[Melissa]

Originally Posted by Boots13

The U. S. Department of Labor describes the working poor as

“individuals who have spent at least twenty-seven weeks in the labor force, but whose income fell below the official poverty threshold.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty threshold is $14,763 for a family of four.

So we are labeled and assigned a social class by our own government, no matter how fluid social class has become. I'm pushing 50 and cant remember a time (in my lifetime) the economy has been so unstable. All the biggies are affected..Tech, Pharm, Oil, Wall Street, Banking, Real Estate, Insurance...nothing seems stable.

Our economy is so unstable that my ideas of Social Class (re: money, assets, income, futures) are rapidly changing as well. Is the instability changing (or at least lending compassion) to our social structures? I hope so.
I don't know where I'm going with this, other than to reiterate that my perception of economic social class in North America is undergoing a huge shift. White Collar is no longer bastardizing our economy, that Blue Collar feels honest to me, and that the Working Poor with its broader base, is no longer thought of as a lazy population. Poverty and deficit has nested in places its never been in my lifetime (Wall Street, Real Estate, Tech, Oil) . Poverty and financial oblivion is a place that any of us are headed, at any time. And as our country continues to corkscrew itself further into economic distress I can tell you that the economic "markers" and expectations (old stereotypes) of social class seem to be changing.

It seems to me that the government is defining an economic threshold here, not a social class.

Melissa