[CydeWeys]

Huh? Why do you define upper middle class so as to exclude the trades? Trades are frequently lucrative enough to place tradespeople in the income percentile required to reach upper middle class, especially if you own your own business, as many tradespeople do.

[closeparen]

Class and income are related but distinct. People with advanced degrees and high-autonomy white collar jobs ("upper middle class") are a distinct sociological cohort from people in the trades.

You may think this is bullshit, but class has some decent explanatory power for otherwise-puzzling observations, like how the children of the first cohort defy their own economic incentives to avoid the behaviors of the second.

It offends modern liberal sensibilities to treat class hierarchy as normative ("classism"), but most acknowledge its existence and utility as a descriptive concept, one which is a lot more nuanced than bands on the income spectrum.

[tptacek]

"Upper middle class" has a definition in sociology that basically excludes the trades; it's the "managers and professional" class.

[mcguire]

And it is not too unusual to find "trade" households making more than professionals.

[StudentStuff]

I was trying to point out that $60k for skilled people of any type is absurdly low and not worthy of being called upper middle class, by pointing out two skilled trades that are commonly needed and well compensated significantly in excess of $60k/yr across the US.

[throwawayjava]

Most class definitions are classist.

[dredmorbius]

The distinction can be traced to that between the liberal and mechanical arts.

Latter also goes by servile and vulgar:

Artes Mechanicae or mechanical arts, are a medieval concept of ordered practices or skills, often juxtaposed to the traditional seven liberal arts Artes liberales. Also called "servile" and "vulgar",[1] from antiquity they had been deemed unbecoming for a free man, as ministering to baser needs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artes_Mechanicae

https://quidditycirce.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/liberal-arts-...

Closely related is C.P. Snow's ""Two Cultures":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

This is reflected in educational systems, with a rough hierarchy from premier liberal arts colleges (Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Palermo, Stanford, ...), major research schools (MIT, CalTech, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, ...), various technical schools (San Jose State, Michigan State), polytechnics and ag schools, secondary tech schools (often formerly "teachers colleges" or "normal schools") in the U.S., say, Midwest State in Wichita Falls, TX. Then two-year and strictly vocational schools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school

Interestingly, liberal arts universities are some of the oldest extand institutions, with exceptionally durable prestige: Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge, Padua, and Naples, dating from 1088 - 1224. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_universities_in...

The emphasis on basic skills and literacy is part of this. STEM (or STEAM) is the new "Three Rs", as is the focus on rote-work and standardised skills testing at primary and secondary levels in the U.S. and elsewhere.

J.S. Mill commented on this in the 1860s in the UK, via the late Hans Jensen:

First, the universities were given the task of providing an unceasing supply of ideologically correct candidates for vital positions in government, church, and business. The state was able to make the faculties of the "venerable institutions" of higher education, or rather indoctrination, assume this duty because it controlled appointments and held the purse from which "emoluments" flowed into the coffers of academics. Hence the members of the unversity "hierarchy" made it their "business, the business for which they ... [were] paid," to "uphold certain political as well as religious opionions," namely those of the "ruling powers of the state" (J.S. Mill, Autobiography and Literary Essays, p. 429 (1981), J.S. Mill, Journals and Debating Speaches, p. 350. (1988) ). Thus the universities pursued with vigor their assignment to inculcate in their students those political and ideological views that were cherished by the power elite. The graduates of the ancient universities were, therefore, well prepared for employment in, and by, those institutions that were instrumental inperpetuating the existing maldistribution of income. All of this might come to naught, however, if the masses of the underclass should achieve anything approaching success in ptoential attemtps at throwing off their fetters.

See: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6x7u6a/on_the_...