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The Five American Socioeconomic Classes.


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AspieAlly613

@RoseGoesToYale, you've pretty convincingly refuted my hypothesis.

 

*surrenders sword*.

 

I feel I should clarify the following statement:

 

Quote

Workers in this class are doing jobs that any non-disabled person can do. (A large number of disabled people can do these jobs as well.)

My thought process was that most people can do these jobs, but I didn't want to say "anyone can do these jobs" because that would be disability erasure.  When I wrote out "any non-disabled person" I realized it could sound like I was saying "no one with a disability can be gainfully employed," so I added the parenthetical statement afterward.

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Lysandre, the Star-Crossed
4 hours ago, RoseGoesToYale said:

So... they're both jobs any non-disabled person can do, but also that disabled people can do. What do said workers have, Schrödinger's disability? Also, have you considered the fact that disabled people can hold jobs requiring a college education and thus be higher up on the socioeconomic ladder?

Just playing devil's advocate here...

 

That's probably a language shortcoming more than anything. There's a difference between being disabled in the sense of "fully unable" and being disabled in the sense of "less able than some arbitrary standard but still able nonetheless". "Disabled" is used ambiguously in OP's post from what I can tell, I think OP meant it to be read as "fully unable". 

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AspieAlly613
2 hours ago, Lysandre, the Star-Crossed said:

Just playing devil's advocate here...

 

That's probably a language shortcoming more than anything. There's a difference between being disabled in the sense of "fully unable" and being disabled in the sense of "less able than some arbitrary standard but still able nonetheless". "Disabled" is used ambiguously in OP's post from what I can tell, I think OP meant it to be read as "fully unable". 

See my post immediately above, I described what I meant there.  Hopefully that clears up the ambiguity.

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Most of the time when looking at socioeconomic classes it is important to understand the goal. Most social scientists, political scientists, and marketing analysts are attempting to see if there are commonalities amongst people given certain demographics that they can make widespread use of and potentially manipulate/influence to an end goal. And there are. Here's a small list of things you could use in these areas to help determine ways of talking to, influencing, or accounting for the behaviors of people based entirely on their income. I disagree that how someone earns their money has more impact, otherwise, we'd already be using it. Data Analysts are constantly looking for new demographic data, and yes How you earn your income, is very much asked and tracked by a large set of businesses. It still isn't as impactful as direct income. If some analyst could find a link there that brought it to the top, they'd be the star of their analyst group for a long time. It's hard to find new ways to slice data. Anyhow, here's some things you could infer a lot about by just income.

Wealthier people tend to be happier (up to ~75k per year in the US).

Wealthier people tend to be seen as more attractive.

Attractive people tend to live less stressful lives.
Wealthier people can afford different kinds of foods easier than the poor.

Wealthier people tend to have significantly more luxury time. And even when similar to middle class, have more control over their time.

Poor people tend to be more in immediate need of basic services.

The kinds of vacations that can be taken, and how often, vary wildly by how much money someone has.

The ability to retire, invest, etc all improves as one moves up the linear income chart.

The ability to have a family, spend time with them, etc all go up as income goes up.

Mobility on where one can live goes up with wealth.

Ability to move more freely increases a sense of security.

Even the likelihood of cutting off other drivers rises with vehicles of higher luxury status (which are generally owned by the wealthy).

Wealthier people are likely to go to wealthier schools.

Graduates of wealthy schools are more likely to enroll, go to, and graduate from college.

People who graduate from college are in turn more likely to make more money, and if you don't have loans (because you come from a wealthier family) then double win for you.

College graduates tend to have better credit scores.

Better credit scores reduce costs on all sorts of things, reduce likelihood of all sorts of bad things, and provides the ability to get things easier (from debt, to jobs, to getting out of tickets in some states that can run your Financial Responsibility, like Texas).

Higher credit scores tend to decrease the likelihood of being part of a vehicle claim (there's a lot of reasons for this but it holds up).

Interestingly there is a bell curve related to stress and income. At low ends, stress of a job specifically tends to be lower, even if other things about low income increase stress. And as you progress up, the stress tends to rapidly increase, until you hit 'high enough' in that field, and then it starts to lower again even as pay increases. 

 

In marketing, or when understanding general human behavior, there isn't the requirement that 100% of people who fall into a category are exactly the same. What the requirement is, for good analysis, is closer to 80% of a slice of your demographic data. If you can find a connecting point where you can group 80% of people, you have a means of marketing to that group rather effectively. You also have a means of saying something significant about that group. This might take a few points.

