[alasdair_]

>How do you define "lower classes"? If you mean household income

It's interesting that in the USA "class" refers almost exclusively to wealth. In the UK "class" has a slightly different meaning and relates to everything from genealogy to which school you went to social grace. As an example, a "Lord" who went to Eton and comes from an old family will always be upperclass, even if they are bankrupt and worth less than nothing, with no income at all.

It's not quite a caste system as class mobility IS a thing but it's not simply wealth either.

[scottlocklin]

I don't think it does correspond directly to wealth in the US; it's sociological. There are rich working class people; my former landlord was a high school graduate who put in sheet rock for a living and ran a jiu jitsu studio. He made his dough the old fashioned Horatio Alger way: thrift and hard work. Same age as me, and a lot better off.

I, his tenant had less money than him and am solidly upper middle class in lifestyle, from my foamy coffee drinks, to my Subaru, salary, education and occupation. We're the same age, and he has more dough, but he can't move in the circles I can, and his upside is probably capped at owning a couple of residential apartment buildings. He's also crippled from arthritis, and I'm not.

Most of the time, though, upper middle class people have more money than working class people.

It's more subtle than the UK system, but roughly speaking this is the model for the world. Professionals constitute a social class. The fact that professionals have mostly taken over the left wing parties and turned them into Blairite/Clintonite "who cares about the poors" neoliberal parties, the middle and working classes are basically in revolt against them. All over the world. Trump, Brexit, Giletes Jaunes and so on. It's not going to change until there are economic reforms which accrue some wealth to lower classes. This will almost certainly involve immigration reform (as in stop importing so many new residents and making labor so cheap), taxation (professionals can pay more tax) and economic protectionism for important unskilled labor groups. Which of course, the upper middle professional classes absolutely freak out about because it's against their class interests.