Is America a classless society?

That doesn't make a class.

It directly gives rise to it. It is necessary to somehow favor the more useful individuals or risk losing them to those who do.
Do this long enough and clear differences between the groups will form.

Doesn't really happen, now does it?

Well, arguably, class dissapeared in the decades following the French revolution.

In Feodal society, at least, class was tied equally to the privileges as to the obligations linked with each status. This ensured the stability, order and the survivability of the system. Many, including the most destitute, saw this as the natural order of things.

Currently, 'economic' class is, I believe, an unsatisfactory picture of things, perpetrated thanks to Marx's work's popularity in Academia and other intellectual groups.

It serves it purpose rather well nowadays as an unscrupulous divider.

>Retart

Are you kidding me?
Are you saying there is no class difference between someone who is an engineer and someone who is a burger flipper?
Of course there is, there must be. The engineer's labor is many times more valuable than the burger flippers, and he will be compensated appropriately. Consequently, his children will be better cared for and better educated, and, in all likelihood, grow up to be just as successful as their parent's.
Is this not the formation of class?

No it isn't. The burger flipper could do an engineering degree and thats that. Welcome to the post industrial service economy where education is the main mean of production. Class means you are born into something and you cannot change it, no social mobility, no matter what you do. And this is just not the case, no one will discriminate you because your daddy was burger flipper.

>The burger flipper could do an engineering degree and thats that.
nuh uh
take your tabula rusa bullshit back to the 19th century where it belongs, along with your marxism

Nope.

And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

whut, I'm arguing anti marxist, you flaming homo.
And the marxist class definition simply doesn't work in todays world and society no more.

most burger flipping is probably done by young people who are wanting to do another career and do it part time.

Like studying engineering and get a better job and paycheck.

>Class means you are born into something and you cannot change it
No it doesn't....?
The level of social mobility in a society has nothing to do with the existence of classes. Why would the concept of social mobility exist at all then? What would you be mobile through besides various classes?

>The burger flipper could do an engineering degree and that's that
That's how it works theoretically, but in real life it is much harder than that. The poor person will have to put in significantly more work with their less valuable labor to even pay for things like food and housing. They are also significantly more likely to have unresolved bad habits and ideals harmful to success passed down from the previous generation. A wide combination of things comes together to make it rather difficult for most poor people to achieve such things.

>All men are created equal.
Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution

Not that guy but your arguments are pretty pro-marxism.

>The level of social mobility in a society has nothing to do with the existence of classes.
The level of social mobility is one of the main defining points in classes. Imagine being a poor working class fagot in the 19th century, even if you somehow manage to make money, you will still be treated as a working class fag, you will not be able to become a member of the upper class.
Now this concept simply does not apply anymore.

Being poor doesn't make a class, having no means to change the fact that you are poor, thats what makes a class. Now if you have free education like you for example have it in Europe, you can get an engineer or a burger flipper, and this solely depends on your ambitions and abilities, not on how rich your parents are.

>calling someone out for 'communist propaganda'
>that argument
>the constitution
>retart

Did you get lost here on your way to /pol/? actually, not even /pol/ is this level of brain damaged.

America really is the country of useful idiots.

>actually, not even /pol/ is this level of brain damaged.
Oh yes, they are, really gives you brain cancer """"debating"""" there.

elaborate please

Well, they elected an orange reality star with a ridiculous wig as president.

>you can get an engineer or a burger flipper, and this solely depends on your ambitions and abilities, not on how rich your parents are
You precious, naive little child.

Yes, but then I had dirt poor parents and got an engineering degree. Enjoy flipping burgers while you blame society for you being a failurel

>and this solely depends on your ambitions and abilities, not on how rich your parents are.
Your ambitions and abilities depend on how rich your parents are.

While winning the genetic lottery is certainly the fastest way to a very cushioned life, let's not act like the other way does not exist.

The idea that an immigrant's son can lock down his life for 28 years and emerge a spine surgeon earning half a million a year would be bonkers to anyone from the 19th century.

