Just the term "working class" is elitist

[SoCalDem]

It immediately implies that "those people" are little more than beasts of burden, doing the dirty work of the ones above them..

and it's actually true...that's the sad part..

We ARE a service economy and it's nothing to be proud of.

We used to be a GOODS & service economy, and people could move between the options, and use one as a ladder to reach the other.

Someone sold our ladder..

ALL work is important, BUT when one segment of the workforce is so little appreciated, it's not hard to see why so many politicians only care about them at election time..

The "service" economy does not provide many family-sustaining jobs, and in some communities, that's about all there is...jobwise..

There's a pride angle too.. There was a time when a guy who worked in a factory making something, had a sense of pride when he saw one of "his" products in use... Where's the pride now?

"Hey honey..look.. that's the guy whose hair clippings I swept up at the salon today "

[provis99]

1. "Working class" means those who actually do the work

As opposed to most middle class people, who are economic parasites, useless middlemen.

I'd rather be called working class than middle class; it sounds less lazy.

[Yurovsky]

2. And even more worthless than the middlemen...

are the super rich bastards who profit off the cheap labor of the working class, and keep the pressure on the middle class to keep the pressure on the working class, in a vicious cycle that really benefits only the very few at the very top.

Welcome to W's America, 2008.

[hfojvt]

3. I use it all the time and I'm also a card-carrying member of the working class

But I am hopefully rare in that most members of the working class don't have University Education in economics, at least not the blue collar ones.

[SoCalDem]

7. Working class USED to also mean "middle class"

Men & women who worked blue collar jobs..sometimes dirty jobs... could buy homes. new cars, take vacations, send their kids to college..and still manage to save money in the bank

That was then.. this is now..

now, even a decent-paying job is not enough.. and back then it only took ONE blue-collar job to do all that..

Kids did not have to raise themselves back then either..

[PaulaFarrell]

11. No, it didn't

there was the working class, the upper class, and (in between) the middle class- who weren't rich, but didn't have to do physical labor to survive.

working class is essentally an english term. in America, we basically have poor, middle class, and rich. in america, the classes are essentially divided by income, so a blue-collar person could easliy be 'middle-class' as in not poor. but the term 'workingwhere's it used it refers to the type of work done. if you don't believe me, read the Guardian occasionally to see how they sneer at the 'middle class' - they would never conflate 'middle class' and 'working class'

[hfojvt]

18. I'm not sure about that

I think most working class people did not send their kids to college, although it has been talked about now as a standard for American society, like everybody is supposed to goto college. I have read perhaps from Thurow, that college degrees became less valuable on the job market at the same time that more of the working class children went to college.

I think lots of working class went to college after WWII with the GI bill and the other part about cars and houses and more middle class lifestyle may have been available from a good Union factory or retail job. A friend of mine, for example, was making $9 an hour working at a grocery store. This was as a part-time stockboy while he went to Vetrinary school. A year later when I graduated, my first job was a GS-7 mathematician for the Air Force, making $8.57 an hour. My co-worker who got hired at the same time and had a computer science degree was only a GS-5 making something like $6.80 an hour. (Both of us, however, were promised a promotion a year up to GS-12). But even home ownership has been steadily rising since the 1980s.

[zalinda]

4. Well, of course, and we don't have a voice today

The Democratic party left us. How many of us were sold a bill of goods that the 2006 election was going to change everything if we just trusted the dem party. Hello? What has changed for us little guys? We are being squeezed even more than we were before and the dems have done NOTHING. Hell, once Edwards left the race "our" two leftover candidates have barely spoken about an issue. Oh, wait, Obama told us how we are all so bitter about the government that we hate gays, but love God and guns. I guess that's an issue.:shrug:

zalinda

[crankychatter]

5. They co-opted "Work Ethics" to "Owner Mentality"

the real elites hate the term "working class" because they don't even want to give us credit for WORKING.

they want us to believe they struggled and strived to get where they are, when in fact, the preponderance of them just invested their inheritances.

money makes money and real work is without honor to them

[Deja Q]

6. Where's the pride? Dunno. Ask Coca-Cola, Target, or the cast of F*R*I*E*N*D*S.

:shrug:

[Fovea]

8. America's blind spot.

Even in the 19th century we understood class.

