America and class

We understand that American society today is divided into four broad social classes. But while we acknowledge the existence of different classes on an intellectual level, it isn't something we notice on a day-to-day basis. This isn't because class is unimportant, but more that we don't notice it in the same way we don't notice the air we breathe. Even though your class is only a third of the country's population, the odds are that you (yes, YOU) do not have any close friends who are part of a different class.

What divides these classes is something subtle. We often talk about class in terms of income levels, but I suspect that income is secondary to something deeper. The fundamental divide is a different set of attitudes towards work; a difference in your expectations of how you will make your living.

The Lower Class

The intermittent workers

If you are a member of this class, you probably did not graduate from High School. You rarely work a permanent job. Instead, you tend to patch together a living from part-time work, seasonal work, one-off gigs, and government benefits, and the hospitality of friends. If you are in a situation in life where you are working very hard, say, to support your children, you probably work multiple part-time jobs. Recreational drug use is common in your circle of acquaintance. You likely have no more savings than a couple week's pay, and are carrying debt.

The Blue Collar Class

(aka, working class)

If you are in this class, you expect to have a job. The pay might be less than a lower class person would achieve from multiple part-time jobs, or it might be more than most white collar people make. But there's a key difference: In the blue collar class, high pay is less important than high stability. You have a job, and you plan to do that job, ideally even for the same employer, through your whole working life. This job is the source of much of your identity, and much of your security in life. You probably have at least a GED, and might have an associate's degree, but the traits that help you succeed are ones that you learn in primary school: orderliness, timeliness, politeness, consistency, perseverance throughout the day, the 3 R's, and attention to detail.

The White Collar Class

(aka middle class)

This is my own class, and if you're reading this post, it's probably yours as well. Though it's often called the middle class, most people in it are above the median income. Only 30% of American adults hold bachelor's degrees, but they are the norm in the white collar class. This makes sense, because the traits that get you ahead in this class are the traits that colleges try to teach: perseverance in the face of failure, confidence, creativity, continuous self-education, initiative, and long-term planning

The key distinguisher is that white collar people don't identify themselves by their "job" the way a member of the blue collar class would. They identify themselves by their career. Your security does not come from your relationship with your employer, rather, it comes from a portable skillset that you are confident you can market to many different employers. Your concern is less with stability and more with growing that skillset, gaining more experience, and taking on increasing responsibility, and you will voluntarily change jobs to advance that concern.

Here's, I think, the fundamental divide: a blue collar person would be proud to say that he's worked at the same job at Acme for twenty years. A white collar person would be a little embarrassed.

The Upper Class

It appears to me that there exists another echelon above my own White collar class. I only get vague impressions of their existence even, so what follows involves a lot of conjecture.

The key distinguisher is that in the upper class, unlike the white collar class, you do not identify yourself by the contents of your resume. Your security, instead, comes from your reputation within a broad network of professional relationships.

It appears to me that the art of cultivating these relationships is something you can learn from your parents, and it gets taught in a few top-tier colleges. But more than college, it's something you learn in high school. Every big city has at least one elite high school which teaches students how to nurture professional relationships of the sort which upper class membership is built on. If you have acquired those skills by the time you're 18, you can spend your college career growing your network at any modestly prestigious university.

I think some doctors and lawyers, many professors and journalists, and most corporate executives, Washington politicians, and successful entrepreneurs, are part of the upper class.

As white collar people don't worry about keeping a particular job as long as they have marketable skills, upper class people don't even seem to worry about keeping a particular income as long as they have strong relationships. It appears to me that early in their career, they manage to leverage their relationships from school to gain a valuable internship, or a position with a non-profit. It might pay next to nothing, but it lets them further grow their network of professional relationships. Based on those relationships, they have quite a few options. They will often advance to new positions of greater responsibility by being invited into them. They also have a solid platform to find investors and collaborators if they want to launch their own business: Even if it fails, the experience and contacts they gain will make it worthwhile.

Here, I think, is the fundamental divide: A white collar person's security is best summed up in his resume. An upper class person would tell you that if you got your job by submitting a job application and a resume, you're doing it wrong.

It's an odd quirk, but it seems to me that the upper class really has at least as much in common with the blue collar class as with the white collar class. In both classes:

• The key to your security is relationships. For blue collar people, its the deep-rooted relationships with your employer, boss, co-workers, and possibly your union.
• The formative years that prepare you for your career are your late teenage ones, while for the white collar class, it's your early twenties
• The white collar class is not really entrepreneurial, while both the upper class and blue collar class are. Most successful startup founders are members of the upper class, while for blue collar people, the highest form of career advancement is to own a successful small business.

Class Mobility

In a way, these classes display a lot of the effects of American egalitarianism. If you act like a member of the upper class or the white collar class, people will treat you as such, regardless of who your daddy is. The problem is that skillfully acting in the manner of a different class is very difficult to pick up if you haven't learned it in childhood.

If you're a blue collar person, the job hops that a white collar person takes as a matter of course in advancing his career look insanely risky and a little dishonest. You're giving up a stable job and proving yourself to be disloyal! Furthermore, it doesn't work if a blue collar person just says to himself, "So! The secret is to take huge risks and be disloyal? I'll give that a try!" He'll find himself trying to dance to a music he hasn't even learned how to hear.

Likewise, to a white collar person, the career moves that are par for the course in the upper class look insanely risky and a little dishonest. You're founding a startup which might never make a dime, and you're spending all your time schmoozing and bumping elbows! It also doesn't work for a white collar person to just say, "So! The secret is to take huge risks and schmooze? I'll give that a try!" I think to an upper class person, watching a white collar person try to "do networking" has a certain cringe factor, like a Parisian feels when listening to an American tourist try to Parlan Fransway. The elements are there, but they are executed so maladroitly that they do not produce good results.

Politics and the plight of the Blue Collar class

In the last few decades, the stable unionized manufacturing jobs which were the backbone of blue collar employment have been disappearing. The jobs that are replacing them... it's not necessarily that they pay less, but they lack the stability which is more important than money to the blue collar class. They are prone to layoffs. They might require extensive retraining or require moving away from your home in the town where you have built your life and have a deep social support network. Their health insurance and pension benefits range from stingy to nonexistent. In other words, they look more like lower-class jobs. The American blue collar class, as a whole, feels that it is being bulldozed into joining the lower class, and that nobody cares.

In the 2016 election, the blue collar class voted en masse for Donald Trump. It's not necessarily that Trump has a solution to their problems. These are difficult problems, and they are not amenable to easy political answers. The causes seem to have little to do with politics, and lots to do with how the world has changed: How technological advances have destabilized whole industries, and how the US is no longer the world's only economic powerhouse.

But at least Trump listened to the blue collar class. He acknowledged that their struggles are real, and promised to try to help. Democrats really didn't. My dear democrat-voting friends, I know this isn't what you think, in your heart of hearts. But your fellow democrat's reaction to the plight of the blue collar class often comes out sounding like, "Your skin is white and you are male, so by definition you are privileged. You don't have real problems. If you think you are struggling, that just means you're really a racist".

Where is this coming from, democrats? You were supposed to be the party of the working man, of the little guy. You're acting as the party of white-collar contempt for those dirty people in their flyover states.

Sources: Most of this is just my intuitions from watching people and reading newspapers. Take it with a grain of salt. Some of the perspective also comes from reading Charles Murray's Coming Apart Header image courtesy of Wikimedia commons