classe IV, the mirror yawns and sings like that fat lady does

[ink_ling]

Still looking at my psycho-social construction, in terms of class ... :

Comments

[ink_ling]

Thank you, Fella. I've talked to a few people and have been considering this for almost two years. Two co-workers and a close friend have taken this route and said it really worked for them. The friend asked her lawyer what the drawbacks were and he said he had two questions:

* Are you planning on making a large, financed purchase in the next, say, five years? If not, then it's a good choice.
* Can you live with the stigma? Oh, yes. Fairly practiced.

My friend even told her than her landlord/realtor told her that she most of the time prefers to rent to people in bankruptcy because she assumes they are saving and paying in full.

I am also definitely in no position to make -- or really need -- any large purchases any time soon. The only concern is emergencies, which I can already not take care of with my cancelled credit cards and blown credit rating.

That's all I have considered so far. Are there concerns I am overlooking?

[ink_ling]

Oh, I know the issue you are talking about, Buddy. I am in no danger there. My goal is to be credit-free, and I am not a "spender" anyway. My move is to free me up where I am not living pay check to pay check, to allow me to pay for my student loans and not default, and to put me in a space to save some for emergencies like car repair or medical problems.

[paulonleave]

Hey Jason, I am enjoying your thoughts on class, which is a complex subject. My lover and I had a huge discussion on a car trip through North Carolina a couple of years ago about that very subject. I argued that in the USA, more than in other countries, the politics of race were used to obscure issues of class and economics: poor white people are able to identify with rich white people rather than poor black people. The idea of America as a class-free society is very appealling, of course, and perhaps that is why so much emotional/political capital has been invested by the whole culture in reading society in black/white terms. I don't just mean by racists, but also by progressive people who are more comfortable battling the injustice of racial prejudice than the injustice of capitalism. I hesitate to even write this, for fear of sounding like a presumptuous outsider, because I know that in a context like this, it is easy to sound as if I am merely trying to substitute one master narrative for another

[ink_ling]

That is extremely true. Everyone seems so eager to have their pie at the table of the wealthy. See, but rich people make me immediately nervous. And shopping makes me paranoid.

I've never quite understood why the have-lesses and the have-nots haven't found more in common with each other ... .

[shawnsyms]

>>And shopping makes me paranoid.

Shopping makes me SO anxious!

Thanks for these interesting posts. I read through most of them at my parents, where I couldn't devote sufficient concentration to them. I intend to do that though, in the next few days.

xo

[dellwood]

I enjoyed reading Paul Fussell's Class which was almost twenty years ago but he was an excellent writer and I think it was even a brief PBS series at one point. One episode featured a battle between the crunchy granola/yuppie faction vs. the working class in Burlington, Vermont in a struggle over stocking plain white bread at the local coop. Another episode featured the African-American debutante scene and a society called the Jack And Jill Club (pointing out how inclusivity permeates even the least included groups in our society)

[ink_ling]

That sounds exactly the kind of thing I should be reading! I often wonder why we don't have better histories (or more available ones, maybe) of the amazing work done in working class people's political work. The labor movement and the Southern black communists, for example. Maybe I should also try to find more about those histories.