David NjokuWhat class are you (please vote below), and how do you define that class (please reply to this post)?
I'm also curious if you believe your a different class from your parents. If yes, what happened to cause that difference?
#poll
David NjokuIs there an argument to be made that if you're on Mastodon you're middle class? I know you're too modest to admit it, but we're a select group. We're not feral like those people on Twitter, or try-hards like the BlueSky lot. And don't get me started on Truth Social (shudder).
Steff 🏳️⚧️
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@davidnjoku@mastodon.world
Today, I would call myself middle class, as I work in an office, have a job title and decent salary. My parents and grandparents all worked in factories or small office positions, like bookkeeping, with the exception of my father who worked in selling coffee and restaurant supplies. In my younger days, I was decidedly working class - I worked factory floors and in the trades on job-sites. I used to belong to different trade unions. I've driven a cab and worked in restaurant kitchens.
What allowed for my class mobility? Mostly luck, and a love of learning. I was lucky to be in related trades when the technology revolution took off, and was able to adapt my skills and find people who would give me opportunities.
Coated Ambassadors Everywhere!@davidnjoku@mastodon.world Survival of my family and me depends on my work income, not on property. So I guess that makes me working class.
@davidnjoku@mastodon.world
Retired and surviving.
Retirement is not all that great like what you heard when young.
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️Robot Diver🌊
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️@davidnjoku@mastodon.world
I think my parent's would have considered themselves upper middle class. My grandparents were decidedly working class. I am the most educated out of all of them and have worked some prestigious jobs, but none of them have ever paid enough that I didn't need to work at least a second job or third job to cover my rent and food. They worked 40 hrs a week and lived comfortably. I worked 60-80 a week and barely made ends meet. Then I became disabled and I now seemingly don't deserve to exist given the current class system would rather I die than offer any support. So decidedly lower class.
Annelies Kamran, Ph.D.@davidnjoku@mastodon.world I'm a paycheck away from homelessness. That makes me lower class in my reckoning.
Cait the Proud Trans Woman@davidnjoku@mastodon.world
I am and have always been working class. My grandparents were an infantryman who became a postal worker, and a lunch lady, and a seamstress, and a factory worker.
My parents are/were (my father died in 1981) a mechanic and a bookkeeper, neither of whom finished high school.
BUT! When we moved to Canada, where there was much more social mobility than the UK, my mother went on a serious effort to do social climbing. She and her second husband (a complete asshole who is a mortgage broker in the most expensive community in Canada) successfully managed to get themselves into the comfortably upper middle class, with the husband ending up rather further ahead (having separated, but not divorced, 25 years ago). He has millions.
I, on the other hand, went into the army, got kicked out for being queer, worked my way through university as my parents refused to contribute to it at all, got my degree, and then transitioned. Which immediately dumped me into poverty, from which I've only ever escaped briefly.
Currently, I live on about CAD1450/month on disability support. My sister became a record company executive in Los Angeles for a couple of decades, so she's stinking rich. She does nothing at all, nor does my mother, to help me.
So I consider myself to still be working class, given my poverty. But my parents and sister have taken a different path. All three of them have always been money-driven. I have never been. I work to live, never live to work.
Since I became officially disabled, I have spent most of my time being an activist for zero dollars. I have done so for 30+ years. Because with a fixed but barely livable income, I can work on activism without needing more support.
David Njoku@akamran@indieweb.social Our gini coefficient in the UK is better, but not all that better, unfortunately.
David Njoku@akamran@indieweb.social By that reckoning half the country is lower class.
David Njoku@RobotDiver@starlite.rodeo That's crap. Previously I would've immediately presumed that you're in the US, but these days the government's attitude to disabled people in my country, Britain, isn't that much better, sadly.
David Njoku@oldladyplays@wargamers.social I know that this wasn't the point of your reply, but I'm really sorry you've had to suffer so much just for being who you are. It's not right. It's heartbreaking.