I was about to agree with you until you went full plebian with the baseless insult.

poor little victim. as far as I can tell, rich kids have few ambitions, they usually choose liberal arts or some other retard studies, while folks form poor background work harder and choose studies that actually will get you a well payed job. Of course, if you only have a two digit IQ, this might not will work out.

It is good customs to retort and insult with an insult.

>The idea that an immigrant's son can lock down his life for 28 years and emerge a spine surgeon earning half a million a year would be bonkers to anyone from the 19th century.
This. And this social mobility solely based on merits was not imagined in the classic marxist theory, they simply cannot explain it. Thats why I'm inclined to say that classes do not really exist anymore.

You are projecting. I'm from a rich family and am fairly well off myself already. This is based on my observations of those around me.

>as I can tell, rich kids have few ambitions, they usually choose liberal arts or some other retard studies, while folks form poor background work harder and choose studies that actually will get you a well payed job
This is literally my point. This isn't how it turns out 95% of the time from what I've seen though. Poor people generally end up with children that are equally poor. They may have the potential to rise up, but few have the abilities to actually realize it. A piece of iron ore has the potential to be an axe head, but it takes a lot of refining.

You are an absolute retard. Rich kids are the people with the most ambition because they can see the world in a much larger scope and know they have resources to support them. Poor kids are beat over the head that they have to work just to survive and their only ambitions are to survive better. I've been on both sides of the fence.

>I've been on both sides of the fence.
Thats actually an argument pro social mobility, not against it.
Please remember, in most places of the western heminsphere, Uni education is payed for by the state, which enables pretty much anyone to study, as long as they got good grades.

>Classes
>SJW's favorite excuse for not achieving anything

There are a lot of things that just can't be taught in a University. The fact that it is a good idea to attend a University, for instance.

Valuing education has nothing to do with economical means, thats a cultural thing. Check all the Asian immigrants that work their asses of to get their kids a college ed.

>>Currently, 'economic' class is, I believe, an unsatisfactory picture of things, perpetrated thanks to Marx's work's popularity in Academia and other intellectual groups.
>
>It serves it purpose rather well nowadays as an unscrupulous divider.
economic class is natural in liberal/republican society, because these people always swear by numbers [muh numbers are truth] and since these people make money matters, the simplest numbers-as-social-interaction you can get is the revenue and how much tax are paid by an individual [so far, the taxes are the only mandatory social commitment to classical liberal societies]

I never argued that it wasn't a cultural thing. I've been citing cultural reasons all along. Like I said, there is a huge combination of things that come together to make it where, in general, the children of poor parents will remain poor themselves.
Being raised by a family that makes choices that are bad for their personal finances is likely to result in you learning some of the bad habits that make that happen.

america has a politcal aristocracy

bush and bush, clinton and clinton, roosevelt and roosevelt, adams and adams, harrison and harrison

it's ridiculous

>Thats actually an argument pro social mobility, not against it.
I'm in a unique position. My grandmother married into high society, but my grandfather died before I was born and his family took most of the inheritance. I lived in relative poverty, but my mom and grandmother are both well educated and they spent most of their money on giving me good education as well. I've never lived as high class but I've gone to school with them, become friends with them, etc.

in my uni in uk, id definitely say there is a class thing in americans culturally. quite a few of them also try really hard to be like the middle class english people.

An actually classless society is nigh impossible. Sure you can remove official classes, but hierarchies of some sort will always form based on age and occupation primarily.

>but hierarchies of some sort will always form
but hierarchies are not classe

have you checked recent stats?

teenagers haven't been flipping burgers since the late 90s. it all become adults with no skills or ex cons.

Definitely not.

>Poor kids are beat over the head that they have to work just to survive and their only ambitions are to survive better.
This. Theoretically, social mobility is possible, but in reality, someone's ambitions are influenced heavily by the class they grew up in.

