Upper Social Class
An Upper Social Class is a social class composed of members with highest social status.
- Context:
- It can (typically) be composed of Upper Class Households.
- It can range from an Inherited Upper Social Class to being a Non-Inherited Upper Class.
- It can range from being a Top-Upper Class, Mid-Upper Class and Entry-Upper Class.
- …
- Example(s):
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Social Stratification, Economic Inequality, Class Society, Political Power, Aristocracy, Nouveau Riche.
References
2021
- (Wikipedia, 2021) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/upper_class Retrieved:2021-1-11.
- The upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is generally distinguished by immense wealth which is passed on from generation to generation. Prior to the 20th century, the emphasis was on aristocracy, which emphasized generations of inherited noble status, not just recent wealth.
Because the upper classes of a society may no longer rule the society in which they are living, they are often referred to as the old upper classes and they are often culturally distinct from the newly rich middle classes that tend to dominate public life in modern social democracies. According to the latter view held by the traditional upper classes, no amount of individual wealth or fame would make a person from an undistinguished background into a member of the upper class as one must be born into a family of that class and raised in a particular manner so as to understand and share upper class values, traditions, and cultural norms.
The term is often used in conjunction with terms like upper-middle class, middle class, and working class as part of a model of social stratification.
- The upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is generally distinguished by immense wealth which is passed on from generation to generation. Prior to the 20th century, the emphasis was on aristocracy, which emphasized generations of inherited noble status, not just recent wealth.
2020
- https://foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2021-01-08/what-happened-social-mobility-america
- QUOTE: ... The very definition of an inheritable upper class means that social mobility is reduced. The child of middle-class or poor parents will not have the same opportunities as the child of two homoploutic high flyers. ...
... Can the slide toward an aristocracy of labor, capital, and hard work be arrested? The “cure” is easy to define but hard to implement. It must consist of preventing the excessive transmission of financial power across generations and of opening access to the top educational echelons to people of all backgrounds. We thus arrive at the two central elements of the philosopher John Rawls’s “theory of justice”: strong taxation of inheritance and public education. ...
- QUOTE: ... The very definition of an inheritable upper class means that social mobility is reduced. The child of middle-class or poor parents will not have the same opportunities as the child of two homoploutic high flyers. ...