Does Canadian society lack class?
May. 1st, 2014 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterThere's been a lot of bellyaching lately about the shrinking middle class. But what or who exactly IS "the middle class"? Or the working class? Or the upper class or any other social class we may care to define?
Political science 101 taught that social class was determined by our relationship to the "means of production". By some measures, if you were beholden to an employer for your livelihood, regardless of how good the job was or how much you made in money and other perks and benefits, you could consider yourself "working class". On the other hand, if you managed to scrape up enough money to start your own business and maybe even take on one or two employees at minimum wage, I suppose you'd be a capitalist pig or something. But for now, let's take a closer look at those who are employees.
If they're defined by their relationship to the means of production, does it make a difference whether the product is very concrete and tangible or something done almost entirely with brain-power? There are white-collar jobs, blue-collar jobs, pink-collar jobs, "unskilled labour" jobs and so on. And for reasons that often have little to do with the realities of the job, the education and training they require, the compensation packages and working conditions and so forth, they have varying degrees of prestige.
What about adults who are not for whatever reason engaged in "gainful" or paid employment? This may be due to illness or disability, retirement, unemployment, personal choice (these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive), wealth acquired through inheritance, investments, lottery winnings... to what classes do all these people belong?
I suspect a majority of Canadian adults would self-identify as "middle class". But most people seem to use the term as a synonym for "middle income". That's a bit easier to define, maybe (one could use the cutoffs for tax brackets, for example) although the dividing lines are still going to be a bit arbitrary.
Political science 101 taught that social class was determined by our relationship to the "means of production". By some measures, if you were beholden to an employer for your livelihood, regardless of how good the job was or how much you made in money and other perks and benefits, you could consider yourself "working class". On the other hand, if you managed to scrape up enough money to start your own business and maybe even take on one or two employees at minimum wage, I suppose you'd be a capitalist pig or something. But for now, let's take a closer look at those who are employees.
If they're defined by their relationship to the means of production, does it make a difference whether the product is very concrete and tangible or something done almost entirely with brain-power? There are white-collar jobs, blue-collar jobs, pink-collar jobs, "unskilled labour" jobs and so on. And for reasons that often have little to do with the realities of the job, the education and training they require, the compensation packages and working conditions and so forth, they have varying degrees of prestige.
What about adults who are not for whatever reason engaged in "gainful" or paid employment? This may be due to illness or disability, retirement, unemployment, personal choice (these categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive), wealth acquired through inheritance, investments, lottery winnings... to what classes do all these people belong?
I suspect a majority of Canadian adults would self-identify as "middle class". But most people seem to use the term as a synonym for "middle income". That's a bit easier to define, maybe (one could use the cutoffs for tax brackets, for example) although the dividing lines are still going to be a bit arbitrary.
