Anonymous wrote: Anyway, I always suspect I'm the only person on DCUM who has this shameful family past and still tries hard to be a good liberal and donate, help others, and remain compassionate. It's just damned hard sometimes.

Another one saying you are not the only one with shameful family secrets. We are unquestionably 1%ers, and I make at least 60% of our HHI. I scored a 36 - upper middle class with middle class parents. I have a sister who has kids with multiple men and lives off of the child support for one kid, the SSI checks for another kid, grant money she has received to buy equipment for her kid with the disability (that she then spends on herself and never gets the equipment), and help from my parents, along with whatever other assistance (state medical, food stamps, etc.) she can get. She never even finished college and also never could hold a job for more than a year as another PP referred to. The odd thing is that she is the only one in my immediate family, or frankly even extended family, like that. Not everyone in the extended family is as economically well off as my parents (solidly middle class and comfortable in retirement unless spending on my sister's kids causes them to run out of money, which they fear). Yet none of them act like my sister. I keep trying to think not everyone who needs assistance is like her, and I donate to all sorts of things. But it does sometimes make me wonder how many else there are like her. Her poverty is absolutely self-inflicted. She had all the same opportunities I did, but blew them.

The fact that I got a 36 instead of something lower has nothing to do with my sister - it's a combination of having lived in small places, bought Budweiser at the beach and that emergency road stop at Outback. I didn't work at a factory - I worked at fast food places, but that was while in school so that uniform didn't count, and I don't remember it causing anything to hurt. I haven't had anything but a desk job since the summer after my junior year in college. And I don't watch much TV (except for my maternity leave ventures into Dr, Phil, Oprah and Judge Judy) or see many movies. I didn't know who Jimmie Johnson was, but I have bought Avon.

I know there are many different ways of living, and I like having lived in different places from urban to rural. I do find it hard to know what to do, however, about people like my sister. I don't see any fair way of being able to systematically figure out those who have self-inflicted poverty and those who don't, though, so if living in the bubble helps me think the number of self-inflicted people is small, I am glad for my bubble.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that some do not have an evangelical friend or have a friend with different political opinions. I also somewhat find it surprising that most here did not work a factory job, even if only for a summer during college or grad school.

Why do these things amaze you?

I dislike proselytizing religious people so I avoid evangelicals. I have many profoundly religious friends of many diverse religious backgrounds, but I find evangelicals to be difficult people to be around since I find them to be religiously intolerant.

As for factory jobs, again, I'm surprised your amazed. The majority of people that come onto DCUM are people who grew up and predominantly lived in suburban and urban areas and ended up with largely white collar jobs. Relatively few have even lived near factories, let alone worked in them. My jobs in college were fast food, then basic office jobs starting with unskilled jobs and then going into skilled jobs that related to my education. And my college friends were pretty similar, working various unskilled jobs in business, retail and office settings that had nothing to do with factories. While there may be a large demographic that has worked in factories as you suspect, relatively few of those types fit the background of the typical DCUM reader.

1. At every job I've had and every neighborhood there have been numerous
G od-squaders. I cannot avoid them.

2. I am from suburban md but spent two summers making windows in elkridge. My nephew recently did something similar.
Seemed common enough.

9 here. I'm the child of well-educated immigrants who went to Yale and Harvard and grew up in SF so not too surprising But I somehow know who both Jimmy/ Jimmie Johnson are.

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that some do not have an evangelical friend or have a friend with different political opinions. I also somewhat find it surprising that most here did not work a factory job, even if only for a summer during college or grad school.

i'm black and from dc. do you know of any evangelicals in the district? a factory?

Anonymous wrote:I find it amazing that some do not have an evangelical friend or have a friend with different political opinions. I also somewhat find it surprising that most here did not work a factory job, even if only for a summer during college or grad school.

Why do these things amaze you?

I dislike proselytizing religious people so I avoid evangelicals. I have many profoundly religious friends of many diverse religious backgrounds, but I find evangelicals to be difficult people to be around since I find them to be religiously intolerant.

As for factory jobs, again, I'm surprised your amazed. The majority of people that come onto DCUM are people who grew up and predominantly lived in suburban and urban areas and ended up with largely white collar jobs. Relatively few have even lived near factories, let alone worked in them. My jobs in college were fast food, then basic office jobs starting with unskilled jobs and then going into skilled jobs that related to my education. And my college friends were pretty similar, working various unskilled jobs in business, retail and office settings that had nothing to do with factories. While there may be a large demographic that has worked in factories as you suspect, relatively few of those types fit the background of the typical DCUM reader.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:50. Probably would've been higher if it were geared towards AAs. The movies, shows, and evangelical questions for example were geared towards a white audience. That said, I am middle class with working class parents, so still accurate.

Not sure I agree with that. Read the explanations.

