What is middle class?

riclad

Working class used to mean you did a job, which requires no education,
beyond leaving cert ,or inter cert.
OR you did physical work,
eg decorator.Bricklayer.
OR you were on welfare for long periods of time,in between jobs.
Middle class people,work in offices,or schools,hospitals etc
I believe there,s an underclass,
ie they drink alot, use a lot of drugs,
are on a welfare , never had a job for a long period,eg more than 3 years.
They tend to have more than 2 kids.
Middle class people go to college, get a degree,place a high value on education.
They tend to speak in a certain way,
tend not to use curse words frequently.

I was walking down the road, i heard a woman use the c word ,
in a casual conversation.
she was not insulting someone or in an argument.

Many of them now ,are in debt, cos the banks gave them large loans,in the boom.
You can be a middle class person,and have very little money.
Some say in 30 years time ,the middle class may be gone,
jobs like teachers ,etc are under threat from
being replaced robots ,or computers.
OR real jobs, are being replaced by interns, or part time work.
You can judge a country by the health of its middle class .
IE middle class people run companys or start new business,es .
And the pay a lot of the taxes .
You can be very well off and still be working class.
ie in the boom,
carpenters ,bricklayers were on high wages ,
making more than many people working in office,s .
MIDDLE class does not equal good guys,
ie the bankers who wrecked the economy were not good guys ,
eg i,ll lend someone 200k to buy a house in cavan,
even if its only worth 100k,
i dont care i want a big bonus this year.
I,LL lend someone a million euro,s to buy shares in my bank ,
ie share price manipulation.
Most of the people who carry out financial fraud are middle class .
When the middle class is in a bad way ,
the economy is in a bad way.
Those are the people who buy luxury goods, expensive clothes etc they
keep hotels and fancy restaurants in business.

ruthloss

I believe you refer to 'people in trade' op.:D

mikemac1

lufties wrote: »

I'm an Engineer on 50k a year, what would I be?

Sure everyone is an engineer these days

The handyman who fixes lawn mowers and has a nixer putting up satellite dishes can call himself an engineer

lufties

mikemac1 wrote: »

Sure everyone is an engineer these days

The handyman who fixes lawn mowers and has a nixer putting up satellite dishes can call himself an engineer

The title on my hard earned earned qualification is aircraft engineer, its not a title I gave to myself.

ruthloss

mikemac1 wrote: »

Sure everyone is an engineer these days

The handyman who fixes lawn mowers and has a nixer putting up satellite dishes can call himself an engineer

Don't be churlish., I'm quite sure that he is a perfectly good Engineer.:D

Jimbloggs

There are 3 main classes now, economically.
2 that don't have to work for a living and 1 that does.

Grayson

creolebelle wrote: »

I was just thinking about the class system in Ireland. In America we have this obsession with rich. Our tv shows, magazines, media etc soely focus on them. We also have this societal belief that if your are poor in America there is something wrong with you. That poor people actually chose to be poor. Many of my family members seem to think its a sin to be poor.

Is irish society really status conscious? Is there a lot of societal pressure to become wealthy? Does a large part of irish media focus on the very rich and what they are buying?
Is there a lot of interaction between the classes on Ireland?

looking down on the poor is a weird part of the protestant work ethic. Strange thing is that it's been around before that. St Vincent de Paul is a catholic saint. The St Vincent de Paul organisation helps the poor. However it has a very strange origin. The reason it helps the poor is because in the middle ages being poor/homeless was seen as being a defect. And since there was no difference between what was perceived as a spiritual or mental defect, poor people were seen as being cursed or evil. the original VdP homes were the equivalent of a combination of an asylum and workhouse.
This continued years later when actual workhouses were formed. people seem to forget that one of the reasons people in workhouses were treated so badly was because it was felt that they deserved it. It was felt that through hard labour the people there would be saved. they were morally corrupt because they were poor and the hard work was for their own good.
There's still a certain amount of that hanging around. people tend to look down on the really poor as if they were ill and we have this impression that anyone who is poor is poor because of their own fault.

BigAl81

Working class : your name on your shirt

Middle class : your name on your desk

Upper class : your name on the building!

Wibbs

In which case if you're Mr Calvin Klein you're all of the above.

bodice ripper

I went to a private school, then I got my hands tattooed. I believe I went from middle class to hipster in one fell swoop.

lufties

bodice ripper wrote: »

I went to a private school, then I got my hands tattooed. I believe I went from middle class to hipster in one fell swoop.

