In England, you might say well if your dad was working class then you are working class for your whole life regardless of anything else. But the American notion of class isn’t generally thought of that way.
People often confuse the symbols of class for the class itself. Baz who grew up poor in a dilapidated tower block, speaks exclusively in east london slang, but now owns his own plumbing firm and drives a £100k land rover (with custom plates that say "working class") is not working class any more. He owns for a living. On the other hand a footballer who makes a huge salary is working class, because they have to work in order to get paid.
In the US and UK both this is deliberately obscured, but in different ways. In the UK, class is seen as inherited social status. In the US, class is seen as more or less a synonym for income or wealth. Both of these are wrong.
That said, I think the "owning" vs. "working" model is incredibly valuable; and just as "lower class" has been redefined into "working class" (in a noblesse oblige of linguistic dignity!), I'll definitely be referring to the upper class as the "owning class" from now on. ;) (One complication, and arguably the reason that capitalism has proved resilient against its alleged contradictions: the middle class has managed to carve out some portion of ownership, in the forms of home ownership, stocks, etc. Not enough to carry substantive political or economic power, but enough to give them "skin in the game", and therefore a motivation to vote to preserve the ownership status quo, lest they lose their achievements of security and status.)
The difference would be people who make their living by owning things (stock, companies, property) that pay dividends. This is not to say that they don't work hard, but that their income isn't directly tied to their labour.
In this sense, someone can be both lower class (poor) and a part of the owner class. Someone else can be upper class (rich) and working class.
>It also wasn’t exactly for wages in the classic sense given that the federal government had holidays, vacation, and so on.
Wages are typically understood as whatever price is paid to employees for their ability to work[1]; we may be operating under different definitions, though (I studied economics rather than business).
[1]: https://www.economist.com/economics-a-to-z/w#node-21529310
Did they earn their living by working? Then they are working class. If you make a salary or a wage, if you have a boss, you are working class.
Did they make their living by owning stuff (e.g. landlords, investors, etc.)? Then they aren't working class.
Edit: Surprised to see downvotes, Wikipedia defines it thus:
> "The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in waged or salaried labour, especially in manual-labour occupations and industrial work."
White collar jobs are definitely working class folks.
Plenty of folks do. Yes, 'working class' is often synonymous with lower class in the US, but I regularly hear and use working class to mean "the class that is working". Engineers, farmhands, day laborers, doctors, grocery store clerks, analysts -- we all are working for a living, we are all working class.
There's a pretty massive gulf between a heavy equipment operator who's making token contributions to retirement and would have a tough time with the mortgage if his spouse lost their job and a brain surgeon with maxed out retirement accounts, kids at ivy leagues and a vacation cottage on an exclusive lake.
They might work 500yd from each other but they are not the came classes of people. The arcs of their lives from birth to death are wildly different. Both depend on their wage to sustain their lifestyle. But the doctors (and the other people in their neighborhood) mostly wouldn't be caught dead living the way the heavy equipment operator lives (and the reverse is only slightly less true).
Referring to the latter working class is something usually only done before telling the former they need to stop drinking bud light, driving 30 cars, get the project boat out of the yard, vote a certain way, talk a certain way, etc, etc you catch the drift.
Working class carries a very strong implication of blue collar work or not significantly more than blue collar amounts of money. A social worker or paralegal is working class. An investment banker or law firm partner should find other words to use.
The only real difference between these two people is the number of missed paychecks they are away from bankruptcy. Sure, that number is probably small for the equipment operator and large for the surgeon, but it's still a number. Their wealth goes down when they're not working. In contrast to the class of people whose wealth goes up when they're not working.
Drinking bud light? Probably because it's the best buzz/cost ratio(this is a guess) .
Project boat: it's the only way we would ever have a boat, certainly can't purchase a new one.
I've met many blue collar workers who walk and talk like white collar workers, mass assumptions do not help the conversation progresses.
tl;dr: one of way of looking at class is that it's not one ladder, defined solely by economic status; rather it's three ladders (Working/Middle/Upper), which are largely independent, and which intersect both economics and culture. In this sense, Jeff Bezos is not actually upper class ("old money"), but the world's most successful middle class worker; and the reason Trump appealed to the working class despite exorbitant wealth, was an enthusiastic embrace of working class culture (baseball hats, fast food).
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