I also disagree with your premise. The movies, shows and evangelical questions are based on census Nielson, census, and related data which is across the country and does not take race into account. There were all across-the-board most popular in their categories. In general the more wealthy AA's tend to be more like the more wealthy whites. There is greater diversity with the middle and lower classes. So essentially, the lower the score, the more closely AA and white respondants will score alike. The higher the score, the more likely there will be a bigger diversity between races.

I'm the poster who was originally quoted. I don't want to go too far off topic, but I don't find that to be true at all. I think its a misconception. For example, educated upper middle class blacks still tend to pledge Black Greeks, even when there isn't a strong presence on campus in comparison to white frats. Sanaa Lathan and crew in "Something New" is a pretty accurate example of what I mean. Virtually every black upper middle class person will know who she is...will every upper middle class caucasion? probably not.

Also, the article begins with something like White upper class people are losing their minds. That's who this survey had in mind (nothing wrong with it).

this has been interesting for me. it seems many of the biggest leftists fall into two categories: (1) those so out of touch that they truly don't know anything about poverty or even blue collar workers other than what they read from their ivory tower; and (2) those relying the most on the government handouts who want to keep the gravy train coming.

I'm like a lot of the "50s". I have first cousins who are "poor by choice". That is, I know the decisions they made (multiple kids by multiple men, crime, etc.) and have much less pity for them as a result. I have many rental properties where the tenants spend all of their money on amazing luxury goods (new pick-ups, incredible tv systems, stupid crap like outdoor furniture and trampolines and above ground pools) and then have no money for rent.

So maybe I was in a bubble, because I thought the "limo liberal" thing was just a joke ... but now it seems real to me.

53. Dang, no wonder I'm not upset about making an average income.

I find it amazing that some do not have an evangelical friend or have a friend with different political opinions. I also somewhat find it surprising that most here did not work a factory job, even if only for a summer during college or grad school.

36. Very interesting!

I got a 35. That was interesting.

happy to have a 50.

I'm a life time Fairfax County resident w/ 2 vists to Ihop and Outback makes me 27. Im upper middle class but I chose not to get a ft job earlier cause school hmm i guess I chose poverty temporarily.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I don't think the point is that if you make some effort to eat at Outback rather then bistro bis you're suddenly in touch...it's more like...try travelling somewhere where outback is your only option for going out for dinner. That's why I've been to those places. I have family and friends who talk about NASCAR, so even though I've never seen a race, I know who Jimmie Johnson is. You don't have to be interested in the STUFF, per se, to be interested in people and places where the experience is different from the bubble here. "

I say this gently, but I don't have enough vacation time to go to those places. I like to vacation in places with historical significance. I'm not interested in spending any of my 3 weeks off in rural America.

This is a very interesting point, I hate chain restaurants-just because the food really doesn't agree with me and it tastes pretty bad-but I worked in Frederick about 10 years ago-before Volt opened up.
It was awful! There was *nowhere* to get a remotely healthy lunch and I mean *nowhere*. But they did have Roy Rogers which I ended up eating quite a bit
So if people don't have access to healthy food, like in bad areas where grocery stores sell half-rotten fruits and veggies, how are they supposed to eat healthy?
Did you know WIC (google it) didn't even cover fruits and veggies until just a few years ago?
Off stepping off my soap box now...

So why did you eat at Roy Rogers instead of packing lunch from home?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this anti-elitism only succeeds in showing that we're out-of-touch with a certain part of America. How are they arguing that that's the REAL America and ours isn't? And when it strays into anti-intellectualism it's downright scary.

People like me, who are urban and educated but have modest, middle-income families and depend on government funding for public service-oriented work, are being hurt by Tea Party attacks, not the real fat cats still laughing all the way to the bank.

The problem is that people like you (and like me) are still only about 15-20% of the American population. The other 80-85% of the population is still rather outside of our bubble. Let's face it, the educated, urban, upper-middle to rich classes are still somewhat insulated from what the majority of Americans are like. And nowhere is it more apparent than on DCUM where those making $250K and above are whining about being middle class without realizing that they are in the top 5-10% of the economic scale and nowhere close to middle class. Those people have no clue what middle class really is. That's kind of the point of the quiz and obviously this thread. The quiz points out a lot of the disparities between classes.

Very well put. It reminds me of an Alice Waters story (that i'm sure I will garble to an extent): she was at some event that was quite long and, behind doors, the staff ordered themselves pizza. Waters saw them eating it and berated them for eating such terrible food when the food she was advocating they eat was her typical food: seasonal, fresh, organic - and, oh yes, hard to find and afford for lots of people, including the people she was berating. Anti-intellectualism is incredibly stupid, but I think it's good for those of us in a privileged bubble to know what the average American's life is like. Lots of us don't realize how fabulously lucky we are.