Lower end is probably associated with your traditional professional classes. Then there is managerial classes. And finally the newly rich. Which might interact with others, but likely won't fully belong...
In fact, you still regularly hear the disparaging words "new money" today.
If you grew up old money, you get tapped for the best projects and will make Staff by 25, Principal by 30. If you don't have the technical abilities, they'll make you a manager. On the other hand, if you come from the rabble, you stay in the rabble--you get assigned regular grunt work and performance reviews actually matter to your future.
I could not disagree with this more. I would say that tech, unlike legal, medical or other fields, is by far the most egalitarian. You can be a kid that comes from the "rabble" and make Staff/Principle if you are really good and committed.
Likewise I have seen many "old money" folks like you describe completely wash out. We had a few at my company get their foot in the door because the parents play golf with the owner. Sure they have the advantage in getting in, but once youre in if you aren't skilled technically, you're going to wash out very quick (both guys we hired were gone in ~3 months)
You're right that they don't need to work. They do it to legitimize themselves. And, of course, to make sure any genuine opportunities go to their social class and not the rest of us.
In my org, half of the senior staff and executives weren’t even born in America. They were naturalized citizens or on work permits.
Not sure how those folks could be leveraging their social class in America.
One example off the top of my head: Indian caste discrimination in Silicon Valley [1][2]. Cisco was even sued by the state of California for such discrimination [3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24952698
100%. You also have to keep in mind America is much younger as a nation compared to Europe, but the classism is trending it towards the hereditary classism found in Europe over time.
This is the reason why speaking of an "aristocratic class" remains somewhat inappropriate. The term "class" was introduced specifically to mark the difference between the old society, which was dominated by heritage ("estate"), and the new society, in which this has been replaced by wealth ("class"). That there was a lot of continuity from the old to the new order is another matter. Britian seems to be very special, because there the "upper class" is a mixture of old estate and new wealth (plus celebrities from academic, sport and culture), something that is more or less absent in the rest of Europe. While a poor Lord in England is still a Lord, a poor Graf in Germany is just a poor person.
Both you and sibling commenter (zbentley) are making points that don't contradict what I was talking about in my reply to gp kstenerud. I'm not saying stratification, hierarchy, elites, etc don't exist in USA. Instead, I'm explaining why Americans don't seem to be aware of their class.
To re-emphasize the specifics that I was focused on, he commented: "In older societies, everyone is aware of their class from a very young age, but in America they seem to pretend that class doesn't exist"
I was dissecting his phrase "their class from a very young age" and how why Americans (e.g. USA children's brains) don't even know there are classes and thus, they're unaware which one they are in. Maybe one can call that self-awareness "class consciousness" or something similar but there's a reason Americans do not have it to the same degree as Europeans. In USA, the so-called "classes" are not _overt_ and _blatant_ to the same degree.
In contrast, some societies with overt & blatant classes:
- India Hindu castes with the "untouchables"
- feudalism with "lords" and "serfs"
- peerage with titles of nobility
America's particular circumstances of nation creation means the class system emerges from money & wealth rather than the 3 examples above from religion or monarchy. A young child in India in the "untouchables" class will be self-aware they're part of the untouchables. And likewise, a serf knows he's not a lord and a lord knows he's not a serf. But an American child in deep south Alabama won't necessarily know they are "hillbillies" or other derogatory terms like "white trash". These are class terms that others give them. In America, "classes" for many people are the proverbial "water that fish don't even know they're swimming in".
But to re-state your points a different way... Just because the USA doesn't have overt classes, it doesn't stop "invisible" classes from forming ("old-money") and functioning in similar ways. Some Americans authors are so exquisitely observant of subtle class differences such that they can write books where characters' self-awareness of class adds tension to their novels. Examples being F Scott Fitzgerald "The Great Gatsby" and Edith Wharton novels. Likewise, the readers of those books need to be aware of subtle class distinctions to see the significance of characters living in West Egg vs East Egg -- or that a Wharton character is driving a 2-wheeled horse & buggy instead of a more expensive 4-wheeled carriage.
WASPs might hold some prestige but I think as they lose power they become more irrelevant and less exclusive. I don't think it's straightforward right now who the upper class is. It feels like things are in a state of flux and amorphous or secretive. I completely agree net worth is not the only deciding factor.
The upper class will always be a small exclusive group by design so regardless of who is in it, social mobility is probably lower than most people expect. So to sum it up I only disagree with you about the power of "old money" in the US now. I think there is a somewhat parallel class with actual hereditary advantages that is replacing the "old money" class.
edit: I see dzdt has provided something useful.
