See the class calculator didn't rate me as middle class, when I quite obviously am. The reason for this is that I rent rather than own a house, which doesn't take in to account I live in a part of London where rents are high. This suggests that the whole thing should be taken with a pinch of salt.
It does annoy me though when I hear Oxbridge graduates whinge about being underprivileged though.
The current cost of housing in Cambridge (where I am) sometimes makes me feel a whole lot less "middle class" than my parents (who own the lovely 4-bed detached house I grew up in; and who would never dream of claiming not to be at the very least middle-middle
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Yeah, for what its worth if I lie and say I own rather than rent it puts me as technical middle class (even if I put my house vale in the lowest bracket). This suggests that it puts a lot of weight on home ownership. Technical middle class describes me a lot better than emergent service worker too (i.e. work in science, comes from a middle class background).
Yes, I *feel* like I'm middle class; although from the descriptions I think "Established" rather than "Technical" because I have a wider range of both tastes and friends even though I do work in IT.
Well I did think I was middle class - I am practically the definition of it - I own a suburban semi detached, professional qualification & job, well paid, son of a teacher and a civil servant
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Yes, I was very surprised by how 'little' was necessary to be Elite too, and I'm a lot less elite than you! (Good pension, good savings (but less than the cost of even the smallest house on their list), good income, but still renting). I'd have totally accepted 'upper middle class', but 'the very top class' felt odd. Then again, it is 6% of the population, which is quite a big group of people.
I think Helen is right though, people compare up not down. And also, it's a distribution with a very long tail. So although proportionately there might not be _many_ people better off than us, the sort of life style with Giant Country Mansions feels very different to semi detached houses. If there was one good thing about it as a meme, it was an excellent 'check your privilege' moment. Particularly as the classes were data-based, 'get a sample of people, how do they split up into groups'. I'd be interested in how they found their sample though.
Hmm. I just tried it and it rated me as 'precariat', which it defines as "the poorest and most deprived class group", so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it might not be terribly accurate. It seems to have ignored the fact that all the people I know are lawyers, lecturers, software engineers and so forth and that my interests include opera and ballet, and fixated on the fact that I rent my house and have no savings.
I had a similar experience - I was also surprised to come out as 'emergent service worker' rather than 'new affluent worker' because both my social and cultural blocks were basically maxed out - well above any of the 'samples' on the calculator (apart from not knowing any manual workers) and I think we got knocked down because we have very little in the way of savings and we rent our home. I think I had this expectation for two reasons - firstly, using the IFS calculator (http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/) as a joint household we came in the top 70% (though alone I come in the bottom 40% as Erin earns about 7k more than me). Secondly, we were scraping by for a very long time - one working and the other studying or part-time, trying to pay Edinburgh rents and so on, and just both having full-time jobs (and moving to Dundee) has made us so much more comfortable that honestly, if we were on this income (about 30k between us after tax) for the rest of our lives? I
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Excellent post. I guess the only comment I could make here is that of course class is about so, so, so much more in England. I guess my family were middle class when I was born but financially we were no better off than working class by the time my Dad retired (Earning about half of the average UK income) and although I never thought of us as being poor we didn't really put money aside for a rainy day as we should have done. Yet We are noveau pauvre very much so, my background is very much haut borgeoisie.
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It does annoy me though when I hear Oxbridge graduates whinge about being underprivileged though.
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I think Helen is right though, people compare up not down. And also, it's a distribution with a very long tail. So although proportionately there might not be _many_ people better off than us, the sort of life style with Giant Country Mansions feels very different to semi detached houses. If there was one good thing about it as a meme, it was an excellent 'check your privilege' moment. Particularly as the classes were data-based, 'get a sample of people, how do they split up into groups'. I'd be interested in how they found their sample though.
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I guess the only comment I could make here is that of course class is about so, so, so much more in England. I guess my family were middle class when I was born but financially we were no better off than working class by the time my Dad retired (Earning about half of the average UK income) and although I never thought of us as being poor we didn't really put money aside for a rainy day as we should have done. Yet We are noveau pauvre very much so, my background is very much haut borgeoisie.
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