Today’s NY Times has a very long article about the “relo class.” As usual for articles in the series, it’s extremely wordy, as if trying to make up for its shortness of insight with sheer length.
The article wrongly describes as “upper middle class” the group of employees who get paid high salaries but have to move around the country a lot. Paul Fussell, the author of Class : A Guide Through the American Status System, would more correctly call these people middle class, because although they may make enough money to be upper middle class, being at the mercy of their employers and forced to move at their employers’ whims brings them down in class.
The more that you are bossed around at work and told what to do, the lower your class. The upper class man is his own man, bossed around by no one. But at factories, workers often have to ask permission to go to the bathroom.
Most of the relocated people mentioned in the NY Times article also seem to be in sales. Once again, Paul Fussell would tell us that sales is a lower class way to earn money compared to other professions. Successful salesmen have money, but they don’t have class. The salesman’s lack of class should be evident from the fact that parents send their children off to college so they can become doctors, lawyers, business executives, maybe even scientists, but you never hear of someone going off to college to become a salesman. This is despite the fact that a significant percentage of people in the top 10% of incomes are indeed salesmen.
This is an excellent point. The amount of control you have over your working environment is good indicator of what class you are in. Income is only a secondary indicator.
Should this really be surprising? No, class diffrentiation has always been about who is in charge.
Posted by: Reader | June 01, 2005 at 10:39 AM
"class diffrentiation has always been about who is in charge"
If you're really high in class, you're in charge at home too, bossing around servants.
Posted by: Half Sigma | June 01, 2005 at 10:43 AM
The highest paid physicians such as neuro-surgeons have the least control over their working environment. I like the idea of control but you forget that people in all professions get paid a premium for poor working conditions.
Posted by: superdestroyer | June 02, 2005 at 07:42 PM
The woman described in the NYT article seems dissatisfied to some degree with her husband. After taking over the leadership role in the family, she wonders why her husband doesn't behave more like a family leader.
The husband apparently has no time to play tennis with the wife since he is working his butt off to pay for her tennis instructor.
The tennis instructor is probably screwing the wife since the husband is not at home to do that either. He is too busy working to pay for the maid because the wife is too tired from tennis ''lessons'' to vacuum.
The short-sighted husband is simply doing his part to maintain the illusion of a meaningful existence. This type of husband is just waiting to die of a heart attack before the age of 50. When that happens, the wife gets everything and marries some other sucker. C'est la vie. Hopefully for them, the afterlife is not a fairytale.
The rat race is a cruel joke played on those foolish enough to spend their short lives running it.
Posted by: Stephen Patrick M. | June 14, 2005 at 02:59 PM