I had a look at Charles Murray's quiz that is meant to delineate one's class status, specifically whether one lives in an upper-middle or upper class bubble, versus being one of the people, i.e. more ordinary Americans. I won't bore you with my score or how I answered each individual question, but a few things jumped out at me.
One is that certain things I took almost for granted appear to be somewhat unusual. For example, I have not only walked on a factory floor (question number 5), but have worked on several. In his explanation, Murray explains that he has actually visited a factory only once in his entire life; I'm wondering whether that makes him part of the upper class bubble, or whether it's an indication of how much America has changed. Even though Murray is significantly older than me, I was still able to experience the America of yore in which people worked in factories. In any case, I found it downright weird that Murray would consider this a class marker, but perhaps I shouldn't have.
I have also held a job that made something hurt at the end of the day, and while I've never been to a union meeting, I have belonged to three of them, including the Teamsters. I most definitely have lived in neighborhoods where most of my neighbors didn't have college degrees, and in a town of under 50,000 people. And I've had a close friend who could barely get C's in high school. Several close friends, in fact.
But on the other hand, my father was a professional (question 2). This illustrates the other thing I noticed, and that is Murray's idea of increasing stratification of society by IQ. We lived in an ordinary middle-class neighborhood in a small town, I hung around with normal middle-class kids. According to Murray, this is becoming more unusual. I would guess especially that most upper-middle type parents would be horrified if their children associated with other children whose best efforts brought C grades in school.
But not only has social stratification increased, the country as a whole has changed. Even growing up in a blue-collar family, it would be difficult to get a job in a factory now. Flipping burgers might be more like it. Or a "service" job.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteI think it is an exaggeration to say as you do that for people who grow up in Blue Collar families "Flipping burgers might be more like it. Or a "service" job. "
In simple terms, "founding stock" blue collar americans in expensive places have low fertility and "founding stock" blue collar americans in inexpensive places have high fertility
Everyone on this blog knows that some quite nice neighborhoods of the USA have gone up quite a bit since 1963 - places like Aspen, La Jolla, Soho, Greenwich, are up 20x. Dennis in your own backyard, plenty of places in Silicon Valley offered blue collar workers affordable family formation in 1963. Those same neighborhoods offer blue collar workers only the chance to live in small studio apartments.
Putting it another way, it used to be very easy for blue collar founding stock people in Silicon Valley to afford three and four children. Today blue collar founding stock people in Silicon Valley can't afford even a single child
Dennis, since you live in Northern California your focus is on the high cost of living of Northern California -
In much of red state America family formation for "founding stock" americans has never been cheaper than it is right now
There seem to be very few people here at Mangan's celebrating the almost miraculous affordability of family formation in much of the USA.
Think about it, the typical young European-descended male and female each with IQ of 110 can get training as an electrician and nurse, respectively, earn $60k per year each, and use that combined $120k income to buy a nice 4 bedroom house for $280k in some place like the suburbs of Pittsburgh, or Southern Utah, or New Hampshire.
A house for $280k in a school district that demographically resembles the USA of the 1950s. And with such a school district and a four bedroom house, it is quite affordable to have three children.
If mortgage rates are at 5%, you are talking about mortgage payments of only $14k per year on an income of $120k
The affordability of family formation in much of red state America is truly without parallel in most of the developed world.
Just use google to read about the cost of family formation in Japan, or Singapore, or Europe, or Australia or Canada.
Indeed a study just came out that proved
"U.S. Housing More Affordable Than Housing In Rest Of English-Speaking World"
Plenty of people who grow up blue collar have the IQ and future time orientation ("marshmallow test") to grow up to be electricians, plumbers, and nurses. Plenty of the ones that grew up in Northern California wise up and move to affordable red state America
Dennis, you and Charles Murray both choose to live in expensive BLUE state coastal enclaves. Don't generalize your experience
Nursing pays 60K in expensive suburban NJ, might pay 40-45K in cheaper parts of the country.
DeleteBetter check your math on that mortgage . . . Closer to 20k per yr. Also, starting salaries are going to be lower, as already pointed out. Also, that new nurse will be on call and working nights . . . Not the Rx for a happy home life.
DeleteI tend to agree with this. The side of my family which was blue-collar grew up in Southern California, but now lives in Idaho, Montana and Utah. It takes a while but people discover where they can live that affords the best quality of life for them.
