Fuck the Caste System, what American Class are you?

[theCryptofishist]

Class is one of the forbidden subjects in our country. I would guess that most of us are of middle class background, perhaps with and intellectual or bohemian flavor, but I"m also sure that's not universal. So were you dispised for your poverty, envied for your riches? Did you grow up in the cities/ the burbs, a rural area? Did your family own or rent? Did divorce or job loss or a windfall plunge you into another class that you couldn't navigate? Did you rise or fall from your class origins after you left home? How has money or the lack affected your life?

[theCryptofishist]

I'll go first
My mother was from a working class family, her parents both worked, schoolteacher and parole officer. Her mother looked down on some of her family for still being blue collar.
My father was an emigre, his father was a Herr Professor Doktor from the German tradition.
So my mother married up, and was in many ways never really of the middle class. My father was hopelessly out of it.
We had a middle class income, but not a lot of the cultural capital of the middle class--no sense of how to network into a job, for instance. I dropped out of school due to illness, starting me on a 15 year oddessy of un and under employment. I've been on welfare. I would have ended on the streets if my parents hadn't supported me in various ways. I now have a government job, as an Office Manager. Mostly in my agency those jobs are filled by family women (typically black) who are probably near the top of their asperational curve, rather than towards the bottom like I am. I am having a nice chunk taken out of my paycheck and put towards my retirement, because poverty sucked.

[unjonharley]

I am one of the richest persons alive today..love and life

On the other hand I am very poor..money

no one can take away the wounderful memories or the peace i feel within, that I am so rich with..

I have learned to live with out wants.. i can not buy wants..I am pocket book poor..

I'm "first" class..

[erri2000]

My mother’s family came from a very influential background, her family tree branches to Senators and a Pope, no joke.

My father saw this and wanted it. So he took it. Over the next 8 years he did what was necessary to achieve his dreams and then left us (my mother, brothers and sister) in shambles. His crimes where so disgusting and vile that relatives could not or would not even listen or just stated that we where lying. My relatives eventually just turned their backs. (They are still cordial when I see them, but I rarely see them).

My mother not knowing what to do tried to distance herself from the problem by having her marriage annulled by the church and then pretended that she never had any relationship with my father. This included having children.

I got my first real job when I was 12 through a work program that the state ran (my mother lied about my age) which consisted of digging ditches for the city.

My family was thrust into poverty and that is where we stayed. The self-pity just became a way of life. My family is still reminded that we are “piles of toxic wasteâ€

[BitterDan]

My father comes from a poor family in a tiny little town in Florida. He was a great student and ended up getting a scholarship to a bible college in Georgia where he studied mechanical drafting. He paid his rent through college by working at McDonalds near the campus.

My mother comes from a middle class family from the Bay Area, California. In the 60's she was your typical "hippie" from San Francisco. Somehow, after high school, she too ended up at that Georgia Bible College where she met my father.

Both of my parents then joined the military (Air Force). I guess you can say we were poor though we lived on base (I do remember a trailer home though). We didn't have nice cars or fancy things but I don't remember it being tough. When I was 7 my parents were forced to do duty overseas and they ended up in Seoul, Korea. I had to stay behind with my aunt and uncle in Florida for a year. When they got back from Korea they were once again civilians and my dad landed a drafting job in Houston, Texas.

This change raised us up on the totem of class and propelled us into the lower-middle class. We had our own home in a nice suburban neighborhood in Houston. We stayed there for a few years rising higher and higher on the pay scales before my dad got laid off and landed an even better job in the Bay Area, CA.

We moved into an even nicer house and eventually my dad started his own business franchise. We lived there for about 10 years before my parents decided to move back to Houston, Texas. I didn't go with them.

