Savings rates have really jumped, will it last? And why so low for so many years?

bendix

Frugal_Millionairess wrote: »

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I'm not so sure about the class system in America though. There is some of that new money/old money thing going on in the East coast, but in the true midwest (I'm talking Iowa farm communities) throughtout your life you're admonished, "Don't put on airs"; "Don't think you're better than anyone else" and so on, almost a sort of Amish like thinking. And the only ones named "Duchess or Queenie" are the family pets.;) Tell me your thoughts about this class system.

If that's your rationale for their being no class system in the midwest, then I can categorically state that there is no class system in the UK too, because such attitudes prevail here too.

It all depends how you define a class system. I suspect Americans think of the British system as some kind of old boys club . . that has largely broken down and it's possible for anyone from pretty much any background to rise up the social ladder now, in the same way as it is in the States. I am living proof of that.

But of course there are classes or strata or types of people. The UK working class geezer with a skinhead hair cut and who walks around with his obese wife in sports pants and an Arsenal shirt, is obviously a different type of person than a liberal, vegetarian, bearded treehugger University Lecturer heading home to count his crystals. Is that class? I don't know.

In the old days you could define class by birth or by money; now it's not nearly so easy. In fact, your plumbers are generally more wealthy than your lecturers these days.

I don't think it's any different in the US. You have your working class blue collar rednecks, you're indebted middle classes, your underclass, your liberal or conservative aristocracies.

Is that a class system? I don't think so? Does class exist? Yes. Is it about money? No. Is it about attitudes? Probably.

Frugal_Millionairess

bendix wrote: »

It all depends how you define a class system. I suspect Americans think of the British system as some kind of old boys club . . that has largely broken down and it's possible for anyone from pretty much any background to rise up the social ladder now, in the same way as it is in the States. I am living proof of that.

But of course there are classes or strata or types of people. The UK working class geezer with a skinhead hair cut and who walks around with his obese wife in sports pants and an Arsenal shirt, is obviously a different type of person than a liberal, vegetarian, bearded treehugger University Lecturer heading home to count his crystals. Is that class? I don't know.

In the old days you could define class by birth or by money; now it's not nearly so easy. In fact, your plumbers are generally more wealthy than your lecturers these days.


Is that a class system? I don't think so? Does class exist? Yes. Is it about money? No. Is it about attitudes? Probably.

Good morning Bendix! Have been pondering this a bit. On several points we are in accord. Ironically, our next door neighbor is in fact a plumber and indeed makes more than I do teaching at the university (albeit part-time). If you subscribe to Adam Smith's invisible hand theory, this is a simple reflection of our relative value to society, which is why we liberal arts folks aren't too keen on Smith...;)

Second, I probably do have a bit outdated vision of Britain. Mark that up to too many happy hours spent reading Barbara Cartland novels in my youth. Even as I type this somewhere deep in my mind I'm sure all of you over there are linking in from your 500 year old thatched roof stone cottages or manor homes, laptop on a polished antique libary table, glass of port to your left, crackling fire on your right....but I digress.

So what is class? It can't be just money as evidenced by our own Howard Stern or Jerry Springer or Roseanne Barr. It's not just education, have you watched Dr. Phil? Or met a PhD who told off-color jokes and had poor table manners?

Maybe you're right that it is about attitude, but what is that? Maybe more than attitude, it is a sort of high personal code of ethics, or a simple kindness to others, the basis of good manners that give class? I think we would all accord Mother Theresa "class" and indeed I think she was invited to meet your Queen, yet she took a vow of poverty and has little (that I know of) higher education. So many things to ponder - more fun that a suzuki puzzle.:D

An aside, congrats on your own climb up the ladder. Was it a tough one??

Milarky

Frugal Millionairess - welcome to MSE forums

Have you seen this 'A National Failure to Save' YouTube video from Chris Martenson - and the rest of his excellent 'Crash Course' on his website, http://www.chrismartenson.com . Someone posted it here a few months back. I think you will find it compelling.

TTFN

Frugal_Millionairess

Milarky, Thanks for the welcome and the video clip. I did indeed find it compelling, watching it over an early lunch. The 53 to 85 trillion shortfall was plain scary and the Plutarch quote along with the increasing gap between rich and poor carries a lot of historic overtones - none good. My five year old has become facinated with learning about the French Revolution (he's a normal kid in every other way:rolleyes:) and he mostly likes to discuss how the rich were all being beheaded by the poor. And while I have not yet seen any impoverished farmers wielding pitchforks marching down the road, it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of Net Present Value - avoided those sorts of classes during my years in school, much to my present chagrin as I find some of the finance stuff as compelling as a good Grisham novel.

TTFN to you too and Cheers fellow Pooh fan! :beer:

bendix

Frugal_Millionairess wrote: »

Good morning Bendix! Have been pondering this a bit. On several points we are in accord. Ironically, our next door neighbor is in fact a plumber and indeed makes more than I do teaching at the university (albeit part-time). If you subscribe to Adam Smith's invisible hand theory, this is a simple reflection of our relative value to society, which is why we liberal arts folks aren't too keen on Smith...;)

Second, I probably do have a bit outdated vision of Britain. Mark that up to too many happy hours spent reading Barbara Cartland novels in my youth. Even as I type this somewhere deep in my mind I'm sure all of you over there are linking in from your 500 year old thatched roof stone cottages or manor homes, laptop on a polished antique libary table, glass of port to your left, crackling fire on your right....but I digress.

