People talk about
all sort of serious stuff.
All I see? Numbers.

How long has it been
since I participated
in closing Natter?

I am not sure that
I remember how to write.
Fried. My brain is fried.

middle class:

academic

professional ( things that demand a certain in level of education and/or experience) but a wide variety of dollars

and then there are a whole bunch of other jobs where education/job titles/money don't quite match each other that I don't have a name for

People at work are making me crazy today. Maybe I should apply for that nanny job. I would put that college kid in his place!!

Wow, Nilly around during a thread-turnover (or near). Cool.

Psst, Frank, your post # is exactly 17 posts below the 10,000 limit. The cool is yours.

[Edit: Jesse, maybe you should put that college kid under the care of those annoying people from work, and let them annoy each other?]

Nilly, your unconditional 17 love always makes me smile.

One of the things that I have seen with both myself and my friends who are college educated (in the liberal arts, not in specific trades/professions) but were on the lower end of the class scale, is we had no idea what kind of jobs to get just out of college, since we weren't "teachers" or "nurses" or "accountants". And we didn't have parents who understood what a liberal arts education was or what an "entry-level" position which would lead to promotion was or who knew how to help us get one. So we (I) just basically applied for clerical jobs, which is what I still am, even though I have risen quite high in the staff category at a university. Almost everyone else I know who was in the same situation as I went back to school to become a teacher, nurse, or speech therapist. Also, I thought I was going to work full-time in theatre and was just taking jobs until I could fulfill that dream, but for 5 years in my mid twenties I was a college educated sales-clerk at JC Penney because I didn't know how to get another kind of job.

[Edit: Jesse, maybe you should put that college kid under the care of those annoying people from work, and let them annoy each other?]

Ooh, now that's a plan.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say the British have more of a rigid class system in place than the US.

I don't think you're taking much of a risk here. But the chances of breaking through from upper middle class into the US to the upper class--not that big. Mobility only gets you so far.

if your daughter is marrying an investment banker who grew up poor but makes bank and has the right manners it probably isn't that much of an issue with anyone but Bunny McDougal.

I can do no more than shrug at that. I honestly have no idea.

More useful to whom?

As a sociological class that identifies common traits. "Middle class" is too broad and ill-defined to mean anything in particular.