[alenart]

See, that's fascinating! I was raised to believe that asking "what do you do" demonstrates interest in having a conversation with someone. Until now, I had never ever posited that asking "what do you do" is a pry into income level.

[mjolk]

Likewise. The bulk of America's workforce spends a majority of their waking hours on "what they do," so it's a perfectly valid introductory topic that expresses interest in communication.

[rayiner]

Seriously. If you wanted to have a conversation with me and it was something other than "what do you do?" I don't think I'd know what to tell you. If I'm not at work, I'm taking care of my baby, and you probably don't want to hear about poopy diapers...

The real answer here is you probably wouldn't want to have a conversation with me anyway.

[Domenic_S]

If you're looking to capture the most people with a question, "where are you from?" captures more than the bulk - everyone's from somewhere.

[ufmace]

How you, or whoever you ask, responds to the question can tell you a lot about them too. In my interpretation, if the person responding interprets it as an inquiry into their income level, then most likely they either want to brag about their high income to try and impress people, or are insecure and uncomfortable about their low income. In either case, what specific income level is high or low is in the mind of the person responding.

I intend the question and respond to it as an inquiry into what kind of work you enjoy doing and spend your day at. Like are you a teacher, rocket scientist, software engineer doing Ruby for a startup, etc. I'd rather talk to people about what they're interested in doing than some income pissing contest.