Comment by aebtebeten
10 hours ago
Not sure if the birthright castes are any more stably stratified: according to https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report.... , the US actually ranked worse in 2020 than the UK for social mobility?
(for 2025, see https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Degre... )
Still different from birthright castes.
With a birthright caste, you're stuck. Even if you make a lot of money, you're still an untouchable.
In the US, if you make a lot of money, you can become upper class, even if you still have some "rough edges." I actually know a number of folks that have done exactly that.
I also know folks that have done the opposite. Started off on top of the heap, and ended up skint.
We definitely have strata. Hollywood stars represent an interesting one. They are sort of what folks aspire to be, but they are nowhere near the top of the heap.
In the UK, Elon Musk would never be a toff; no matter how much he has, but in the US, he's King of the Hill.
I guess that's where we part ways: just as the US is the world's richest 3rd* world country, I'd call ERM the richest upper-middle-class person in the US, but not exactly upper-class...
(just as a datum point: ERM is the opposite of an éminence grise, in just about any of its senses)
* in the economic sense. In the political sense, by definition the US is 1st world [after what happened to Yugoslavia (former leader of the non-aligned movement) I'm surprised Carney is brave enough to attempt to revive a "2nd World" ... surprised; but pleased!].
Quick delve: American class-based exceptionality gyrates around Norman Mailer's "philosophical psychopath"
Which Hollywood stars (mostly from the "middle-middle class" mentioned in my earlier link) are. Professional hipsters?
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2019/03/the-banality-of-the-...
>remember G.K. Chesterton’s lesson about how “two opposite passions may blaze beside each other
Wonderfully anachronistic essay on a wonderfully anachronistic opus, oh wow, I must have meant "timeless" somewhere
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/528839/summary
Compare: SV founders (including "broligarchs"(?)) will never say "cowboys" in vain, but East Coast financiers might :)
(How familiar are you with 1990s-2010s neo-hipsters?)
Edit: MPAA^W AMPAS will never think secret thoughts of "British upper middle class theatre" outside the occasional hire (for "diversity", these days). Is that why PG and Trevor moved to the UK ;)?
It's not reactionary centrism, but it's also not progressive centrism.. to always say never!
How do people know your caste? Is it on your ID document?
In India maybe. In the US (or some other places) it might be easier to have someone analyze your tax docs. "So what do you do?" is not a popular conversation opener these days..