For a few years after I was on my own things we tough. Getting enough money to get enough gas to drive to the grocery store was difficult. I was in and out of temporary jobs and shithole jobs and I even got kicked out of my place. Luckily for me I had good friends and one of them took me in at zero rent for as long as I needed. I ended up taking a job at a car dealership as a detailer which paid something around six dollars an hour. After a couple of years of this low wage I ended up going to work for my aunt in the catering business at night and going to college during the day. It took me 3 years to get a 2 year degree and before I graduated I called by a "headhunter" about a job in the software industry. I interviewed and got the job which took me from broke-ass college student to middle class working man in a matter of days.

I have been in the software business for about 8 years now and I would say that I am upper-middle class when viewed on a national level but probably just middle class on a Bay Area level.

Now that's probably more about BD than you ever wanted to know.

[Zulegoona]

I have to ask that ( what’s your definitions and attributes question)
I have no idea what the income level breakdown is these days as to what class that would put you in. growing up in the days of easy grants and loans for school I knew a lot of people who considered themselves educated proletariats “educated prolsâ€

[Toolmaker]

I was a homeless runaway for a year. I lived in squats and knew all the great places for free grub. I did alot of acid and robitussin that year. I explored alot of the Philly sewage system. I got into some naughty shit and wound up having money in my pockets.. I pissed it away on drugs and parties. I liked working in the trades when I was able. These days I'm honest but still kinda fucked up in some ways. I never really wanted to be too respectable so I am kinda happy being the grungy fucko that I am. Whatever I am it wasn't my parents fault, it was the punk rock music.

[cowboyangel]

Wow, this eplaya is getting more real than Tribe. That's good. We have a class war going on in the US now and most people are unaware of it. The rich rule and their mode of choice is the corporation and all that entails. I see how the other side lives alot because I work in their homes....Senator Feinstein, Paul Fisher of the Gap, Bill Rutter of Cyron Corporation, to name a few. There are 2 Americas, as John Edwards was heard saying. And as Thom Hartmann from Air America notes in his book "Screwed"...our middle class is loosing ground every day. The poor and the middle class are poorly represented in this country. In my mid-50's I've seen enough of it to be able to say its true.
I grew up in blue blue collar central Massachusetts in a Lithuanian neighborhood. All our immigrant forebears worked hard as nails and almost all of them encouraged us to go to college and make better, which we for the most part did. Me too. We actually got something for all that hard work in the 50's the 60' and even 70's. It started to change when Reagan came in. The corporate agenda took hold like never before. Now we have a nightmare president, a government that doesn't give a shit about the poor or working middle class, and a war machine that is relentlessly gobbling up our money, resources and our our souls.

We have each other too. What has always impressed me about Burning Man is this idea of sharing and helping each other and the gift economy. This is what will work. Us taking care of each other.

[can't sit still]

My parents had 9 kids so, we were never what you would call afluent. I still remember the sherriff repo-ing my dads Suburban. They had to give it back because it was his work truck. I started working when I was 6 or 7. When we came home from school, my sisters had to go up on the roof and pound nails for an hour. When I was 8, they bought me a 12 lb. sledge so I could split wood. None of this hurt me a bit. I left the day I turned 18. Ran off to K.C with some troublemakers. I have a sister who was supervising shuttle launches at Vandenburg. For myself, I always seemed to be just north of poverty and just south of respectibility. 15 years on the road didn't help with the poverty aspect. I'm much better on the poverty aspect but slip-sliding away on the respectability part. I have never expended much effort to impress the world,,, even less to impress women. With predictable results. I just can't see living my life to make others [adults] happy.
I guess lower middle fits best. Somehow, I never caught on to middle class insecurities or aspirations. I could pay cash for a new Rolls tomorrow but I buy my work clothes at Salvation Army.
Is there a "give-a-fuck" class" How about a "happy as I am " class? What about a " I don't need all this shit to be happy" class. I know that the thread is a "class" question. I always disregarded class and just looked at "HAPPY" I guess I'm a confirmed misfit.

