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.

t looks at clock

I'm so not getting to the post office today, am I? Just like yesterday.

Bastards need to stop sending me work and making me attend meetings. Don't they know I have packages to mail?

"If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

A legitimate question to ask economists. Otherwise, nsm.

In my family's case, education meant moving away from physical labor. Farmers, machinist, housekeeper. Oh, and a math teacher, but she was also a farmer. For my parents, an education was a heavily pushed way "up." When my dad was between post-docs, they had a couple months of unemployment where they lived with their parents. And despite education being really foisted on them, my machinist grandfather could not comprehend that it was ok for dad to be unemployed, that this was just the nature of postdocing in that era and field. Go out and get a job already. If you don't, there is something wrong with you! Lazy bum!

In my generation, we've got people with multiple degrees running brokely around and that's just what it is. But for the couple of cousins who didn't pursue higher ed, I think it took longer for that to sit comfortably, sadly (and dude, they probably make more than the average of us.)

I actually think there's something in the luxury to choose a profession for reasons other than maximum earning potential that speaks to being upper class. A liberal arts degree is "higher class" than an engineering degree, because it's so impractical. To me.

Maybe my head is too full of impoverished gentility.

I'm the poor relation in my family.