Reply to Why do so many affluent people insist they have "middle class" values?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Are "hard work" and "valuing education" exclusively middle class values?

There are people who are hardworking people and shiftless, lazy people of all classes.

I think people just like associating the "middle class" with things they like.[/quote]

Not exclusive, but the middle class has a strong focus on hard work and education. My family lived below the poverty line when I was in my teens. My parents were new immigrants and had strong focus on hard work and education. And I don't just mean if you ask them in a survey "do you value hard work and education", but they actually lived like that. On the hard work front, they lead by example, putting in long hours, and made sure that the kids were not idling around. We got summer jobs, paper routes etc, as soon as it was legal for us to do so. For education, my parents moved around within their financial means to put us in good school districts, tutored us nightly to help us with our schoolwork. They made sure all of us went to college, and had good useful majors that had good income potential.

The US is such that if you have middle class values, and practice what you believe in, its overwhelmingly likely that you will have a middle class lifestyle. I won't say that everyone in the lower class or living in poverty is lazy, but there is strong correlation between this demographic segment, and behaviors such as laziness, lack of focus on education, and poor life choices in general.

On the flip side, some of the generational money I see are not hard working. They may have a nice degree from a nice school, but they don't use it. They travel a lot, drink a lot of wine, attend a lot of social functions, charity events, art exhibitions, etc. These people are not middle class and would fall into poverty if you isolate them from their wealth. [/quote]

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