[theCryptofishist]

I have to ask that ( what’s your definitions and attributes question)
I have no idea what the income level breakdown is these days as to what class that would put you in

Is there a "give-a-fuck" class" How about a "happy as I am " class? What about a " I don't need all this shit to be happy" class. I know that the thread is a "class" question. I always disregarded class and just looked at "HAPPY" I guess I'm a confirmed misfit.

Part of my point is that we have so turned our back on class issues that we don't have good definitions; maybe there's also something about the particular fluidity of burners--I don't know how representitive we are fo the event, much less the wider country.

I was lucky enough to grow up in Berkeley, in the 70s and it's an oddly classless city because of the University. (Not completely classless, by a long shot, and growing much more upper middle because of real estate and other issues. My paradise is gone.) Plus I was in some sort of intelligensia family. In some odd way, I'm blind enough to the immediate class, spending to keep up with the Joneses, for instance, that I can think about bigger issues, like what is class in America, why do we pretend it doesn't exist, and how do we experience it?

Some of these stories are gut-wrenching. It's amazing how disposable people are in this country.

Please, keep your stories coming.

[Donna Matrix]

My dad was raised on a farm in Minnesota, the last of 13 chidlren. The German father was kicked out when my dad was two because he was an asshole who beat everybody up on a regular basis. The family came out to CA soon after. He joined the army when WWII started and was on a supply ship headed to Japan to supply the invasion force when the bomb was dropped. His ship turned around.

My mom was born in Iceland on July 4. Her father was killed before she was born in a terrible storm in the Atlantic - her mother was pregnant with twin at his death. When the twins were born my aunts took my mother in. When my mother was 8 her step father was killed when his fishing boat hit a German mine. My great-aunt (her mother) worked three jobs to make ends meet. My mom came to SF when she was 17.

After the two got married they had three kids - I was the middle kid. We kept moving up in the world thanks to both my parents working. It was a pretty good childhood even though my sis (older) and bro (younger) were total jerks.

My parents wanted us to go to college and since they were willing to support us - the girls did. The boy was a trouble maker and eventually became a felon.

After graduation I married and had some kids. I was a stay at home mom and home schooled. After my divorce I got more degrees and started teaching at the local JC. I have never made much money. I am in law school right now, but even when I graduate I don't think I'll make much money, because there are so many things I won't do for money.

I sold my big house and moved into a little cabin in the woods and just last Sept. I paid off my mortgage with some inheritance money. We are debt free. So, what do we do (my new hubby and me) we just make less money. Go figure. Now, he does what he wants and I do what I want.

We just want to live free and be left alone. I don't know what class that makes us...

[Dork]

I suppose I'm middle class. Growing up I went from middle to lower-but-with-a-house back to middle. Lower and middle class seem to be morphing together. Lower class has enough money to eat and a place to sleep for the most part. Middle class has a wider choice of food and a bigger house, but most are still on the edge financially. The old upper class has become the middle class - they have a bunch of money for luxuries and no danger of being put out on the street. My sister is in this class, and it's amazing to me how much money she can spend. Then there's a new really-freakin-upper class that's running everything, accountable to no one.

I have a mortgage but I'm working real hard on getting that paid down.

[BAS]

Born to middle class, am now in lower class/steerage....

[theCryptofishist]

I agree that our class system seems to be in more flux than usual. And those super rich are back from 80 years ago or something...

[Box Burner]

I am in my own class.

[Donna Matrix]

I teach two classes this spring term. I have about 35 students in each class. It fun and the students are great - they always like that fact that I go to BM.

[Simon of the Playa]

i am the first born to an Upper Class Jew and a Cuban Trailer Park Escapee who immigrated in 1956 to Florida, the only place where Jews and Cubans Breed.

I have been all over the world, my family is very involved with the Military and Defense community.