ReplyDeleteHis test seems to do little more than give a false of superiority to the pretentious wanna-be nuevo-rich; the Yan Shens and Half Sigmas of the world. Really all it shows is the debasement of higher education - their college 'degrees' are little more than paper-pushing licenses.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought I'd score way down with the upper class elite coast types. In fact Murray gave me some points for the several times I have had jobs in or near factories, a couple of trips by intercity bus, living in a town of a few thousand, and watching The King's Speech. Also the test helped me to remember that once I belonged to a union and I actually lettered in high school (track & field). So I scored in the middle, with the upwardly mobile (generationally speaking I am distinctly downwardly mobile, since I didn't follow first anon's recommended path of becoming an electrician (I got a degree in Being Clever and a degree in Not Being an Uncool Flyover Conservative, and found the job prospects limited).
ReplyDeleteIt seemed like a fair test to me but others could be generated that didn't rely on Murray's necessarily subjective ideas of "upper middle class" and the like.
Got a 12... guess I don't have much redneck cred. I do know who Jimmie Johnson is, though.
ReplyDeleteI got a 19. Hammered by the factory-floor issue in my case as well!
ReplyDeleteJM,
ReplyDeleteYour score is a revelation. Mine was 51.
You and I have sparred over "Game." It now occurs to me, perhaps this thing "Game" IS effective on women in your social circles, but not on us RedneckEttes. Perhaps "Game" is just another example of the ways that the upper class truly IS becoming a different species, including in mating rituals.
I got 30; when I did the test using what I know of my older son, I came up with a 57. Big difference - quite ironic, too, because we live in quite a prosperous suburb among prosperous (and educated) people. Where I was raised in a DC suburb where most parents worked for the government, he's in a Texas suburb with a higher income level (and significantly bigger houses) where most work for private businesses. However, his high school work experience (table busser and all-around dogsbody) meant a lot of physical labor. He smokes (which we hate) and drives a pickup and is contemptuous of the pampered high-school classmates who drove their Mercedes to school. He watches lots of movies (I watch almost none) and joined the military and refused a non-combat MOS. He defiantly refuses to be part of the "elite" despite his off-the-charts IQ . . perhaps my and my husband's continuing move to the alt-right has influenced him, ya think?
ReplyDeleteJSM:
ReplyDeletePerhaps "Game" is just another example of the ways that the upper class truly IS becoming a different species, including in mating rituals.
There's probably something to that. Roissy did a site survey a few years ago and found that nearly half his readers earned >100k.
"Game" is just another example of the ways that the upper class truly IS becoming a different species, including in mating rituals.
ReplyDeletegame -- or, colloquially, charisma -- works on all women, accounting for differences in intensity of application. an analogy would be comparing the tastes of low class men to high class men. both groups of men love the curve of an exquisite female hourglass shape, a firm butt and rack, and pretty face. now lower class men may date more women who veer from that template, but that's only a reflection of their lack of options, not their different tastes.
in my experience, less intelligent and lower class women really take a shine to asshole game, while smarter girls like their game a little more subtle, to allow their imaginations room to construct elaborate fantasies. the principle concepts remain the same, even if in practice the techniques differ.
Dennis,
ReplyDeleteSheila's comment speaks to the fact that the USA exhibits both dramatic upward mobility for many people born to modest backgrounds as well as upward mobility for many people born to more high class backgrounds.
Indeed, this upward and downward mobility is not dependent entirely on IQ or on parental income. It depends mostly on future time orientation and other personal traits.
Experiments have shown that if you take a person from an upscale background like Sheila, that person has two sons, and one son does well on the marshmallow test and the other does poorly at the age of 4, then the one that does well is likely to stay upscale and the one that does poorly is likely to sink a few classes.
If a four year old does poorly on the marshmallow test, he is dramatically more likely to do things like smoke, ride a motorcycle without a helmet, contract a venereal disease, drop out of school, etc. Low future time orientation leads to downward mobility.
It will be interesting to see how much this topic is discussed in Murray's book
One reason to avoid certain types of police and possibly the same type of computer geniuses as well.
ReplyDeleteMurray may be out of date.
ReplyDeleteToday, only a small proportion of Americans work in factories. May be 5%. And today factories are not like the carton box factory he visited. They are well designed places full of sofisticated machines, robots and computers (there is almost no machine today without a computer). Workers in a modern factory are, I think, middle class.
On the other hand, Murray's explanation of having a friend who got C in class is eye-opening. People reading Murray's book is, per definition, unaware how dumb the majority is.
I scored a big zero -- go me!
ReplyDeleteYou don't diasagree with friends on politics?
DeleteThe test seems to rely on stereotypes. Perhaps he should have included working at a service job along with factory employment as a point getter. In an urban area it's hard to determine what constitutes a neighbor; someone who lives within a block, three blocks, a mile? Some very disparate people might be living in physical proximity to one another yet do not see themselves as having any shared sense of identity. People just sort themselves out according to commonality of interests and background. Everybody knows flunk-outs and watchers of American Idol, may even be related to some like that, but time spent with them may be limited by a lack of things to talk about.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me to be an elaboration of the old blue collar-white collar dichotomy with all the attendant images that brings up. I will say though, the latter group unnecessarily pats itself on the shoulder as being smarter, hipper than the mere proles. Whereas it seems to me that they are just as prone to their own forms of stupidity, fads and fashions as the proles, just at a seemingly more complex level. They just come in a fancier package, that's all. The proles reach for their mass-market beer while their upper class counterparts reach for some granola as they tell you which place has the best sushi.