In a nation state, classes have specific powers and limits.
The working class could strike and sabotage to affect the Middle and Bourgeoisie. The Middling class managed the workers, the Middle Class contained professionals and managers (a much smaller class in the 19thC) as well as small business owners.

That elite controlled the government, banking, and industry from the gilded age's beginning to the end of WW1. They did this so well that Franklin Roosevelt was able to dismantle that entire social system in his first term.

The new industrial workforce that helped win WW1 (with the timely assistance of a virulent flu from Kansas) needed something to do, and consumerism was born, with the protean advertising industry, fresh from the job of war propaganda. Everybody could afford a car, and electricity flowed. And it flowed into radios.

This flattened the working, middling, and to a lessor extent middle class with new technical based professions conferring the sorts of wealth before reserved to doctors and lawyers. There sprang up a new class of support job, telephone operator, linesman, increasing the differentiation between skilled and unskilled labor.

As a result of this, and I think residual embarrassment regarding the severity of the great depression, and now the obscene disparity of wealth in the US, we cannot talk about class without dragging a gordian knot of race issues, economic issues, education issues along with it.

That knot has allowed the elites to sell the working class's jobs for profit and greater wealth.

And that is what Obama is able to do, because he straddles within his life's experience, many of the strands of that knot, and seems to feel their tensions viscerally.

That is why he is sometimes too careful, because he knows how the words are attached to the invisible strings of class, race, religion, the second amendment, trade, poverty and vanished hope. Too careful seems better, when you talk to America, than too brusque or stupid.

[PoliticalAmazon]

9. This faux political correctness is absurd. The term describes the people. n/t

[margotb822]

10. I don't think so

It's a descriptor, plain and simple.

[TahitiNut]

12. Well, God forbid we offend the "ownership class" with such elitism.

:eyes: After all, to even SPEAK of the class war is to admit it exists and the "bottom 90%" have been getting FUCKED royally for the last 30 years.

[noel711]

13. Are you kidding? Get out and talk to some working guys..

They'll tell you they're working class
and DAMN proud of it!

It was a point of pride to have a good job,
and to support your family.

It was a point of pride to be able to afford to
buy a rowhouse in a good neighborhood,
and keep your property lookin' good.

It was a point of pride to be able to take a few
days down the shore with the kids.

It was point of pride to be able to buy your
wife nice jewelry for your anniversary.

It was a point of pride to be able to
afford to buy a new car rather than a used one.

Real workers are people of great dignity, and
they have great bullshit detectors.
I love them. I was raised blue collar on
Chicago's south side, and you took pride
in your status, and in your town, and in
your people.

elitist? Wanna laugh?
Blue collar people don't use words like that.
They'd call you uppity, and make fun of you,
but slap you on the back anyway, and buy you a beer.

Salt of the earth, the people who built this nation,
and look what's happened. We should hang our head
for the denigration of wonderful people of
devotion and dignity.

But then, George Bush, et al, not a clue.

[Fridays Child]

14. Well said. Here's your fifth R.

[H2O Man]

15. A working class hero

is something to be. -- Lennon

[Hippo_Tron]

16. The service sector isn't unionized like the manufacturing sector is

Among other key problems facing today's middle class, that is a huge one.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. I have to work to survive. I am working class.

[Beregond2]

19. Classes

All these terms defining class have gotten so mixed-up. Oringinally, if you were "Upper Class," you were a member of the hereditary aristocracy, and never had to work. The "Middle Class" consisted of business owners, "tradesmen," the bourgeoise. Anyone who worked for someone else was in the "Working Class."

Somehow in America, any class but the Middle Class has come to be looked down on, so everyone claims to be a part of it. Maybe that is because the Revolution was instigated by business owners, who didn't want to pay British taxes. So the closest thing to an aristocracy we had was the businessmen, and therefore they became the ideal to aspire to. But the truth is, we are now under the thumb of a hereditary aristocracy once again, who control both business and government. That fact is obscured from most by this myth that we are all somehow Middle Class.