I speak Three Languages, and went to school in Switzerland.

i am Jet Trash.

that said, i personally have fluctuated WILDLY in my own class status, if Money is how you gauge it. Having been Divorced twice, and having 4 children (1 just Graduated from the U of Rochester, another is a sophmore at Harvard, the other two in high school) Money is a constant issue.


now if you derive your class status from your education, then i guess i would be upper-upper-middle.

i generally tend to judge people by their shoes....that is who they are, whereas their car is who they want you to think they are....


i ONLY WEAR QUALITY SHOES.


i also judge people by their education, and base of knowledge, and respect those with horse sense and no formal education more than those who twitter away in the ivory tower because it's all they know.

i am Noble Savage in my own mind, and work with my hands because it satisfies me.

[asp3]

My parents were born in '32 and '33 during the depression and were definitely affected by it. My mother's father was a barber and lived a solid middle class life mainly in Wisconsin where he did a fair amount of hunting, fishing, etc... Her aunts and uncles were farmers and such. She was the second of five kids (three girls and then two boys) and the only one to get a college degree. I'm not sure what my mother's mother did, but she and my grandfather divorced before I was born and my had two more kids with his new wife.

My father's mother went to school to become a teacher but then wasn't able to teach because of the depression. She was very negative about higher education and told all of her kids not to get a degree. My father is the only one among his siblings with a degree. My father's father drove an oil truck and delivered oil in Wisconsin. My father went into the air force during the Korean war and worked as a radar technician. After leaving the air force he went to school at the University of Wisconsin Madison where he met my mom.

I was born in Wisconsin and we moved to California when I was three after my father got his degree in Electrical Engineering. He was a job changer years before it was something that was considered normal or a good idea and continued to get better and better jobs. He worked in a number of different technologies and often changed technologies when he changed jobs. I lived in apartments until I was five when we bought our first house. My father also improved our houses so that they sold for more and more each time and our family's wealth increased. We started out in lower middle class and ended up in upper middle to lower upper class by the time I graduated from high school.

I was able to go to college on a parental scholarship because college was relatively cheap in California when I went during the pre Proposition 31 days. I graduated with a degree in software engineering and have been pretty much middle class ever since. A divorce from my first wife severely impacted my cost of living and my current wife's job as an artist doesn't provide nearly as much as money as it did when she was a director of marketing, but she's much happier as an artist. We've been able to purchase a house with a loan from my parents and a lot of luck finding a relatively underpriced place.

I am definitely living under the level I did from about 6th grade on and I continue to see my earnings erode as healtcare and other costs increase. I'm happy to be at the level I'm at, but would like to have more free funds.

Interestingly enough this touches upon one of my dreams for America. I would like to see everyone who is willing to put in a 40 hour work week or whatever they are able to if they are impared in any way get a living wage. They should be able to have enough to put a decent roof over their head, have enough to eat and not have to worry about healtcare costs. I'd like to put that into some sort of contribution for Burning Man 2008, but I haven't come up with any way to do that yet.

I consider myself lucky and am deeply concerned about the widening rift between the haves and have nots.

[Box Burner]

The rich rule and their mode of choice is the corporation and all that entails. I see how the other side lives alot because I work in their homes....

There are 2 Americas, as John Edwards was heard saying. And as Thom Hartmann from Air America notes in his book "Screwed"...our middle class is loosing ground every day.

It started to change when Reagan came in. The corporate agenda took hold like never before. Now we have a nightmare president, a government that doesn't give a shit about the poor or working middle class, and a war machine that is relentlessly gobbling up our money, resources and our our souls.

We have each other too. What has always impressed me about Burning Man is this idea of sharing and helping each other and the gift economy. This is what will work. Us taking care of each other.

the corporate game is a win/lose game. In order to win you have to make as many other people as possible lose. There can only be a few winners. the only way for the majority to win is not to play. In other words, become as independant and self sufficient as possible. the more you do that the fewer overpriced services and benefits the corporates can sell to you.

