Money Matters

[ladysprite]

Apologies for the rant that's about to follow, but....

So I've been thinking a lot recently about social classes, and financial privilege. And I have to wonder - at what point of material well-being does one become incapable of comprehending that there are people whose upbringing did not match theirs?

Because I have a significant handful of friends - good friends, good people - who grew up fairly well-off, who are just incapable of comprehending this. They weren't wealthy, and that's all that they see, and so they feel that they grew up underprivileged. And, by extrapolation, that anyone else who claims the label 'underprivileged' grew up in a situation like theirs.

And to be honest, it frustrates me, because... well, there was a bit more challenge to growing up on food stamps, or with sometimes not enough money for both heat and food, than to growing up with only one summer home and no in-ground pool.

I grew up lower-middle class. Food stamps, reduced-price school lunches, hand-me-down clothes from my cousin who was sixteen years older than me. And yet I understand that it could have been a hell of a lot worse, and that there were people out there who DID have it a lot worse - we had enough food (mostly cheap stuff like Hamburger Helper, but it was food), we had a phone and tv.

And I think that's what confuses me the most. It seems like, at some level of privilege, people become incapable of recognizing that some people have it worse. And I don't understand how this happens, or at what point - or when the assumption becomes that everyone starts life off with more or less the same resources as you.

(And on that note, don't get me started on 'We're not rich, we WORKED for our money!' So did my family. The only difference is we started out with a lot more debt and a lot fewer resources, and earned a lot less. We weren't poor because we were lazy; we were poor because no one paid for our education or sent us out into the world with a stock portfolio and a trust fund.)

That said... ultimately what I want is to understand, and figure out how to explain. Because it's no one's fault that they grew up in different circumstances, and ultimately, as I said, they're good people. But I think that finding a way to communicate clearly this difference in experiences and circumstances would go a long way to improving the situation in this country.....

Comments

[mindways]

but having seen wealthy, I would not say wealthy

This is something of a trap - not that you specifically are falling into it, but many people do: "I've seen rich, and I'm not that, so I'm not rich".

The problem being that there are levels upon levels of rich, and nearly everyone on the planet can think of people who are orders of magnitude more wealthy than they are - the gap between the 99th income percentile and the 99.9th is huge, and between the 99.9th and 99.99th is even larger.

(This may be exacerbated by the fact that the human brain uses "things I've seen / heard about" as a heuristic for frequency, and many super-rich celebrities are seen in the media? Not sure.)

[quietann.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point.

My husband and I are what many of our friends would consider "rich." And compared to most people, even most Americans, we are (though not in "the 1%"). Money is such a tricky subject, though.

The one way in which I absolutely do consider us to be rich is that our house is paid for. No mortgage or rent makes a huge difference in the MA economy. (When the wealth happened at that company, almost everyone who got it went out and bought a house. Practical people: "At least no matter what happens, I'll have a place to live." Few looked at it as an investment.")

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

It is a trap, to be sure, and it is the same sort of thing that ladysprite originally discussed, but on the other end of the ruler.

My friends with summer homes were privileged, and in some definitions of wealth, they were rich. For a variety of reasons, I'd put them within the middle class. But that is like a line in the sand. For people struggling in poverty, middle class is rich.

I have "married well." My wife's family is wealthy. It isn't something that you'd guess if you knew her. The family is sensible about money, but they have a lot of it, and sometimes commit acts of extravagance without a second thought.

So just to be clear, I may be falling into a trap, but it is not self-denial.

[mindways]

Clarification: I didn't mean to imply that you yourself were falling into a trap - just that your wording illustrated a particular trap perfectly. :)

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

No problem. To a degree I am falling into the trap. While poverty is killing people, talking about the line in the sand of privilege is sort of ridiculous.

However, how people self-perceive does effect how they approach money, and how they treat others. Yeah, my wording is betrays my middle class upbringing big time.