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by petercooper 5883 days ago
By "upper class," are you referring to the rich? If so, you're noting that the rich are doing a good job at staying rich. That's unsurprising because they can take bigger risks without losing their shirts due to their wealth buffer.

In the recent Sunday Times Rich List (of the top 1000 richest people in the UK), 751 were "self-made" with only 249 having inherited their wealth. Most of the billionaires had humble beginnings. There is no defined "upper class" or level of wealth that's impossible for people born into the least economically beneficial situations to attain.
1 comments
pw0ncakes 5883 days ago
No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich. The two factors are strongly correlated, but not the same thing.

The upper class is a tightly-connected group of people who work to consolidate power, social resources, and wealth within their own ranks. Most of them are parasites and a lot of them are criminals whose politics are regressive.

Most rich people are technically upper-middle class. In fact, if you weren't born upper-class, upper-middle is as high as you can go (your children and grandchildren have a shot, though).

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petercooper 5883 days ago
No. Rich does not mean upper class, and upper class does not mean rich.

I had to ask (and semi-assume) because, generally, "upper class" is based significantly on wealth and fame: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_upper_class

Your definition seems to cover a more conspiratorial and political superclass (perhaps in an old European sense of "upper class"), and while I believe an insidious old-boys network of sorts exists, it can't be confused with the typical rich "upper class" that isn't inaccessible to newcomers.

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starkfist 5883 days ago
From other posts I've surmised that pw0ncakes lives in an Edith Wharton "Age of Innocence" version of New York with the scenes and characters updated for modern readers.
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wrs 5883 days ago
> if you weren't born upper-class, upper-middle is as high as you can go (your children and grandchildren have a shot, though)

Therefore one can be born upper-class to upper-middle parents? Otherwise that doesn't make sense.

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