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Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by toyg on Friday February 07, 2020 @12:38PM (#22268497)
Your comment is very good. You’ve basically listed the modern British class system: upper, middle, lower/working. There are some additional subtleties to it (education and the arts can bend boundaries a bit), but that’s the gist. Outside London, margins between such classes are somewhat smaller; in London they are magnified.

In the end, it’s a country that still has an official aristocracy. There is a reason for that.

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by ChuckNorris89 on Friday February 07, 2020 @03:43PM (#22270700)
>You’ve basically listed the modern British class system: upper, middle, lower/working.

Errr, isn't all of the West structured like that?

You're either the wealthy upper class who own the capital, land and means of production, or the middle class, responsible for keeping the upper class wealthy and in power(finance/law/consulting/politics) or the lower class, performing the basic services for the other two classes(building, cleaning, security, etc.)

AFAIK, that's how it works in most places on the planet including Europe and the US and it has been like that since a long time just that now the upper class has better PR.

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by sprafa on Friday February 07, 2020 @07:25PM (#22272675)
Nothing like the UK. The UK had very high levels of income inequality. London has both a lot oft he richest people in the world and some 50 000 to 100 000 homeless people (they’re everywhere ).

And the opportunity to bridge through that income inequality (social mobility) is pretty low. France and a lot of Continental/EU Europe is far more equalitarian, better social system.

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by barrkel on Friday February 07, 2020 @10:52PM (#22273712)
A quick Google search indicates 1 in every 52, or about 170,000 homeless in London.

That's not the count of rough sleepers, though, that's more like 5000 to 8000.

(Also, IMO, what London has even more than income inequality is wealth inequality. House price appreciation has really added to it; it's not unusual to have little old ladies who are property millionaires, but their houses are decrepit piles of junk and they have no money to do them up. The housing stock is generally in dreadful shape, nowhere commensurate with the value of the land it's sitting on. Large sections of the capital are like this; decrepit, but very expensive.)

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by toyg on Friday February 07, 2020 @04:34PM (#22271218)
> isn’t all of the West structured like that?

No, at least not all of it, not all of the time, and not as markedly, as you see in the UK.

The fact that you can not conceive this is possible, is telling in itself.

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by flurdy on Friday February 07, 2020 @07:10PM (#22272580)
Exactly. I live just outside London, and the big class system is obvious. Most people are in the 3rd tier the OP mentioned, i.e. lower or working class. Most people I know and work with are in the middle class. And there is the unreachable upper class that owns most companies and land. You generally have no connection to them.

But I grew up and lived in several other Northern European countries where there is mostly just a huge middle class. Sure, some differences between upper-middle and lower-middle. But not a lot, and they can live side by side, go to the same school etc.

There are the odd billionaires, big estate heirs and royals i.e. classic upper-class but very few and they don't own everything. And they might also live near you, their kids might go to your normal public school etc. And then there are some unfortunate that could be classed as in a lower class but that is very few, and not everywhere, mostly just in the big cities. Mostly recent immigrants that do the jobs no-one else wants to do. They quickly get swallowed up by the middle class once settled.

Unless I was very sheltered that seems to be the case for most countries in Northern Europe apart from the UK?

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by sprafa on Friday February 07, 2020 @07:28PM (#22272699)
Id say you’re righty as far as “Northern Europe” being Scandinavia+Germany. The Uk but london specifically is actually a pretty decent example of a contemporary protodystopia (I live there). On one side you have Mayfair which is like Monaco with some of the richest people in the world living there(and often the most corrupt - Russians, Saudis, Chinese oligarchs, African dictator’s families) side by side with Tower Hamlets in East London where a substantial amount of children suffer from malnutrition.

Malnutrition! And Tower Hamlets is of course a 5 min walk to the very core of the City of London.

Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by twic on Friday February 07, 2020 @06:49PM (#22272442)
No, he hasn't done that at all. That third group, "everyone else", includes an awful lot of middle-class people. They're just the middle-class people who aren't handmaidens of mammon.
Re:Guide to the London Startup Ecosystem by maest on Friday February 07, 2020 @07:09PM (#22272573)
I'm struggling to see where the following professions fall on the GP scale:

* lawyers * consultants * ad execs * dentists