{"id":66776,"date":"2015-04-22T15:28:34","date_gmt":"2015-04-22T20:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=66776"},"modified":"2015-04-22T19:52:27","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T00:52:27","slug":"is-chris-christie-middle-class-class-and-self-perception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/04\/22\/is-chris-christie-middle-class-class-and-self-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Rich People Think They’re Middle Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Christie\u2019s net worth (at least $4 million) is 50 times that of the average American. His household income of $700,000 (his wife works in the financial sector) is 13 times the national median.\u00a0 But he doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s rich.<\/p>\n

I don’t consider myself a wealthy man. . . . and I don’t think most people think of me that way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s what he told the Manchester Union-Leader on Monday when he was in New Hampshire running for president.<\/p>\n

Of course, being out of touch with reality doesn\u2019t automatically disqualify a politician from the Republican nomination, even at the presidential level, though misreading the perceptions of \u201cmost people\u201d may be a liability.<\/p>\n

But I think I know what Christie meant. He uses the term \u201cwealth,\u201d but what he probably has in mind is class.\u00a0 He says, \u201cListen, wealth is defined in a whole bunch of different ways . . . \u201d\u00a0 No, Chris. Wealth is measured one way \u2013 dollars. It\u2019s social class that is defined in a whole bunch of different ways.<\/p>\n

One of those ways, is self-perception.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were asked to use one of four names for your social class, which would you say you belong in: the lower class, the working class, the middle class, or the upper class?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That question has been part of the General Social Survey since the start in 1972. It\u2019s called \u201csubjective social class.\u201d It stands apart from any objective measures like income or education. If an impoverished person who never got beyond fifth grade says that he\u2019s upper class, that\u2019s what he is, at least on this variable. But he probably wouldn\u2019t say that he\u2019s upper class.<\/p>\n

Neither would Chris Christie. But why not?<\/p>\n

My guess is that he thinks of himself as \u201cupper middle class,\u201d and since that\u2019s not one of the GSS choices, Christie would say \u201cmiddle class.\u201d\u00a0 (Or he\u2019d tell the GSS interviewer where he could stick his lousy survey. The governor prides himself on his blunt and insulting responses to ordinary people who disagree with him.)<\/p>\n

\"1c\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This\u00a0 self-perception as middle class rather than upper can result from \u201crelative deprivation,\u201d a term suggesting that how you think about yourself depends on who are comparing yourself with.* So while most people would not see the governor as \u201cdeprived,\u201d Christie himself travels in grander circles. As he says, \u201cMy wife and I . . . are not wealthy by current standards.\u201d The questions is \u201cWhich standards?\u201d\u00a0 If the standards are those of the people whose private jets he flies on, the people he talks with in his pursuit of big campaign donations \u2013 the Koch brothers, Ken Langone (founder of Home Depot), Sheldon Adelson, Jerry Jones, hedge fund billionaires, et al. \u2013 if those are the people he had in mind when he said, \u201cWe don’t have nearly that much money,\u201d he\u2019s right. He\u2019s closer in wealth to you and me and middle America than he is to them.<\/p>\n

I also suspect that Christie is thinking of social class not so much as a matter of money as of values and lifestyle \u2013 one of\u00a0 that bunch of ways to define class. To be middle class is to be one of those solid Americans \u2013 the people who, in Bill Clinton\u2019s phrase, go to work and pay the bills and raise the kids. Christie can see himself as one of those people. Here\u2019s a fuller version of the quote I excerpted above.<\/p>\n

Listen, wealth is defined in a whole bunch of different ways and in the end Mary Pat and I have worked really hard, we have done well over the course of our lives, but, you know, we have four children to raise and a lot of things to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He and his wife go to work; if they didn\u2019t, their income would drop considerably. They raise the kids, probably in conventional ways rather than sloughing that job off on nannies and boarding schools as upper-class parents might do. And they pay the bills. Maybe they even feel a slight pinch from those bills. The $100,000 they\u2019re shelling out for two kids in private universities may be a quarter of their disposable income, maybe more. They are living their lives by the standards of \u201cmiddle-class morality.\u201d Their tastes too are probably in line with those of mainstream America. As with income, the difference between the Christies and the average American is one of degree rather than kind. They prefer the same things; they just have a pricier version. Seats at a football game, albiet in the skyboxes, but still drinking a Coors Light. It\u2019s hard to picture the governor demanding a glass of Haut Brion after a day of skiing on the slopes at Gstaad, chatting with (God forbid) Euorpeans.<\/p>\n

Most sociological definitions of social class do not include values and lifestyle, relying on more easily measured variables like income, education, and occupation. But for many people, including the governor, morality and consumer preference may weigh heavily in perceptions and self-perceptions of social class.<\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Christie\u2019s net worth (at least $4 million) is 50 times that of the average American. His household income of $700,000 (his wife works in the financial sector) is 13 times the national median.\u00a0 But he doesn\u2019t think he\u2019s rich. I don’t consider myself a wealthy man. . . . and I don’t think most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":66777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,23384,293,37],"class_list":["post-66776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-social-construction","tag-social-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/04\/1c2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66776"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66781,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66776\/revisions\/66781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}