College is actually a pretty good example. I've seen a few studies talking about the way that college is sold to rich kids as opposed to poor ones. For rich kids, college is presented as something necessary that will make you more money and make you a better person. For poor kids, it's optional and solely about the idea of making money. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, and I'm one out of maybe three of my childhood friends that went to college and got something more than an associate's. Hell, there was a university right in the neighborhood I grew up in, and no one even thought of applying to it because we all understood that it, as a private school, wasn't for us. And when I did eventually end up going to that private school, it took a huge adjustment because I felt like I didn't belong there. I was surrounded by a bunch of rich kids who went there because there parents did and who had grown up in a social bubble.

Even at younger ages, you have less ability to succeed if you're poor. My family couldn't afford a computer until I was in my late teens, and for a while, I was actually getting bad grades because I couldn't do work the same way that other students could. I also went to shitty schools and was passed over for several advanced programs because my parents couldn't the extra costs.

And a lot of the thinking is really ingrained. I ended up going for a somewhat academic field, and I can't help feeling that skipped a step by not going for something more practical, like engineering or business and letting my kids do what I'm doing now. Because so far, I haven't met a single person in my field who didn't grow up rich.

I'd disagree with that. College is sold to rich kids as an experience and a path to enlightenment for whichever subject they like and as a stepping stone to shit like law school. College is sold to poor kids as a 100% necessity for any kind of meaningful competitive employment. Something to make a rich person a more whole person and as a vocational school to the poor.

t. Grew up working class in nyc

it is both, for the poor. people do not like to hear that the opening of the gate of academia to all the plebs is just for having the shittiest résumé, this would be admitting the failure of the secular himanist society, thus they cling to their ideal of ''meeting other people who do not think like where you came from'' and that ''public education is for creating good citizen''

>Something to make a rich person a more whole person and as a vocational school to the poor.
>poor kids, it's optional and solely about the idea of making money.
That's really not that much different than what I got. The only difference is in how necessary it was presented as being. But the takeaway is the same: poor kids are given a different idea of what college is, and what it's for.

Some viral article talking about the differences was going around for a few weeks while I was in undergrad, and all the other students were shocked, and had a hard time believing it 9much like it took me a while to adjust to how they viewed college as for something beyond just job training), even after I explained to them how accurate it is.

No, because classless societies don't exist.

It certaintly has no class

>classless
America is farrrrrrrrrr from being communist

ITT: People use class mobility as evidence that class doesn't exist

If human nature does not exist, by what mechanism does the mind discriminate in order to process new information? Why are people dissuaded by pain, and not encouraged by it? Can I feed a man fish until he learn to play the piano?

youtube.com/watch?v=WFoC3TR5rzI

How about you take your commie pinko crap somewhere else? Not all men are created equal. White men were created to rule over all other races.

Income is not how class is defiend in marxist philosophy.

Sure, but why shouldn't it be considered? You frame it as if people are stuck when they are not. It's awfully difficult to feel sorry for fatties who die early from luxury problems. "I eat/drink/smoke/play videos games too much"

Class is a spook

>Marx invented class
Christ, this board.

bump

>the mind can utilize discrimination to process information, therefore objective human nature exists
non-sequitor
>it appears that usually people are dissuaded by pain, therefore objective human nature exists
non-sequitor
>I can't stuff fish in someone's mouth to make them know how to play an instrument in a way I like, therefore objective human nature exists
non-sequitor

Class is definitely not a spook. The justifications for class might be spooks, but class is an actual material outgrowth of this.

i.e property is a spook. But the fact that I don't have the state support to claim any makes my being a prole a material reality.

>filthy rich
>regular rich
-------------------------------------------
>well to do/moderately rich
>regular people
-------------------------------------------
>paycheck to paycheck
>lower class/ghetto/poor
>homeless/welfare queens

De jure yes

De Facto probably not

Way to miss the point Mr. college sophomore who just learned a Latin phrase.
Reality has a nature. It is in the nature of objects to attract each other gravitationally.
>"objects"
>"anything"
You can just do that all day and at the end you'll still be retarded.