trailmonkey – I’m not sure which bit of what I wrote offended you so much? Perhaps you didn’t understand it.
Generally, those at the “bottom” of a class system (who would have been called ‘working class’ in the mid 20th century) are generally the least affluent, least “socially mobile”, probably most likely to spend their whole lives closest to their place of birth, often least likely to be well educated etc.
Anyone earning minimum wage today almost certainly has a higher standard of living than a genuinely working class family in the 70s and early 80s (I remember those times – not through rose tinted glasses – and whilst we weren’t necessarily poor we were very much working class and life was a struggle). But whilst many of those people would still claim to be working class my point is there is actually a further “strata” which has developed – of people who are the poorest in society, likely to be have least access to education or opportunity – the point being that those people are generally not “working”.
The other part of my post was about the labels we attach to social groups/classes and how we define them – and the fact that “classes” defined by job/affluence are increasingly being blurred but that there are other ‘social’ descriptors if you want to put people in pigeon holes which might work just as well.
However I did start the whole post pointing out it was a “pub discussion” which means you shouldn’t really treat too much of it is as a formal hypothesis on society and class structure, indeed perhaps even a touch of humour or irony!
