The proposed solution still defines people by their utility/material acheivement.

Once the definition of success included family, community, religious/civic morality, military service... funny how all that stuff was undermined by the Left, replaced with Marxist class warfare or tribalism based on externals.

Did you ever read The Millionaire Next Door?

Anyhow, this reminds me of an article on Slate of a guy in Wyoming I think it was who earns 60k a year and how much he spends on his kids. And it got me thinking, those kids have a lifestyle comparable to those of someone making more than twice that much in an urban area. And the latter would be classed as "upper class" and the guy in Wyoming not. Even though the purchase power of their salaries is the same.

Yeah, morality and family and community involvement was always tied up in financial success, don't kid yourself.

The truth is, class has nothing to do with money -- or, rather, you don't automatically have class because you were lucky enough to be born to somebody with money....

Class is not money. It's not simply elegance either. Lacking rigidly-defined social classes, we Americans struggle with the concept of class and assign it based on intangibles -- money, behavior, manner, education, etc. -- when it's all of these, and none of these.

The book's a bit dated, but this guy has a pretty good handle on the American class system.

"Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles."

"Two motives urge fans to obsession with their sports. One is the need-—through the appeal of vicarious success—-to identify with winners. The other is to sanction, through pedantry, dogmatism, record-keeping, wise secret knowledge, and pseudo-scholarship, a claim to expertise on the subject. Sports give every man his opportunity to perform as a learned bore and to watch innumerable commentators on TV do the same."

"The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class."

"If you are an author and give one of your books to a member of the upper class, you must never expect him to read it."

"A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class."

"The [middle class] cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value."

@Conan: Followed your link to Paul Fussell's book. While he *may* have had some accuracy on the subject, the tone of it all suggests to me that Mr. Fussell had his own "yearnings towards pomposity". An East-Coast ivory-tower intellectual (despite infantry service in WWII), imagining himself to be upper-class, satirizing the unwashed lower- and middle-class rubes.

I wonder if he ever had any fun at all..

Cass . . . suggests the reintroduction of a tracking system--a voluntary sorting into either college-prep or occupational training programs during high school.

Does anyone doubt what the outcome of this would be in a racially mixed school?

"A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class."

I LIKE it. Somehow, I missed that passage, years ago.

When my TV broke down for a couple of years (it still worked for DVDs), I went through maybe a week of withdrawal, but after that, I really didn't miss it. A doting relative got me a new one - and I have to say I did appreciate watching all sorts of good old shows I'd never seen before, like Ed Sullivan.

I sympathize with the idea that if you want to expand your social circle, it's important to be able to talk about the things that interest OTHER people, and that usually means being familiar either with sports or the most popular TV shows. Trouble is, the latter typically consists of stuff that's only on cable, and why should you have to have cable if you don't want to pay for it?

One CAN get DVDs of those shows from the library, of course, but it's still pretty time-consuming.

> maybe a week of withdrawal, but
> after that, I really didn't
> miss it

This, a lot.

Many of our established media attractions are neurological more than they're emotional. The tiniest fraction are truly spiritual, where you work to accept challenging material and recognize a distinct identity within it. The vast majority of it is like morning TV shows.

Someone here mentioned Germany favorably, but they are very top-down: the gov decides which track you will go into. Many young people take a while to figure out their direction and should not be pushed into a track against their will. On the other hand, the "everyone goes to college" theme has led to many schools dropping practical courses like auto shop, machine shop, and even home-ec. This isn't good either.

Mr. Fussell had his own "yearnings towards pomposity". An East-Coast ivory-tower intellectual (despite infantry service in WWII), imagining himself to be upper-class, satirizing the unwashed lower- and middle-class rubes. ~ Brad R Kelley at March 21, 2019 7:30 AM

Most assuredly.

His first wife, also a writer, said much the same thing about him in her book, My Kitchen Wars, along with some other less-than-complimentary and salacious things.

One Amazon reviewer of his book, The Great War and Modern Memory suggested that as Fussell grew older, he grew increasingly bitter.

Sorry, botched the link.

My Kitchen Wars by Betty Fussell

In some places and to some extent, we already have a tracking system in the US. The main reason it doesn't work very well, in my experience, is that most parents force their teens into the track they want them to belong in, not the one that fits what the teens themselves want to do with their lives.

Parental authority is overdue to be cut back.

I just started reading The Once and Future Worker and it is great on diagnosing the problems. I need to finish it before I say anything about its prescription to solve the problems. The one thing I have not seen a solution for is how to keep smaller towns alive. He stresses that people should have the option to live where they want which I agree with.

I totally agree on the vocational training. I have two friends who are high school math teachers and they both oppose forcing all kids to take Algebra 2. The weaker students should be given the vocational classes to help them succeed rather than math which makes them feel stupid.

Parental authority is overdue to be cut back.

That usually occurs when one is able to put a roof over their head, clothes on their back, and food on their table independent of parents.

Anyhow, this reminds me of an article on Slate of a guy in Wyoming I think it was who earns 60k a year and how much he spends on his kids. And it got me thinking, those kids have a lifestyle comparable to those of someone making more than twice that much in an urban area. And the latter would be classed as "upper class" and the guy in Wyoming not. Even though the purchase power of their salaries is the same.

NicoleK at March 21, 2019 5:54 AM

What kills most affluence is the house payments. Never realized as a kid how lucky I was to have a father who built the house we lived in and paid cash.

I was raised in Wyoming and still live there. No state income tax and low property taxes make a heck of a difference in disposable income.

"Does anyone doubt what the outcome of this would be in a racially mixed school?" [disparate impact]

But that's an artifact of the colleges being expected to fix problems caused by the primary-school system. Where I live, about 3/4 of the public elementary and middle schools are widely considered undesirable. Parents jostle to move to the right neighborhoods and get their children into that 1/4 of the schools that are functional.

That sounds bad and snobbish, and in a way, it is. But there's another side to the story.
The schools that are already having problems with bad outcomes, instead of getting improvements, get fobbed off with "diversity" measures that just make their problems worse -- and that's what the supporters of those schools want. School board members don't have any skin in the game beyond getting re-elected. There's one school board member who has been on the board for decades. The schools in his district have been, that whole time, consistently among the worst-performing schools in the city. Yet he wins re-election easily, every cycle. Parents in his district, by and large, are fiercely loyal to him. His campaigns are so well-funded and supported that usually no one bothers to run against him.

How do you get people to care? How do you get anyone to realize that a civilized society is more than just tribes figuring out how to divide up territory? When people don't agree on what the basic standards of civilization ought to be, where do you go from there?

In fact that is exactly what The Millionaire Next Door says... pay cash. Problem is in some areas that is absolutely not feasible.

Curtis... when I taught Algebra I had a girl repeating... she was terrible at it. She tried so hard. She had tutors. She just couldn't.On the other hand she was a brilliant artist, very interested in fashion. Wish she could have just gone to clothing design school.