What can't Jeff Bezos do that he would be able to do if he had parents from a different class?
That's old money?
$300,000 is simply not an outsize amount of capital to start a business. People do it all the time. Expect to put out $1.3 to 2.3 million to start a McDonald's franchise, and those are everywhere. (Other franchises are less expensive, not more.)
The idea that one has to be rich to raise $300,000 is simply not true.
It's like Bob and Ted have an equal financial position.
Bob: I just borrowed $10,000 and put it into Bitcoin!
Ted: Haha, you fool, that's so risky!
--- 5 years later ---
Bob: My bitcoin is now worth $1,000,000!
Ted: That's sooo unfair!
And remember, Bezo didn't have $300,000 either. He borrowed it.
This. The idea that we were founded by the industrious poor of Europe doesn't really hold out. People came to the New World with all sorts of different motivations, and from all social classes. The rich who came over to get super-rich got super-rich and their descendants are now the elite. The poors who came over to work in the coal mines stayed poor and their descendants now work at Wal-Mart. And the one-sixth of this country whose ancestors were brought over against their will are still treated horribly because their skin color makes it evident (or at least likely).
Not only is social mobility rare, but there's a mean-reversion. Class doesn't prevent you from attaining wealth, but it makes it harder to keep it; there are so many forces in play that most people aren't even aware of, but that exist to keep long-term upward mobility at a minimum. You can get a PhD and work at a FAANG, and you're still going to lose in project allocation and in promotion battles to 23-year-olds whose fathers and grandfathers the VPs are afraid of.
How about one of the richest men in America? The son of a butcher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor#Early_life
How about the Kennedys? Irish immigrants:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Kennedy#Early_life
The Vanderbilts? From an indentured servant coming to America:
Similar to the UK, most of these dynasties were based on real estate and failed to safeguard their wealth during the transition to the postindustrial era (post-civil war), unless they transitioned into finance/insurance.
Because of this, we don’t know their names today as well as we know the (post-)industrial names (your example of Astor is an exception because his story & wealth were singular, but even Astor isn’t well-known outside of NY).
John Jay, the various Roberts Livingston, the van Rensselaers,the Van Cortlandts, the Schuylers, Morris, etc.
These were people who had functionally feudal titles in post-revolutionary America, and many descendants retained them until the mid 19th Century.
They weren’t Windsors, Hohenzollerns or the uppermost crust of European houses. They were generally the descendants of Scottish, Dutch, or French elites who came to the new world once they caught wind of the killer opportunity provided by untouched and underutilized natural resources, in combination with a highly malleable set of local legal institutions. Many of them also had the motivation of fleeing asset seizures at home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay#Family_history
I didn't look at the others you mentioned. If you've got a cite that shows they came to America wealthy, feel free.
BTW, Astor is well known on the west coast. See Astoria, Oregon.
It required capital and connections to make it big in the Hudson valley: many of the wealthiest families in the US at 1776 were descended from people of relative wealth and influence (again, not Windsors and Hohenzollerns), who found the british colonies to be a place where skill, capital and connections could be compounded into meaningful wealth at a far higher rate than their birth countries.
Jay's progenitor fled asset seizure in France to take up commodity trading in NY, where he became cozy with the established elites: Jay's mother was a Van Cortlandt, themselves married into the Van Rensselaers, who were among the founders and directors of the Dutch West India Company.
(Most prominent New Yorkers of the 1770s intersect with the Van Rensselaers). Alexander Hamilton married a Schuyler, a family whose history mirrors the Van Cortlandt's (wealth deriving from the furs trade, cemented with marriage to the "Vans").
Robert Livingston the Elder fled to the Netherlands from Scotland, where his well-to-do father had faced religious persecution. He ended up in New York, where he married a Van Rensselaer widow and was granted a "patent" to 160,000 acres of farmland along the Hudson.
---
South of the Potomac River, the stories are pretty similar if you substitute "fur trade" for "tobbacco trade".
e.g. James Madison's paternal grandfather was a man of influence and landowner in Virginia, who cemented his family's future influence with a marriage into the Penn family. The Penns, along with the Baltimores, represent an extreme end of the "arrived wealthy" spectrum.
Whatever you want to call it, there are de facto class structures in the US that operate as the functional equivalents of class in Europe. You are either born into these circles or you remain outside of them (for at least a few generations). Wealth is only one part of this mix, and while it certainly does pay for your tickets into elite events, it does not buy you into the circle.
> social class in USA is fluid and can change
And this is one of the major false-hoods that people believe to be true but simply isn't. Americans in particular suffer from this belief. Social mobility is lower than most people expect, and the trend has been heading downwards for years.