 

For instance, drivers of luxury cars cutting off others do it about 30% more than not-at-all luxury vehicles. That's not enough to market to them, or know their likely voting habits, but you could combine that with college educated drivers of luxury vehicles who have moved States in the past 5 years. And you suddenly have a pretty solid group, ask them some questions, and you'll start to see a lot of cross pollenating. Even then, you might have 1/5th of all people in that group not be recognizable to belonging, but you can start to build off from the first and create these secondary and tertiary groups. Where they don't often travel too far away, but since there's a lot of data points you can start mapping a lot of stuff.

 

I have done this kind of work. Statistical analysis based upon demographic information. Income was certainly one of the strongest data points for all sorts of things, but it alone wasn't always useful - but it was always part of the puzzle.

To your overall point, it doesn't allow me to pinpoint you, specifically. Though that's what Big Data ventures are all about. Google, for instance, even if you turn off tracking on your browser, based upon just a search and what links you click, can essentially track you, uniquely, the next time you login with all your tracking still turned off. And they can use that data to effectively market to people like you and have noticeable returns. The more data points they are allowed to capture the more perfect picture they get, and eventually, could tell you, "If you we show you X, and 300 people like you, we've increased the odds of you buying something by 20%." Or something similar.

Income is easy because it is so impactful as to be the easiest talking point that relates to the most amount of people.

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AspieAlly613
11 minutes ago, dwest said:

Income is easy because it is so impactful as to be the easiest talking point that relates to the most amount of people.

That, and it's also easy to unambiguously measure.

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Just now, AspieAlly613 said:

That, and it's also easy to unambiguously measure.

Certainly, but there are a lot of those kinds of data points. Just none of them are as useful, though still useful, to gather. 

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nanogretchen4

I find it interesting that happiness increases with wealth only up to 75k in the US. The sweet spot falls within the middle class income bracket, in fact closer to the bottom of the bracket than the top. As I see it, that's enough money that you don't have to worry about necessities and you can afford some luxuries, but you can't go hog wild buying ridiculous stuff and you don't have the budget to become a supervillian.

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45 minutes ago, nanogretchen4 said:

I find it interesting that happiness increases with wealth only up to 75k in the US. The sweet spot falls within the middle class income bracket, in fact closer to the bottom of the bracket than the top. As I see it, that's enough money that you don't have to worry about necessities and you can afford some luxuries, but you can't go hog wild buying ridiculous stuff and you don't have the budget to become a supervillian.

Happiness doesn't decrease with more money, there's just significant diminishing returns. It mostly flatlines, but doesn't exactly flatline, at about the 75k mark. And yes, your suspicions are correct. At about 75k the kind of economics a person participates in dramatically changes. Yes, things can still go south, but you have enough money to get luxuries to make your life feel worth living, you are covered for survival needs, and you can save regularly towards a goal/retirement/etc. It's enough to do most things most people want to do, except the outrageously extravagant. 

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I'd more readily agree with 7 social classes.

Upper class: never had to lift a finger in their lives (though sometimes they did), regardless wether they live on interests or capital.

Lower upper class : Through blood, sweat and tears, they made it big times.

Upper middle class : Though higher education or sheer talent, they have a very enviable lifestyle, but they need to wake up everymorning to put their worth in just like the middle class.

Middle class : enviable lifestyle, paid by one's bonified work, may it be through a trade ticket or a bacchelor's degree in an in-demand field.

Lower middle class : needs to rely on good credit to enjoy a lifestyle similar to a middle class.

Upper lower class : They do have a job but could be easily replaced; often minimum wage workers.

lower class (outcast) : couldn't fit any of the above categories.

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I think its a more complex and nuanced situation. Lawyers and scientists both get extensive academic training to get their jobs, but the two groups don't have a lot of contact with each other.   Some people go into true academia (become university professors), others work for industry  - where they may do "what their boss tells them to do" but on average are paid far better than the academics.

 

Some engineers are paid only moderately well, but get stop options which if they get lucky, are worth a huge amount of money.

 

Some people who learn a trade end up opening their own shop, and that can be a path to quite a bit of wealth.

 

Anyone in any class can end up inheriting money.

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nanogretchen4

Middle class people are likely to inherit some money from their parents, but not enough to quit the day job. Wealthy people are likely to inherit mind boggling sums of money from their parents. Poor people are not going to inherit anything from their parents. Inheritance is probably the least class blind of all possible sources of income.

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