classes. this form of analysis is nothing new in academia or actual study/theory of the class system (in fact i've been arguing with just this definition, all along, with as much emphasis placed on one's culture and mannerism as one's paycheque)- it's just been popularized and put in the news because someone at the university of manchester has framed it in a new empirical paper. well done. this sort of class analysis is just a more nuanced, graded, and advanced form of demographic evaluation: it's a synthesis of both traditional marxian-economic analysis with a more modern, relativistic form of sociological thought, nominally founded by pierre bourdieu with his concepts of cultural capital (and habitus). it just teases out the distinction between the different forms of classes in a western world where cultural/knowledge economy are as important as economic/labour economy (i.e. post-industrial, post-manufacturing). the model would work in almost every western country that has an established bourgeoisie and an industry/national economy focused on higher-education, tertiary/quaternary sector employment, and finance/service industry.

for example, this sounds a little bit familiar, don't you think?

Technical middle class - a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy

it sounds like most of the STEM males on this forum are positively aspirational in light of that class definition. dilbert is the technical middle-class par excellence, if you consider his rabid STEM proselytizing and his inane disavowals of anything arty and cultural as 'hipster'. it's the class jay is pretty much headed for, if his beloved american-marketed engineering degree catapults him to the heady heights of a middle-class pay-packet. these classes exist everywhere.

the only difference between the UK and US in this regard is that we openly talk about class and make it a source of some public consternation. our society is a huge racial and cultural hodgepodge, so people tend to fall back on class distinctions as ways of self-identifying and self-labeling. class is the probably the first constitutive marker of identity/group in the UK, yes. in the US, it's race. a class system is one based and divided on simple economic or educational stratification (social/cultural capital, in theoretical terms). a race system is one divided by hate ideology. let's not too readily confuse them. working class people are encouraged to take pride in their identity and celebrate their folk traditions; they are a rich element of british life. i get the feeling white middle america (above the age of 40, anyway) hates black culture. it's also very easy to leave your class (upwards or downwards) in social terms in the UK (maybe not so economically, where social mobility is almost as bad as it is in the US...); it's not so easy to leave your skin.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-03 04:50:14)

i was actually referring more to a rich tradition in music, in art/literature, and in popular expression. all of which has benefited the UK in multiplicand ways. the working-classes' cultural contributions are a huge part of british image and international 'cool'. it wasn't a bunch of little englanders with PPE degrees that made britain a shorthand for rock and roll cool.

you only make this seem like a 'condescending' comment because you automatically adopt an adversarial and 'assault mode' approach to class. as soon as i talk about it, you feel under attack or personally affronted. me just talking matter-of-factly about something that patently exists (whether or not i'm a hand-wringing liberal or a bleeding heart redshirt socialist) really should not be twisted to be negative by default. it's dishonest of you.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-03 04:52:58)

lol. clearly touched a nerve.

"emphasizing intangible things", haha, a beautiful oblique expression of "a definition of class that doesn't solely focus on my paycheque makes me angry".

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-04-03 06:35:22)

what's in jay's head:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

did you go dig those up when i mentioned your infamous lie about murdering someone? that was the best way to get out of a humiliating bf2s debate i've seen.

im not even in this debate

Cybargs wrote:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

did you go dig those up when i mentioned your infamous lie about murdering someone? that was the best way to get out of a humiliating bf2s debate i've seen.

im not even in this debate

just your usual high-intellect activity of sniping from the sides whenever it's advantageous to you, and never contributing anything of any substance or suasion. ok.

Crap, I don't fit any of those categories.

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

the only difference between the UK and US in this regard is that we openly talk about class and make it a source of some public consternation. our society is a huge racial and cultural hodgepodge, so people tend to fall back on class distinctions as ways of self-identifying and self-labeling. class is the probably the first constitutive marker of identity/group in the UK, yes. in the US, it's race. a class system is one based and divided on simple economic or educational stratification (social/cultural capital, in theoretical terms). a race system is one divided by hate ideology. let's not too readily confuse them. working class people are encouraged to take pride in their identity and celebrate their folk traditions; they are a rich element of british life. i get the feeling white middle america (above the age of 40, anyway) hates black culture. it's also very easy to leave your class (upwards or downwards) in social terms in the UK (maybe not so economically, where social mobility is almost as bad as it is in the US...); it's not so easy to leave your skin.

Fair enough. It may be due to stereotypes, but knowing someone's race can be a decent indicator of where they fall on the spectrum. If class:race::UK:USA too, the part of "openly talking" about it is true, too. Here it is quite rare to here someone talk about class unless they're a public figure like a politician, but issues related to race are openly discussed regularly.

Cybargs wrote:

what's in jay's head:

This is exactly how I picture Uzique sitting at home posting on bf2s.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Officials are also encouraging lenders to use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan and are seeking to make it easier for people who owe more than their properties are worth to refinance at today’s low interest rates, among other steps.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ … story.html

Here we go again!

in related news, Fannie Mae posted first quarter earnings of seventeen billion.

7.6 billion btw, not 17

Most of the movement in the housing market has been people buying homes to rent out. Hedge funds, and pension funds and the like have been buying properties like crazy in Arizona and Las Vegas in order to rent them out. There's really no new home building going on as there are still tens of thousands of homes sitting in stasis waiting for a bank foreclosure and subsequent auction.