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In The US - Classes, Homes, and Cars

I started the In the US series and only managed to get one chapter in, because any way you look at it, you could write a book on following and understanding the "culture" of a country. So, for this chapter, I think I'll take a few aspects of US Culture, and try to spell them out for you the best way I can. If you want me to do more chapters with other aspects like this one, let me know!

The first thing to note before I start is that the US is fairly large. We range from the rather cold north to the hot and tropical south. Southerners have a different culture than northerners, and west coasters have a different culture than east coasters. We have access to different restaurants, different population demographics, different environments, from deserts to swaps to plains to forests.

Thus, this chapter will speak in broad generalities, often pulling from stereotypes. I'll try to keep things balanced and fair, but there is no way I can account for the diversity in America. You will probably say... that's not my experience, where I live we do things this way! That's perfectly fine. In fact, I encourage you to go to the comments and leave that, as many PoV as possible will only help other people broaden their horizons. Anyway, let's start at the top.

The Classes

The US typically breaks ourselves down into three classes, the poor, the middle-class, and the rich. However, you can also discuss the upper middle-class, the lower middle-class, and then, of course, the 1%.

In America, 1% of the population possesses about 90% of the money, or so they say. I of course am talking about billionaires. These are the CEOs, the tycoons, and the businessmen. These do NOT include actors and sports players. Although we pay actors and sports players millions at a time, they're still only consider rich (the top 10%), and are not part of the 1%.

The rich, and most certainly the 1%, have their own social club that isn't a part of the middle-class. I have very little experience with being rich, regrettably, and I have a lot more experience with being middle-class, lower middle-class, and poor. However, there is a constant belief among those groups that the rich are out of touch with reality.

You see, they have so much money that they can hire other people to do things a normal person would have to do. A poor or middle-class might have to spend time cleaning your house, watching your kids, teaching your kids, taking them to school, managing your time, ect... The rich think that they "work hard" and thus deserve their fortune. What they don't realize is they have the time to "work hard" because anything they don't have time for, they can pay for the convenience of not having to do it.

It affects the middle-class too. Most middle-class homes would have a washer and a dryer to do clothing. To the average American, that's considered a given. How much time would a middle-class person lose having to take their clothing to a laundry mat and having to wait two hours to do all the laundry every weekend? Do you think a rich person would ever do this?

So these conveniences compound quite a bit the richer you get. Depending on how rich they are, certain Middle-class families will afford certain things the rich have, based on a per need basis. When I grew up, my parents hired a cleaning service to come up and clean the house once a month. If we suffered in school, mom would hire us a tutor. However, we certainly never had something even remotely close to a nanny or live-in maid or anything like that.

This experience differs greatly. The idea of butlers, maids, and Au Pairs are not very common in the United States. The Brady Bunch depiction of a live in maid is virtually unheard of. In fact, as much as it pains me to say this, two and a half men has it closer. You might have a maid you hire, and she'd have a key and come out to your place at certain intervals to clean, but she certainly wouldn't live there. The rich may hire personal assistants that manage their schedules and phone calls, but these would also rarely be live-in. More likely, there would be an agreed upon time they'd be on hand, and then they'd go home after the time was reached.