This New York Times app allows you to determine your class based on your occupation, education, income and wealth.
It looks like a “management analyst” is three times classier than a designer. Let’s ponder that and how business designers should be positioned to exert influence in organizations.
Responses
Good point Victor, what made me proud though, was to see Denmark among the five selected countries in the Country by Country survey. Great to see us among UK, USA, France and Canada. I was a bit surprised I must say.
NYT appears to be creating their own, artificial definition of class. The older definition of being born into nobility or commoness has little application in the US. Likewise, fewer people fit into the socialist definition of worker(proletariat) and the owners of production.
NYT is trying to force a new definition of class. To what end? Is it to provide a template to observe how people have and do move between classes? This is something that happens in this new definition, but happened rarely in the other two.
Is it to give people a reference point as to where they are so that they can either help those ‘below’ them or ‘envy’ those above them.
If class is whatever we choose to define it as, what use is it as a concept? Especially when it’s a word that is full of social power. Now it is a word that is full of meaning, but that meaning different to everyone (as evidenced by the fact that NYT has to take such pains to people into a class) and so it is easily manipulated.
In the US, class is frequently used as an economic term. In our popular mythology it is seen as something to be overcome. People that come from humble beginnings to do great things are admired-because they take the initiative to change their class.
Most importantly, why do we need the NYT to tell us what ‘class’ we belong to?
Also see John Franklin’s comments at CoFactors