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I also was a carpenter for half of my 20's. We should start a support group. I think the building mindset has contributed greatly to my mentality for software.

Interesting thing mentioned in the article: Men are pressured to know this stuff, and women are pressured to know how to "cook and be domestic." I should add that I'm guilty of it myself. A work colleague got a flat tire, and he and his girlfriend were stranded until help came because he didn't know how to change it. I gave him flack for it before I realized I was being unfair to him. His girlfriend was much worse to him than I was FYI.

Well, the fact is that the pressure isn't equal anymore. Women, especially younger women, are pretty damned comfortable admitting they are terrible cooks. Annoyingly, I'm a much better cook than any woman I've ever dated, which I must admit is a sign of social progress. Their mothers didn't want them to feel like it was their duty to cook, so they were never taught. But rejecting a useful skill outright has its disadvantages.

My twin brother has very little building experience, but lucky for him at least has the aptitude for it. His wife, a professional who is quite possibly the worst cook alive, has hounded him, in front of me, for not being a "real man" because he can't fix something himself in the house, and now they have to pay somebody else to do it. Over time, he's gotten confident enough to take on stuff himself, but I also advised him that everytime she pulls that shit to think of a very complicated recipe and ask her to cook it for him. When she replies that she can't cook it, give her the "you're not a real woman" treatment so she can see how unfair she is being.

so are they still married? :)

Being broke makes you learn things too: for most of my 20s (and 30s, and 40s) I haven't had the money to pay people to do things for me. So I learned to do them myself - not always expertly, but they get done. I think a lot of people have fallen into the fallacy that 'time is money', and spend their time on Mad Men instead of fixing stuff around the house.

The rich folk seemed more willing to learn it, try it, and logic out the problem. The middle class folk ... usually weren't present and were more prone to complaining.

Or, the middle class folks didn't have time to hang around, while rich folk don't always work 9-5.

Not in my experience. I usually worked alone and I never had anyone just hand me their keys. I used to work on weekends as well.

It is a smart play, IMO, to not let random people walk into your house with no one there to protect the fortress, if you get my drift.

Or that the rich folk might have gotten that way through being "more willing to learn it, try it, and logic out the problem."

The richest people I know personally are all incredibly hard workers with rather wide-ranging skillsets and certainly a willingness to try new things. But that's just anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt.

I think what we've learned here is that the only thing rich people have in common is that they all have a lot of money.

As a rich person with very little money I am offended ;)

Exactly this. It is all anecdotal. I was just telling an opposing anecdote the the original story.

It does depend on what you are doing and how difficult the particular job is. Cutting wood and hammering nails is easy and somehow relaxing. Tiling walls and roofing are both difficult and easy to screw up, and I don't think I ever had the homeowner with me on those occasions. Painting, laying linoleum, hanging prefab cabinets, etc are all easy to do and easy to take part ownership in. I like the thought that a homeowner can brag to their friends that "they" built something.

Having some sweat equity, as an owner, is really nice. It just gives you a good feeling about your house, car, etc., to know that you built at least some of it with your own hands.

I love to work on my muscle car. To me, just writing a check to buy someone else's muscle car is not interesting, nor does anyone have "cred" with me if they just bought it.

Agreed, it's a hobby. Even if I screw it up I learned something. What I find funny is when I talk to people who say "I rebuilt the engine last year", or "I just painted my car a deep metal-flake blue." I say "That's awesome, I totally want to learn how to do that! What was it like?" just to find out that by "I did" they mean "I paid someone to do". Meh.

I find that to be true of the poorest people I know as well. Which is way-below-the-poverty-line poor.

Unfortunately, spending time with the poorest people I know makes it glaringly obvious why they are poor.

One possible reason for the disparity is that being poor sucks and is really hard in many parts of the world (like NYC I would imagine), however where I live, rents and other expenses are low and it's relatively easy to get government handouts.

Maybe that's true where you live.

I left home at 16, spent ten years homeless and hitchhiking, am told I'm quite good at what I do, and have spent the last 3 years or so exerting the herculean effort required to rise through poverty. I currently live half on a couch of some good people I know, and half in the office of the web shop I work in. I have never had government assistance. I wouldn't have known where to find it, nor been in a situation to be given it in most cases.

As far as handouts go, when you are zilch-zero-nada poor, at least in the US, there are a lot of things in life that will be higher on your priority list than either figuring out that they're there, or going through the process of acquiring them, keeping them, and then becoming self-sufficient. In many places in the US, government handouts are a joke.

I'm not going to try to go into detail, but I can tell you that I know a lot of people whose reason for being dirt poor is not so glaringly obvious as the ones you know, and a fair amount of people who aren't poor because they had the luck to be born to the right people in the right place at the right time, regardless of their work ethic.

I've been thinking a lot about socio-economic disparity amongst technically competent people a lot lately, I should probably try to gather my thoughts more cohesively.

In addition to a 9-5 job, some people also have to drive the kids around, shop for groceries at multiple places, and other things that more well off people can pay others to do.

When you make good money, you have the option to learn and try new things. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy you the luxury of not being accused of "not willing to learn, try, and logic out things".

Perhaps rich people have held positions of managing people, and know, through that experience, when they can jump in and help and when to let the professional guide them? Whereas someone in the middle class may have always been an employee and don't have the same comfortability taking charge and stepping in to help, unless specifically directed to do so.

as someone who is "really" middle class, but moved to a country where they ended up being "upper class" (kind-of) just through changing the context - it really does feel different when the person you are paying is charging so little you just don't care. all stress goes out of the relationship - you can truly say "don't worry about time, or cost, just do a good job". it's a real pleasure.

I think that most self-made rich people are over that mental barrier where they know that everything in the world is made by people like themselves. So they aren't afraid to participate in new things.

I`ve definitely have had my share of folks that like the pretentiousness. As it turns out, they are also the easiest to screw with.

Using Fussell's class breakdown [1], it is likely that you haven't worked for any people in the "upper class"; you have met the several varieties of the middle class. Fussell's definitions of the class is more about their tastes and behaviors than about how rich they are.

The upper classes would never get on their hands and knees and pound nails, because they feel that it is beneath them. The uppers are content with who they are, and don't give a damn what the lower classes think. But they are also uninterested in new ideas and would not be curious about your profession.

The rich people that you work for are likely to be upper middle class. They are likely to have earned their wealth by working hard, so they can relate to the hard work you do, even if their work was "white collar" instead of "blue collar".

The "middle class" that you describe seem to be Fussell's "middle" or "high proletarian". They are near enough to your class that they are bitter to you because they feel threatened by you, or because they think that their snobbery makes them better than you (it doesn't — usually this is the mark of a person with low self confidence). They might also not be there when you work, because are also at work.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/d...

As a note, at first glance, this comment seems to be saying that they could not have been upper class because they weren't horribly condescending and close-minded, and that this is the entire definition of upper class.

Looking at the book description, I take it that these are meant to be heuristics for guessing a random person's position in the class system? That seems more useful. I'm still not convinced it makes sense to apply that here, though, as the OP was working in these people's homes, and certainly has a very good idea what sort of people they were.