Its not very hipster to get love and hate tattooed on your fingers

bodice ripper

lufties wrote: »

Its not very hipster to get love and hate tattooed on your fingers

oh, what I have on my fingers is hip as ****.

KungPao

WC: Football
MC: Rugby
UC: Croquet

lufties

KungPao wrote: »

WC: Football
MC: Rugby
UC: Croquet

Muuuuuunnnnsterrr....Muuuuuunnnsterrrrr

takamichinoku

See, the whole class thing doesn't work so well in Ireland with our education and welfare systems, I believe we're one of the few countries who has a reasonable spread in the middle class rather than a huge split down the middle where half are doing fine and half are crippled with debt.
Also, long term unemployed are pretty much an outlier class called the welfare class, surely? As in they've basically been pushed outside of the system entirely.



On strictly monetary terms I guess I'd be something along the lines of "upper-middle class" in that there is and has been enough resources there that I should never have to struggle, but I still have to work and do well at stuff and so on to keep it that way.
In terms of how I was raised, I went to a school in an area where almost everyone's parents were on the dole during the celtic tiger. Due to my parents not really understanding what they were at with money at all (it was all gathering up in accounts they never checked, apparently ...nope, I've no clue either), we lived on a very tight budget, way tighter than was needed and had issues like no heating for patches and broken plumbing and so on.
With the whole small farm lifestyle, it was maybe some kind of rural working class existance?

steddyeddy

It's amazing the way people treat this as some sort of linnaean classification system considering the amount of different opinions on the subject. It's too poorly designed as a concept to serve as anything more than an tool of snobbery based on some views people have against other people.

Drakares

Arthur Beesley wrote: »

We're the ones that pay most of the income tax.

:pac:

Shakespeare's Sister

steddyeddy wrote: »

It's amazing the way people treat this as some sort of linnaean classification system considering the amount of different opinions on the subject. It's too poorly designed as a concept to serve as anything more than an tool of snobbery based on some views people have against other people.

The question was simply asked though. Responses have just been what people's view of what "middle-class" means. There is no looking down on working-class people contained in this.

steddyeddy

Magaggie wrote: »

The question was simply asked though. Responses have just been what people's view of what "middle-class" means. There is no looking down on working-class people contained in this.

I didn't say there was. I'm just saying if this thread proved anything is there is no defined middle class.

steddyeddy

Plus the snobbery seems to be against middle class mostly :P

catallus

Maybe the middle class is that subset of society which is so tantalisingly close to being independently wealthy that they are willing to do whatever it takes to subsume their envy in a group delusion of being satisfied with their lot lest their envy and anguish at being forever a wage slave, forever to be an underling to the elites, festers into a moral ulcer which slowly eats their soul until the day the doctor says, congratulations you've got pancreatic cancer! and then you say, well at least I've got private health insurance, so at least I'll die in a nice room. Down with this sort of thing.

steddyeddy

I do think there is a sort of class system but it's due to outlook rather than circumstances of birth. I.E what you aspire to in life and why. Just my opinion though.

shewasdiesel

The reality in Ireland is that we have the welfare class, the working class and the connected class.
Anyone who has to work for a living to pay their bills, is in fact working class.
The old English class system is perpetuated today by advertisers trying to convince as many people as possible they are middle class so they aspire to buying more and more stuff they don't actually need. The connected class are also keen to make sure the taxpayer thinks he is middle class, so that he keeps paying up for them and their scams, no matter what they do to him, because its the 'respectable middle class' thing to do.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

steddyeddy wrote: »

I do think there is a sort of class system but it's due to outlook rather than circumstances of birth. I.E what you aspire to in life and why. Just my opinion though.

Class is every bit as ideological as it is material. That's why middle class people will use the terms "middle class" or "bourgeois" as derogatory, and why "working class" can be a badge of honour. I don't think it's ever really caught on that much in Ireland, for one thing urban/rural would be a more common way of categorising people.

It seems to have changed a lot globally over the past century or so anyway. The lords and ladies aren't at all as rich as they appear, and the people running the world and living the most materially upper class lifestyles (including profiting off the poverty of others) are people we've never heard of.

evolving_doors

Probably been said but ..

middle class
not wealthy enough to be keeping horses

but not poor enough to be keeping horses either

mariaalice

I don't think we really have the same sort of class system as Marx was talking about and in todays society no where has.. the world of work is changing and we have the welfare system.