Interestingly enough this touches upon one of my dreams for America. I would like to see everyone who is willing to put in a 40 hour work week or whatever they are able to if they are impared in any way get a living wage. They should be able to have enough to put a decent roof over their head, have enough to eat and not have to worry about healtcare costs. I'd like to put that into some sort of contribution for Burning Man 2008, but I haven't come up with any way to do that yet.

I consider myself lucky and am deeply concerned about the widening rift between the haves and have nots.

In a documentary on an Amazon indian tribe the village chief was asked ho much time they worked each week. After pondering the question for two weeks his reply was; "we work for two hours a week. the rest of the time we make stuff." (the quote is an approximate translation.) Everything you do should be for yourself and your family and freinds. And it should be fun. If not then you are probably still suffering from the corporate "consumerism" brain washing.

[erri2000]

asp3 wrote "They should be able to have enough to put a decent roof over their head, have enough to eat and not have to worry about healthcare costs."

box burner wrote "We have each other too. What has always impressed me about Burning Man is this idea of sharing and helping each other"

You know if enough people actually got together and started an ethical company, without the expectations that there was an instant success, it would be pretty easy to set something up where people could do what they love and get compensated appropriately for their work.

It would not be that tough to do, one good website/domain and a couple of people that do not expect to be paid “billionsâ€

[Ugly Dougly]

I want to be an Untouchable.

Like Eliot Ness. He doesn't look Hindu, does he?

[theCryptofishist]

i am the first born to an Upper Class Jew and a Cuban Trailer Park Escapee who immigrated in 1956 to Florida, the only place where Jews and Cubans Breed.

ITYM Interbreed.

i generally tend to judge people by their shoes....that is who they are, whereas their car is who they want you to think they are....


i ONLY WEAR QUALITY SHOES.

Well, thank you for posting on a thread where the OP cannot make that claim.

Wait, she can...

[theCryptofishist]

I would like to see everyone who is willing to put in a 40 hour work week or whatever they are able to if they are impared in any way get a living wage. They should be able to have enough to put a decent roof over their head,

I think that the Katrina cottage was a good idea tossed too lightly.

[thisisthatwhichis]

i generally tend to judge people by their shoes....that is who they are, whereas their car is who they want you to think they are....


i ONLY WEAR QUALITY SHOES.

Well, thank you for posting on a thread where the OP cannot make that claim.

Wait, she can...

ROFL........ Now that's some in-your-face funny........

I Love You Fishy!!!! (((((Hugs))))))

[erri2000]

I think that the Katrina cottage was a good idea tossed too lightly.

I like that Katrina Cottage. I was toying with the idea of Yurts or a Geodesirific Dome.

What do you all think of Christiania? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

[BAS]

i also judge people by their education, and base of knowledge, and respect those with horse sense and no formal education more than those who twitter away in the ivory tower because it's all they know.

I've been wearing steel toed* work boots a lot, lately.

*Well, technically, some sort of high tech composite....

[BAS]

[quote="erri2000"]asp3 wrote "They should be able to have enough to put a decent roof over their head, have enough to eat and not have to worry about healthcare costs."

box burner wrote "We have each other too. What has always impressed me about Burning Man is this idea of sharing and helping each other"

You know if enough people actually got together and started an ethical company, without the expectations that there was an instant success, it would be pretty easy to set something up where people could do what they love and get compensated appropriately for their work.

It would not be that tough to do, one good website/domain and a couple of people that do not expect to be paid “billionsâ€

[theCryptofishist]

Having dated a boy from wisconsin when I was in college, I say the more we blame on the cheeseheads the better.

[BAS]

Hey der! Some of us are okay! Admittedly, some are cannibals, serial killers, werewolves, political scientists, and Tommy Thompson and his cronies, but at least a small percentage are not so bad...

[Simon of the Playa]

i fucking LOVE WISCONSIN......eau Claire, Home of Beer and Cheese Soup.

let me type that one more time.... BEER AND CHEESE SOUP.


now THAT's CUISINE!



ps. you're going to have to trust me on the shoes.....i have a taste for Bally's

and Donner Boots.