I spent Christmas day entertaining, and enjoying the intimate company of very close friends. An unlikely trio, really, economically speaking:
One—female, mid-thirties, wealthy family background (like millionaire-range: parents were owners of a mega-multinational advertising firm), currently not exactly “rich” (because the economy has taken its toll on her family’s business, and because she’s in the final throes of a graduate program, and presently applying for jobs in the $70,000 range—obviously, not in the US), but still, a bona-fide member of the “upper” class.
Another: male, pushing 50, stable middle-class background (father was a professor, mother an elementary school English teacher), current income approaching 6 figures, has been in the same job for 25 years; solidly (upper) middle class.
The third: female, pushing 50, born into the welfare class; former ward of the state with no “family background” to speak of, but with the trappings of middle-classness, hard-won from years of tugging at non-existent bootstraps; over-educated, over-qualified, underemployed, with current income hovering near poverty level, but clearly able to “pass”, economically, for a member of the middle to upper class.
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