I live some where that is considered very middle class and work beside somewhere that is very deprived, all you have to do is go to a supermarket in either area and you would see the difference between different section of Irish society. its a eye opener because we all usually live in a bubble of or own making.

In Ireland middle class is not about money, its more about what newspaper you read, what books you read, where you go on holiday, France instead of Spain, investing a lot in you children, Irish college, the way you dress, Living in an area where almost everyone is living the same life as you are, third level education, careers instead of a job and so on.

Santa Cruz

Middle class is going to Leopardstown. Working class is going to Harolds Cross dog track.
See the difference between the women at both locations

daz1988

I don't think we can talk about a class in Ireland as there are the social welfare leeches then you have people who are mad to work but cant get anything then you have those in a job who feel depressed and want out then you have those in a handy job who want more money

Ireland is now A mini America land of the free and greedy everyone in the country complains about taxes and cuts and everything but yet there the ones who bend over in the voting boxes and make them feel at home in France 2010 they set places on fire burnt everything they could they made there opinion felt over retirement age going from 60 to 62 in Ireland we turn to Facebook and write big status and expect the government to just stop fact is we are all to soft as a nation big mouths but no heart to follow through with what we say

class number 1 social welfare bums who refuse to find a normal job who work a few days here and there and pay no taxes I would call this the ( LAZY CLASS )

class number 2 those who are just rich from using everything dirty trick in the book those who have loads of cash and say there bankrupt those who fiddle the banks and get away with it i would call this the ( CROOKS CLASS )

class number 3 ( NOT MIDDLE CLASS ) But WORKING CLASS people honest people who go to work try to make a few euros and build a house have a family those who put themselves through hell and back just to be a normal family ( WORKING CLASS )

You see we listen so much to other country's and we forget how bad our own country is our government letting people walk into this country and apply for the dole and pay them top money also claiming children s allowance for 4 children that they have already brought home have you ever noticed how hard it is for IRISH people to get into America or OZ Ireland the land of the free because if you come from some other country don't matter where you get everything free but IRISH people lien on the streets Homeless due to our banks who robbed us taking there homes to pay back money they stole from us in the first place

TOP COUNTRY SERIOUSLY THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD

Kiwi in IE

newmug wrote: »

That child would ideally be taken into the care of a relative or the state. Even if they weren't, they get the same school as the rest of us, and will have the same job offers whenever they enter the workplace, be that at 18 with a LC or at 12 illiterate. Regardless, they may have a longer road, but there is no way "disadvantaged" people have any less of a chance to make something of themselves than any of us.

That is bollocks of the highest order! A child who is brought up by caregivers who have no interest/ability in providing learning opportunities, adequate nutrition/housing/clothing/heating, show no interest/ability in assistance/involvement in their child's education or social development, cannot (or will not) provide the equipment necessary to be involved in social/community/sporting activities is NOT going to have the same oppurtunities in life as a child who has caregivers who provide all of that to a good standard!

Do you really believe that they will have the same oppurtunities because they attend the same school?

Example: Two kids in same class of same school

Child A: Comes to school after good nutritious breakfast, also had a nutritious dinner the previous night, had a good sleep in a comfortable bed in a warm house, is clean, homework done with help from caregiver, has all necessary equipment for school and sporting activities after school, caregivers are loving, caring, encouraging, interested in and supportive of child.

Child B: Caregivers had friends around last night who were drinking and taking drugs into the small hours, dinner was a few left over scraps from the chipper, no breakfast this morning, homework not done as no one was available to help, hardly any sleep due to adults partying, house not heated as no money, no proper bed or bedding - dirty mattress on floor with a couple of blankets, clothes dirty, child unwashed, caregivers have not provided the necessary equipment needed for school/extra curricular activities so child unable to participate in certain activities. Caregivers are uncaring, disinterested, dismissive and have no time for the child.

This is the life pattern of both children from birth to age of majority! Do you really believe they will have the same oppurtunities simply because they attend the same school?

jimgoose

Armelodie wrote: »

Probably been said but ..

middle class
not wealthy enough to be keeping horses

but not poor enough to be keeping horses either

This. Bang-on! :pac::pac::pac: