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The contours of the new American class system are strikingly similar to those of Edwardian Britain. There is a small number of mega-rich, followed by a very large and comfortable upper middle class. At the bottom comes what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat and what we call the underclass. In the middle, a large number of the respectable poor is divided between those who fear dropping into the underclass, those who still aspire, and the vast majority who know that they are stuck in their station and suspect that their children may be stuck as well. The traditional mechanism of social mobility, the public school system, is laboring, and the cost of a college education is soaring. At the same time, median incomes are stagnant or dropping. Copyright © 1996 by The American Prospect, Inc.
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The contours of the new American class system are strikingly similar to those of Edwardian Britain. There is a small number of mega-rich, followed by a very large and comfortable upper middle class. At the bottom comes what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat and what we call the underclass. In the middle, a large number of the respectable poor is divided between those who fear dropping into the underclass, those who still aspire, and the vast majority who know that they are stuck in their station and suspect that their children may be stuck as well. The traditional mechanism of social mobility, the public school system, is laboring, and the cost of a college education is soaring. At the same time, median incomes are stagnant or dropping. Copyright © 1996 by The American Prospect, Inc.