Polite people don't like to talk about "class" in the United States. This is a country where almost everyone calls themselves "middle class", and politicians pander to the term as if the whole notion of social class were some kind of commie plot. Or at least something our founding fathers left behind when they split from the veddy veddy class-conscious UK. But ignoring something doesn't make it go away. Of course society has classes. Of course people can be classified. Of course there are huge differences among people who call themselves "middle class". And of course a simplistic split into lower, middle, and upper doesn't work.
Social class is not a simple vertical thing. Yes, different classes tend to have different economic positions. But there's a lot more to it. A $50,000/year university lecturer and a $50,000 ironworker may make the same money but a group of them is likely to have different tastes. (Individuals can vary; the class describes the more typical members of the group.) Starbucks vs. Dunkin's. Mad Men vs. Wrestlemania. Prius vs. F-150.
Identifying class structure is more than an academic exercise in sociology. It helps understand politics, and can be helpful in winning office. It is certainly useful in marketing. That's why some marketing types have done their own versions of it. The idiot Mark Penn (Mr. Why Hillary Is Not Now President) whined that Obama was practicing class warfare, but he made his mark with class-based "microtrends", an attempt at identifying a very granular class structure. (It clearly didn't work for her.) And almost everyone recognizes that somewhere in "the 1%" is a group that just isn't like the rest of us.
I recently came across a post from last year by blogger Michael O. Church, called The 3-ladder system of social class in the U.S. While I have some quibbles with a few details and even some of his key terminology, I think he's basically onto something. And it provides a useful set of terminology for describing, in shorthand, complex class interactions. His article is quite long but it seems well worth a look.
Before going into detail, I'll observe that real people often don't quite fit the actual descriptions of classes. This doesn't invalidate the structure. Rather, the classes -- Church identifies 13 -- strike me as archetypes. A real person may be in between two or three of them. The nice thing about his 3-ladder system is that they exist in 3-dimensional space, not a straight line or flat grid. I'm not sure Church himself understood that, but he did note that there are "hybrids", and he missed classifying some major groups. He also was "more precise than accurate" is sizing up each class's share of the US, but his numbers are a good indication as to whether he thinks a group is large or small, and that matters.
Church's system creates ladders which to some extent parallel each other. As your rise up your ladder, your income is likely to rise, but it's not all about money. The goals of each ladder differ as much as their social mores and tastes. He calls the ladders "labor", "gentry", and "elite", and each one goes from 4 at the bottom to 1 at the top. They do not line up evenly: L2 is roughly parallel to G4, and G2 is roughly parallel to E4. Social mobility thus occurs horizontally or vertically.
So roughly:
E1
E2
G1 E3
G2 E4
L1 G3
L2 G4
L3
L4
U
but more like legs on a cockeyed stool, with E as horizontally close to L as to G.
I don't like those ladder names very much. The "L" track is basically the blue-collar culture, but also one about material. The "G" track is basically white-collar or "creative", primarily about education and culture. The "E" track is basically the ruling class, all about power. But at the lower levels, it's more about aspiration than success.
So here's the structure, with his names for the classes. Read his article for more details; this is my take on it.
U: Underclass. This class, about 10% of adults, is outside of the labor force; they are the hereditary poor. They're the perennial whipping boys of society, often on public assistance. And they're not on any ladder. That's why there are 13 classes, not 12.
L4: Secondary labor. These are adults with McJobs meant for kids, no benefits, near minimum wage. This is maybe 20% of the potential labor force, and growing, since there's downward mobility in the economy now.
L3: Primary labor. These are traditional working-class jobs, like factory work, with benefits, which pay well enough to raise a family ($20-60k/year). This was the heart of unionized America, and it's shrinking.
L2: High-skilled labor. These are skilled jobs that pay well but have an entry barrier. Think electrician or plumber, or store manager. Pay can be good (ca. 100k), and this is a traditional middle class role. But it's not huge (Church estimates 14%).
