...on another note...

after getting back from dc, was doing some news reading and came across this special series in the New York Times. yah yah, i know you have to register, but i thought it was really interesting.

basically a whole section on what class means nowadays in the US. interesting to see how they break down the elements of class as they see it these days, by occupational prestige, income, savings and education. one of the things that particularly struck me was this Where do You Fit In? section. a bachelor's degree alone puts you ahead of the educational level of 75% of the population, tied with people from 75-90.

i'll admit to being baffled on some of the occupational prestige rankings though. they got it from census data, so i guess it's pretty representative, but what does it say that judges have about the same prestige as podiatrists? bizarre. don't get me wrong, feet are really important, but the judiciary is arguably the backbone of our government. and i do sort of object to software engineers having lower prestige than DBA's and network analysts. maybe next time 'round i'll get a census and can get these things corrected.

and it's also interesting when they talk about the fact that obvious indicators of 'class' have changed so much now. it's much easier nowadays for more people to get the everyday trappings of wealth that used to be unavailable to all but the richest few. as they said at one point, 50% of the people now have the kind of things that 5% used to have. that's good, but considering the other article in there regarding the massive differences in health care treatment and life expectancy, sort of window trimming on serious underlying problems.

i'll come back down off my soapbox now. go and take a read, maybe you'll find it interesting.