So, basically, class = vibes. Because no other definition puts someone owning a $40K truck and a water ski boat in lower class.
Not saying it's not a popular view. This is what (partially) drives WWC resentment towards the "elites". "Look, I'm financially stable, I have my sh*t together, I hit every marker a responsible adult must hit, I may be better off than you - and you still look down on me".
Well...yeah...
That's why I keep making reference to the old school aristocratic values having been adopted by the meritocrats and how problematic that is, especially since most don't even know that that's where they come from.
Old school aristocratic superiority is still alive and well, it's just dressed up in a seemingly palatable meritocratic bow.
My wife sometimes says the neighborhood she grew up with was “construction money,” i.e. new money, no taste.
Class isn’t a matter of money. It’s how you make your money, and what you do with your time and money.
The WWC understands perfectly well what class is and how it works, they just don’t like it.
My experience of living amongst people of various backgrounds and various levels of wealth ranging from working with homeless people to socializing with billionaires is that everyone seems to think they "know" what dictates "class" but almost no one is actually in agreement about it.
It’s not exactly a conversation I regularly have with strangers, so I’m going to need to defer to your crossectional assessment.
However, at least in the US, I suspect if you offered people a set of occupations and hobbies and asked them to code them by class you’d get a fair bit of agreement. If you asked a group whether it’s higher class to make a million dollars as a surgeon or as the owner of a corner liquor store, I doubt many are going to say it’s the liquor store owner who’s higher class.
The past 6-8 years of American politics have gone a long way to cement class perceptions and boundaries in American minds.
In broad strokes, sure, there are broad class themes, but they break down pretty quickly under closer examination and actual lived experience.
And literally everything to do with "new money" and "old money" class nonsense dates back to the aristocrats.
Which is HILARIOUS since the famous "old money" families in the US today were ALL white trash new money back in the day.
And once you see inside the world of the ultra wealthy "upper class" you see that virtually all concepts of "class" are nonsense circular logic anchored to nothing real.
No matter how much you have, no matter who your family is, no matter what cultural signifiers you engage in, someone will always find a way to define you as "not actually high class" for some reason or another.
And the things that most Americans would agree upon are the old aristocratic class signifiers, which are based on a system that literally doesn't exist anymore, and are therefore meaningless and on exact contradiction of many of our celebrated class features today.
The old status signifiers were all about demonstrating a *lack* of industriousness. Aristocrats specially engaged extensively in activities that signaled that they weren't spending their time making money. Hence why certain leisure activities are seen as "high class."
But they were the ones with the money, and now that earning money is also status, the markers of class and wealth go in direct conflict with one another.
Is someone high class because they are brilliant and made a ton of money being brilliant and getting heavily into philanthropy? Is someone high class because they are the descendant of generational wealth, have never had a job in their life, spend all of their time playing rich-kid sports, and are best known for never being prosecuted for all of the servants they rape?
Trust me, every rich person I know thinks that most of the other rich people are total trash. There's only generally agreement about what constitutes class by people who see themselves as beneath that class or above it. Within each class range, there's shocking levels of disagreement about class. Hence why everyone in the broad "middle class" has the same level of disagreement.
It's all a bunch of self-conflicting, fucked up nonsense that completely crumbles under any critical examination.
