These things are all true, and they are terrible and I am glad that you know them.
But they aren't the answer to the question. Any answer to the question "Why aren't they $likeUs?" which presupposes that the only reason they are not $likeUs must clearly be because some injustice prevents them from turning into "normal" people like Us, should be squinted at, very carefully.
The middle class thinks that the solution for the working class is to give up being working class and become middle class.
How do you think the working class feels about that?
Our society tells us quite clearly that being a receptionist at $9/hr is superior in social status to being a mechanic at $30/hr. Do you think the people who have chosen to be mechanics agree?
Surely, at some point in your educational career, possibly in grade school, you encountered people who were pulling C/D averages, for whom book learning was endless struggle. Did you ever ask yourself what became of them when they grew up?
Some of them had aptitudes and interests that don't manifest behind a desk.
It's easy for those of us with college degrees to treat degrees as if they were universally desirable, to treat our desk-work, physically inactive life style as the envy of all who work with their backs and their hands.
It's not.
The thing that's terrifying about this is that so long as we in the middle class can define the working class as "middle class minus stuff", we can take comfort that we have the talismans -- our sacred diplomas -- which will safe us from what happened to them.
But if the working class is simply a class of people with a set of talents, aptitudes, interests, and values that differs from ours, equally honest, but simply, sadly obsolesced....
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Re: Since You Asked....
But they aren't the answer to the question. Any answer to the question "Why aren't they $likeUs?" which presupposes that the only reason they are not $likeUs must clearly be because some injustice prevents them from turning into "normal" people like Us, should be squinted at, very carefully.
The middle class thinks that the solution for the working class is to give up being working class and become middle class.
How do you think the working class feels about that?
Our society tells us quite clearly that being a receptionist at $9/hr is superior in social status to being a mechanic at $30/hr. Do you think the people who have chosen to be mechanics agree?
Surely, at some point in your educational career, possibly in grade school, you encountered people who were pulling C/D averages, for whom book learning was endless struggle. Did you ever ask yourself what became of them when they grew up?
Some of them had aptitudes and interests that don't manifest behind a desk.
It's easy for those of us with college degrees to treat degrees as if they were universally desirable, to treat our desk-work, physically inactive life style as the envy of all who work with their backs and their hands.
It's not.
The thing that's terrifying about this is that so long as we in the middle class can define the working class as "middle class minus stuff", we can take comfort that we have the talismans -- our sacred diplomas -- which will safe us from what happened to them.
But if the working class is simply a class of people with a set of talents, aptitudes, interests, and values that differs from ours, equally honest, but simply, sadly obsolesced....
Then it could happen to us, too.
In fact, it is happening to us.