So what is class? It can't be just money as evidenced by our own Howard Stern or Jerry Springer or Roseanne Barr. It's not just education, have you watched Dr. Phil? Or met a PhD who told off-color jokes and had poor table manners?

Maybe you're right that it is about attitude, but what is that? Maybe more than attitude, it is a sort of high personal code of ethics, or a simple kindness to others, the basis of good manners that give class? I think we would all accord Mother Theresa "class" and indeed I think she was invited to meet your Queen, yet she took a vow of poverty and has little (that I know of) higher education. So many things to ponder - more fun that a suzuki puzzle.:D

An aside, congrats on your own climb up the ladder. Was it a tough one??

There was a comment in The Economist last week which suggested that if an Englishman asks where the 'bog' is, they are either an aristocrat or working class. Their point was that the two extremes share a vulgarity which isn't shared by the more socially mobile middle classes. The middle classes would say 'toilet', 'bathroom' or lavatory. Interesting thought.

Frugal_Millionairess

This IS an interesting thought. I was being taken to task slightly for a posting I'd made about buying kids socks at a garage sale and realizing the woman running the sale was the wife of one of my husband's major clients and being embarrased. This was one of the responses I got. It is from the Simple Living Discusssion board and it sort of echoes what you're saying.

"One of the biggest "Queen of yard sales" persons I know is a multimillionaire, who has an absolute genius for walking into yard sales and walking out with beautiful silk shirts for a dollar, or stuff that she recycles into beautiful art.

Many, many years ago, in a Universe far away, and with another husband, we had a client who was a gazillionaire heir to a very large fortune, who had a lovely estate on the Main Line near Philadelphia, complete with Revolutionary war era stone mansion, greenhouses, etc., who had never worked a day in his life at a job, but was a world authority on orchids, and literally had furnished his home with stuff from the trash, or made from things in the trash. He used to troll around Philadelphia on the days every year when people put furniture out on the street for pickup and salvage things made of good woods, take them apart and use the wood for other projects. His home was worthy of being featured in a design magazine, and one of the delights of his life was to take people around and show them things, tell them where they came from, or what he had made them from. Yet he had horses worth millions of dollars, a large staff, etc., and more money than he could have spent in many lifetimes.

Some people just like using their minds inventively in that way, and enjoy a bargain, no matter what.

Another person in that long ago world of old money was much the same way. She drove an old VW beetle around town with flames painted on its sides that had belonged to her son, took me out to dinner in a very excluive restaurant in Washington D.C. and brought along sardines and crackers in her purse to pass around in the little reception room where they served you champagne while you waited for your table, but according to her, were willing to let you starve to death. She took me to dinner with the Cecils at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville NC (Mr. Cecil's mother had been a Vanderbilt), yet on the same day took me to lunch at McDonald's in her husband's Bentley.

I guess what I'm saying here is that the older money is, the more self confident the possessors are, and those who think they have to "maintain their position" really just don't get it. Maybe your husband's partners just need to hang around with more "old money". end quote.

My very middle class status has me still saying restroom, but I'll work on it.;)

Rollinghome

Frugal_Millionairess wrote: »

So what is class? It can't be just money as evidenced by our own Howard Stern or Jerry Springer or Roseanne Barr. It's not just education, have you watched Dr. Phil? Or met a PhD who told off-color jokes and had poor table manners?

In Europe the vestiges of a class system based on family (a system which often had it origins based on race and physical power) still remain important to some while in the US it has tended to be strongly based on wealth and race. While Jews are now able to join the better US golf clubs, the descendants of the American aboriginal and black slaves appear to still be very much at the bottom.

If you are asking which is the most worthy class system then the usual approach is to award that to whichever system places each of us closest to the top.

cheerfulcat

Hi, FM,

Frugal_Millionairess wrote: »

So what is class? It can't be just money as evidenced by our own Howard Stern or Jerry Springer or Roseanne Barr. It's not just education, have you watched Dr. Phil? Or met a PhD who told off-color jokes and had poor table manners?

Maybe you're right that it is about attitude, but what is that? Maybe more than attitude, it is a sort of high personal code of ethics, or a simple kindness to others, the basis of good manners that give class? I think we would all accord Mother Theresa "class" and indeed I think she was invited to meet your Queen, yet she took a vow of poverty and has little (that I know of) higher education. So many things to ponder - more fun that a suzuki puzzle.:D

A lot of people nowadays seem to equate money with class but historically it was associated with one's profession. A manual worker would have been considered working class, a white collar worker some level of middle class. IIRC, to be upper class ( in Europe, anyway ) required a title. The class one was in did not imply anything about one's moral standing though the concept of " noblesse oblige " meant that in theory at least people in positions of power and privilege should behave accordingly.

Rollinghome

When you say "historically" I assume you mean at a certain point. A class system based on profession seems to be a fairly recent concept and there was what could be seen as class systems long before there were any professions. Different societies will have different systems that are relevent to them at different points.

cheerfulcat

I meant specifically the British class system which the OP was querying.