I think in the American class system, money trumps everything else.

I would have said the opposite. But maybe that's because I've spent my life surrounded by academics and clergy, who always feel higher-class than their income.

I think probably class is used in different ways depending on context. Sometimes it has to do with standard of living, other times with "culture" factors.

Retirement fund should be counted towards wealth, as should property. Wealth /= cash, it's value of assets.

I think probably class is used in different ways depending on context. Sometimes it has to do with standard of living, other times with "culture" factors.

Buffista axiom # 1274: Spend enough time trying to come up with the right phrasing for something, and someone else will say it for you.

My wealth takes a big nosedive if retirement funds don't get counted.

I think Hec was agreeing with and clarifying the definitions you'd presented, in response to my question which proposed a different definition

I'm good -- I wasn't arguing with him, I was clarifying my understanding of his position. Which he did.

academics and clergy, who always feel higher-class than their income.

I wonder if that's a left over from the second (and etc) sons in the upper classes going into the clergy (or the military) in post-Civil War England? Plus the whole bit with poor gentry women becoming governesses. And I understand that under Elizabeth I, getting into college (with the idea of going on to a clergy position, but often ending up in some sort of academic post) was seen as a route up to the middle class or even lower-upper class for poorer folks (ie the route Christopher Marlow was supposed to take, instead of becoming a playwright and atheist spy and etc.). It seems like the educated jobs were seen as what poorer members of the gentry did when they didn't have the money to support their class positions, but didn't want to move allegedly down into trade.

Or it could be I just read too much Jane Austen.

Sadly, I think Betsy is right.(I'm not sad about agreeing with Betsy...the other thing) Emily, yeah, and when I'm feeling especially H:LOTS likes carrots...the poor bastard obsessed with M*A*S*H.(and of course the AFRs) But I've not written Pembleton any letters so I guess I'm Okay. The thing that irritated me most is the feeling I got that if I talked to Wallace and asked "What about this?" I'd get some snitty "lurkers support me in e-mail," sort of response. Because he may be a genius, but he thinks he is a Genius, and you can read it in his prose.

I'm the daughter of two academics (college professor and assistant school superintendent), and the attitude in the town I grew up in was "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

the attitude in the town I grew up in was "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

Those people? No class.

But I guess that's the other kind of class.