List and provide a brief description of each of the six classes defined by Gilbert.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

1. A capitalist class of investors, heirs, and top executives, whose income is derived largely from return on assets.
2. An upper-middle class of college-trained professionals and managers. At the very top of this class are the highly successfully people we call the working rich.
3. A middle class whose members have significant skills and perform varied tasks at work, under loose supervision. They earn enough to afford a comfortable, mainstream lifestyle. Most wear white collars, but some wear blue.
4. A working class of people who are less skilled than members of the middle class and work at routinized, closely supervised manual and clerical jobs. Their work provides them with a relatively stable income sufficient to maintain a living standard just below the mainstream.
5. A working-poor class, consisting of people employed in low skill jobs, often at marginal firms. The members of this class are typically the lowest paid service, retail, and blue-collar workers.
Their incomes leave them well below mainstream living standards. Moreover, they cannot depend on steady employment.
6. An underclass, whose members have limited or erratic participation in the labor force and do not have wealth to fall back on. Many depend on government programs.