It seems that the untrue story of how African American Airmen won WWII is not so popular, even among African Americans.
ReplyDelete32. Have lived at poverty level in terms of income only because of one year's unemployment, (twice) but had enough of a cushion to keep upper-middle class house in upper-middle class suburb where children attend a school where average IQ is 118. So it doesn't seem to me like that counts.
ReplyDeleteWe want to move away from the crowded suburbs and the liberal elite but I've really got to wonder how well we'd fit in elsewhere...it feels good to be in a town where nearly everyone is smart. I've learned how to present myself to get along with people of more average intelligence, and to not be an intellectual snob - mostly - to appreciate gifts of the non-intellectual kind but not everyone in the family has.
56..almost pure prole! Moving to flyover from LA in 1975 made the difference. It was deliberate on my part. The circles I grew up with in Socal were some terribly neurotic and unhappy people. I blame the proximity of Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteBut the beer question is really, really unfair. Who can go back to Coors Lite once you've tasted one of the great local craft beers..even the old yuppie faves Michelob and Heinekens taste like swill to me now.
My score was 68.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in rural (meaning my closest neighbors were lumberjacks whom I could only see with a pair of binoculars) Pennsylvania with blue-collar parents, interned at a GE factory, and lived for over a year in an Inuit village.
On the other hand, I also enjoy stoicism, Wagner, investing, Melville, and business process analysis.
I scored a 47. His assessment pegged me as "first generation middle class with working class parents." Bullseye in my case.
ReplyDelete30 points. But I feel like the test is designed to work well for people who are somewhere between lower middle class and upper class. I theoretically score some sort of 'upper classness' because I watch no TV, have seen only one movie on his list, and haven't been to any of the chain restaurants he lists in years. But this is because I live in a rural area raising pigs and chickens, not because I've migrated upwards out of the middle class.
ReplyDeleteStill, I suppose that my bubble would be thick. Just because I'm a weirdo, though, not because I'm upper class :-)
64, most of those points from my upbringing, no points on current stuff other than Branson, don't live that far from there and it is almost all white people, no blacks, mexicans, asians nor homos. It is great. Very friendly place. Lots of white nuclear families.
ReplyDeleteMy kids would score almost zero on this thing.
MDR
I didn't add up my score as it was pretty clear where things were going. I come off as pretty prole, probably a 50-60, even thogh I am upper middle class, well educated and pull usually 75-100K$/yr when business is good. I made a number of life choices based on my desire to have a wider base of experience than is typical of my class. These choices brought my score up considerably.
ReplyDeleteI think the test is valid in general but there are plenty of possible exceptions to the stereotypes he employs.
I always envied the fellows who went to Harvard. Wouldn't it be swell to
ReplyDeletebe on the Crimson gravy train? I'd probably be a government big shot by
now, undermining U.S. foreign policy, or a CEO running some industry into the ground. I'd have that wonderful accent as if I'd put the Fix-A-Dent on the
wrong side of my partial plate. And I'd have lots of high-brow Ivy League
friends. We could have drinks at the Harvard Club and show off our Ivy
League ability to get loud on one gin fizz. There, but for low high school
grades, middling SAT scores, horrible disciplinary record, and parents with less than $100 in the bank, go I. How sad.
Or so I thought. I'm cured now. I just came back from Harvard's monster
gala 350th Anniversary Celebration, and thank you, God, for making
me born dumb.
As society decays, stratification by IQ is inevitable. The few who can figure out that decay is upon them are changing priorities to have wealth more than comfort, so they can escape the third-world failure that are the public services and daily life of a collapsed empire. As a result, regular middle class whites are getting left behind.
ReplyDeleteAn Optimist's Take on Charles Murray's Coming Apart
ReplyDeletehttp://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/01/an_optimists_ta.html
Neal Stephenson's novel "The Diamond Age" depicts a future world where the nation-state has declined, city-states are back in vogue, and western society has bifurcated in the manner that Murray describes in his latest book. The "competent" people view themselves as a separate people and call themselves the "New Victorians". The novel also depicts technological advances (e.g. nanotechnology, automation) that has allowed increased economic and technological autonomy to smaller groups of individuals, thus undermining nation-states and large corporations. The society depicted is a much more decentralized one along the lines of that described in the blog "Global Guerrillas".
ReplyDelete