| ▲ | Nursie 12 days ago | ||||||||||||||||
How is that classist? If someone is a professional, they are engaged in a middle class job on a middle class income. Unless you consider “working class” to be something that is indelibly stamped on someone’s soul at birth… Being a professional or in management is pretty much the definition of middle class - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_K... This is what I mean by talking past each other - I don’t think we’re working from the same dictionary. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | varispeed 11 days ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||
The issue is that you're treating class as a static category based purely on occupation or income - effectively saying that once someone earns a decent wage or becomes "a professional", they're no longer working class. That's a very narrow, top-down view, and ironically, it erases one of the few success stories of social mobility. Many working-class people entered fields like IT, engineering, or contracting not because they were "born middle class", but because those were accessible paths that didn't require elite credentials, family connections, or private education. They built businesses, gained skills, and carved out independence - often still without the security, assets, or cultural capital traditionally associated with the middle class. By your definition, the moment they succeed, they're no longer working class - which conveniently absolves the system of any responsibility for making life harder for them. It's circular: "If you’re struggling, you're working class. If you succeed, you were never working class." That's what's classist—defining people's identity by a fixed socioeconomic role and then erasing their background the moment they transcend it. Social class isn't just about job title - it's about access to capital, power, mobility, and resilience in the face of economic shocks. IR35 disproportionately affected people who were just starting to get a foothold in those areas - often without the safety net others take for granted. And yes, we may be using different definitions - but mine accounts for lived experience and systemic barriers, not just an abstract Wikipedia definition from a table written decades ago. | |||||||||||||||||
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