L1: Labor leadership. These are people who "made it", store owners, landlords, etc., but in positions that don't depend on formal education as much as skill. This is the top 1% of the blue-collar track, but not all what we call 1%ers. They're good at managing labor, as they come from there. They can afford, and are consumers of, season tickets at sports events, boats, fast cars, and other material symbols of success. But they don't have real power.
I really don't like Church's gentry group names; if you have better ones, I'd like suggestions.
G4: Transitional gentry. (I'd like to find a better name.) This class is an entry point for L2s to move to G; Church characterizes them as typically community college grads, but doesn't name jobs. It's a small group (5%) and young. Bicycles.
G3: Primary gentry. White-collar 4-year college grads, in "professional" jobs that aren't particularly creative. 16% of the total; $30-200k/year. I'd suggest this group is noted for "boojy" tastes. Theater, not sports. Latte, not Big Gulp. Camry or Audi.
G2: High gentry. Church's 2.45% is definitely more precise than accurate. Not so much more money than G3s but more autonomy. Professors, scientists, entrepreneurs, middle managers. They'd be bored silly in many G3 jobs.
G1: Cultural influencers. He guesses .05%. More famous than rich, but famous for their ideas and accomplishments. He names John Stewart; I'll throw in Kos. Income range is around $100k-$1M. So it overlaps L1 financially but is culturally very different.
The "elite" ladder totals only 1.5%, but not all have real power. This group is about power, or about big money. Church really does not like these people, as you'll see.
E4: Strivers. Young aspirants to elitehood. Law associates, junior I-bankers, and others who may be miserable but work their asses off hoping to become members of the higher elite. It helps to come from a prestigious university, vs. say actually knowing stuff. No time for fun. BMWs if they can afford them.
E3: Elite servants, or working rich. CEOs, executives, I-bankers, "white shoe" law partners. 0.8% (sounds high to me). These folks make the big bucks, $200k-$5M/year, but have to spend big to maintain appearances. They seem to have power but are still the tools of the truly rich who own the stock, so their jobs are precarious. They can afford BMWs or Benzes. Their tastes are often closer to L1 than G, but they dress better.
E2: National elite, or "old money". The obvious upper class. Inherited wealth; they don't hold jobs but are often the investors who sit on boards and finance venture capitalists. They need high incomes but don't have to work for it. They go to elite schools on legacy and know each other. Their taste may be highbrow (opera) or sometimes somewhat lowbrow (hunting on preserves, owning sports teams). Think Kennedys, Bushes, the folks in the Hamptons.
E1: Global elite. To Church, this group of maybe 60k worldwide (1/3 in the US) is the real secret power structure, with no allegiance to countries. He also considers them to epitomize evil -- they are, collectively, the devil, and the class goes back 10,000 years. They're "in the empire business", a famous quote from Breaking Bad. Church names Heisenberg, which is brilliant, since both the original Werner Heisenberg (Nazi scientist) and that show's evil protagonist, Walter White (nom de guerre Heisenberg) would be members. This is a social and power elite, not financial elite. Other members would probably include Kissinger, Putin, Erik Prince, Hitler, Stalin, drug cartel heads, Koch brothers, and all the comic book supervillains. (Church even names several.)
Church notes that "celebrities" (Kardashians, not the truly accomplished, but this is where Reagan came from) are a special case, a hybrid of all three. That's possible if you view the classes as archetypes and not strict containers. He doesn't however account for the mercantile classes. Maybe he thinks storekeepers are generally L2 or L1. "Bazaaris" (very small merchants) are probably below that, but being in business, even small business, might not be purely L-ladder.
I learned about this when someone used it to explain why Adam Smith ("The Wealth of Nations"), father of free-market capitalist theory, was a big fat liar. Scotland had been populated by fairly prosperous small farmers, but was taken over by England, and they drove the Scots off the land and wanted to force them to become cheap labor. Thus Smith and cronies were "G1 wannabe E2s feeding the E1s at the expense of all Ls, while pretending it was all automatic". Precious.
Any suggestions about how one might improve on the model, or its terminology? Is it a useful model? I think so but would appreciate Kogs' opinions.