However, “classy” as a laudative is prole. The middle class says “tasteful,” and the upper-middle and upper classes just say “nice.”
Fussell’s book is dangerous in just this way, and should be plastered with biohazard symbols and only sold in brown paper bags by surly clerks who give you a judgmental glare. Before reading it, you can drift serenely through society, unencumbered by analysis. You do the things you do because that’s just how you are, and others do the things they do, and some of them annoy you, and others seem familiar, and yet others make you feel small, but it’s all just random and uncorrelated, right? After reading this book that world is dead, that option is gone. You can now sense the currents of power and mimesis that churn around every social encounter, like those weirdos with the magnets in their fingers who can sense the location of your wifi router. Your innocence is lost, your delusions are gone. The other day when I suddenly had to spend too much money taking our children to a concert featuring works by a composer I don’t even like, for no reason other than that I felt it was important for children to experience the arts, I suddenly felt a dreadful chill and knew why I was doing it.
What’s so striking about this is that it says nothing about the qualities of the product at all. The entire ad is about how this firepit will cause the other people in your life to stop regarding you as “basic.” Of course, “basic” is contemporary code for “middle-class,” making this an unusually blatant status pitch. And of course, like all status pitches, it’s a lie. A product claiming to move you from Class N to Class N + 1 is almost invariably just cementing your place in Class N.
What makes the firepit so heartbreaking is that it’s almost an example of attempting upward mobility the correct way, since — as you note — in the upper echelons of the American class system, taste and style and behavior are what really stratify people. The problem is that the purchaser lacks the class background to understand the shibboleths and so gets led terribly astray. It’s like some poor fool trying to seem very educated and cultured by reading The New Yorker (if you want to impress, try the New York Review of Books, or better the London Review of Books). This information asymmetry is what defeats so many attempts at direct social climbing. You can’t make a frontal assault on the class above you. They will see you coming.
It’s analogous to the observation that only losers try to climb a corporate hierarchy directly. The real trick is to ascend via a zig-zag motion, bouncing between a number of different companies, because getting poached away for a job one level above your current one is perversely easier than getting promoted where you are. Well it’s the same with status hierarchies, social class chief among them — if you want to improve your position, the trick is to find multiple incommensurate status hierarchies and use your position in one to slightly improve your position in the other, and then switch directions and use your newly improved position in the second to boost you in the first.
Status in the American class system comes not just from what you do, but how you do it. Even things like “going to college” or “being rich” aren’t enough to make you high class, and those at least tend to bring with them status-enhancers like spending your time in independent and autonomous pursuits, or freedom from physical toil.
The trouble with becoming a X person of any sort is that you need to know exactly what the rules are — and at the same time, you have to not care about them at all. This more or less means you have to be either a disaffected member of one of the higher classes (or someone who’s spent enough time with them to understand their ways); after all, proles don’t mimic the status displays of the upper-middles either, but that’s because they’re following their own scripts, not writing a new one. Doing exactly as you please, thumbing your nose at silly conventions, flaunting your freedom from the standard American ways of displaying status, is only cool if you’re obviously doing it on purpose, and the best way to do that is subtlety. If you show up at a fancy party in jeans it might simply be because you didn’t know what to expect, which is neither classy nor cool. Better to wear a suit when most men are in black tie, or a sportcoat if they’re in suits — something that makes it clear you’ve understood the brief but chosen to ignore it.
The middle-class mentality is fundamentally shaped by one dominant reality: everything good in life feels conditional and reversible.
Your job, house, health insurance, kids’ college fund, and retirement can all disappear if you make a few bad moves or have a few years of bad luck. That single fact creates an entirely different psychological operating system from the upper class.
- Time = Money (literally). Your primary asset is your labor, sold by the hour or year. Vacations, hobbies, and family time are measured in “how many hours/days I had to work to afford this.” Taking six months off is unthinkable for most.
- Respectability is the most precious currency. Appearing responsible, stable, and “normal” matters more than most outsiders realize.
- Education as the one reliable ladder. The single biggest obsession: “If my kids just get into a good college and get a professional job, they’ll be safe.” This is why middle-class parents will spend their last dollar on SAT tutors, AP classes, and college consultants.
- Work ethic as moral identity. Being a “hard worker” is a core part of self-worth. Taking a sick day when you’re not actually sick feels like stealing. Early retirement sounds immoral unless you’ve”earned” it through decades of grinding.
- Savings as safety, not wealth. Having 6-12 months of expenses in the bank is the holy grail. Investing aggressively feels like gambling with the grocery money.
- Vacations are the only sanctioned hedonism. You deny yourself small pleasures all year (fancy coffee, new clothes, eating out) so you can blow it all on a 7-14 day trip that temporarily makes you feel rich. Then you come home and post the photos while secretly stressing about the credit-card bill.
- Deep belief in meritocracy (mixed with private resentment). Publicly: “Anyone can make it if they work hard.”. Privately: furious awareness that the game is rigged for people born into certain zip codes, networks, or with no student loans. This creates a constant low-grade rage that rarely gets voiced directly.
- Polite contempt for both the poor and the rich. Poor = “they made bad choices.”. Rich = “they’re out of touch and probably unethical.” The middle class sees itself as the only morally legitimate group—the ones who”play by the rules.”
Philanthropy is mostly power laundering Big charitable foundations aren’t about helping people; they’re about converting financial capital into permanent social, political, and cultural capital while receiving tax benefits and veneration.
The nation-state is a service provider
Countries are judged by quality of rule of law, tax regime, private-school options, and how quickly you can get a police escort from the airport. If one stops performing, they shift the center of gravity to another. Loyalty is to family and legacy, not flags.
They know the middle-class rules don’t apply and feel zero guilt
Tax avoidance is celebrated as sophistication. Regulatory arbitrage is a core competency. The idea that they should “pay their fair share” is seen as quaint-the same way a chess grandmaster doesn’t feel bad about putting you in checkmate.
The working-poor mentality is built on one overwhelming reality: there is no margin for error, and tomorrow is never guaranteed.
A single missed shift, a broken-down car, a sick kid, or a $400 emergency can start a cascade that ends in eviction, hunger, or medical bankruptcy. Everything else flows from that.
Shame is the background radiation. Society treats poverty as a moral failure. You absorb the message that you’re dumb, lazy, or made “bad choices” even when you’re working 60-80 hours a week. You hide struggle from friends, family, even your own kids.
Your body is your only asset-and it’s breaking No paid sick days, no health insurance, physically brutal jobs. You work through pain, fevers, and injuries because missing a shift means you can’t pay the electric bill.
Anger turned inward or sideways
Direct rage at the system is exhausting and usually punished (cops, bosses, caseworkers). It gets redirected into substance use, family fights, or bitterness toward other poor people who “get more help.”