What is your financial status?

[Person Man]

Actually...I think we should have a more PC way of talking about financial status without using the word "class".

Priviledged Families

Option I+- Extrodinarily Privledged Families and Persons (income greater than 5000000)
Option I-  Very Priviledged Families and Persons (income greater than 1000000)
Option I- - Priviledged Families and Persons (income in the highest tax bracket)

Professionals and their families

Option II+ - Senior Professionals (175000 - highest tax bracket)
Option II  -  Professionals (125000-175000)
Option II- - Junior Professionals (75000- 125000)

Working Families and Persons

Option III- Skilled Workers (50000- 75000)
Option IV -  Semi Skilled Workers (35000-50000)
Option  V - Struggling Workers (20000-35000)

Struggling Families and Persons
Option VI+ -  Working Poor (12000-20000)
Option VI -   The Poor (under 12000)
Option VI- - The Homeless (none)

Where do some aged decrepits with $200K in rental incomes fit into that?  Oh I guess 'privileged families and persons'?

Then again, this financial status poll  isn't 100% either...

[Gustaf]

This is annual figures, I assume?

[Platypus]

Somewhere between 10-11. Whatever I earn pays my expenses, and if I'm short, mum and dad pay the different +$30 for expenses.

[Gustaf]

Whereas "working class" is an archaic term which supposes that the middle class doesn't work, which isn't true.

Well technically the more correct European/British definition of middle class would include a great many people who don't work all that much - petty capital.  Basically my understanding of the euro idea of middle class is small business types of a certain wealth level, and highly paid professionals like doctors or lawyers. 

Regardless, the american idea of middle class includes vast numbers of people who really have no position or security but merely a tenuous job which pays enough to live.

No, that would be upper middle class. Middle class in Sweden are typically people who have standard white-collar jobs, working behind computer screens in companies or in the public sector.

Anyway, I'm  a student who have an income of about $15 000 (untaxed) a year if I don't work. This year I'm working during the summer and fall so I'm getting another $5 000 (pre-tax). I voted 10 000-20 000.

My parents are well-off, but I wouldn't say rich, so I definitely have not known economic hard-ship in my life. I'm not unaware of it though, since several of my friends have poorer backgrounds and my dad was from the working-class.

My rent, which includes all utilities, is about $450-500 a month, at current exchange rate. I have a decent-sized room and access to a kitchen, two bathrooms and a large living-room all of which I share with 3 other people I know personally.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

RSA since a few days.

In order to be a bit more precise:

R.S.A. is the new system set by the government, when you can't pretend to get the unemployment benefits and when you're 25 and older, you can touch at least 400€ (569$ with current change), which is the minimum you can have when you don't have an handicap or some children to raise, which is my case, then it can be more. So, I touch it since a few days.

To be complete, in France, according to your social status there are also good helps to help you for accommodations, so according to my social status I also have about 230€ (327$) to help me to pay the flat in which I also am since a few days, a decent 2 rooms flat of about 40m² (abroad I don't know, but in France we count the number of rooms outside of kitchen and bathroom, so here I've a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, and a bedroom).

At the opposite of RSA, the only conditions to touch your accommodations help are your social status. For R.S.A. it's different, it means "Revenu de Solidarité Active", which is to be literally translated by "income of active solidarity", it is tied with the public administration for jobs. They let you 3 months during which they ask you nothing, but then, the public job center put you obligations to find back a job and if you don't follow these obligations, your financial help (RSA) is threatened if I understood correctly, something which is different of the precedent system the R.M.I. (Revenu Minimum d'Insertion: Minimum Income for Insertion, social insertion), here, before the 1st of July of this year, you could touch the helps and you didn't have any obligation.

Well, the principle of RSA is understandable, it's normal that when you give money to someone there is a counterpart, I just hope they will make some constructive work in the public job centers, some clever social insertion and not profiting of this threatening of the financial help to stupidly put people in any jobs just to give them a job, though, such a time of crisis won't help it.

Oh and wait, in my administrative region, there also an other help, among still others (euh, I won't make you everything, I'm not a social assistant, but there are also enough helps to get a professional training for free, helps for phone, for electricity, for health of course...), it is that in this administrative region, Midi-Pyrénées, people who are in unemployment can have the train and the bus within the whole region, a big one, 8 départements, for free!

Héhé, that's France! WTF! I am also surprised to discover all the helps we can have here, and figure that we are the people who complain the most! Mouhaha, spoiled children...

Well, back to me, I use to be a very classical son of the French middle class, during my life I knew the upper middle class, the middle class, the lower middle class, and also during some periods, officially, the lowest possible classes, like now, but I never had the feeling to be poor neither to have money problems. Except the problem I had a bit when I was a child and when I passed from the upper middle class to money problems for the family, I had a bit of problem to accept it. Except that feeling I had during this period of my childhood, no matter the financial status in which I was, I always had the feeling to have a very decent life, and when I come to think about it now I also had a very decent life in this period of money problems and even now. I have that very feeling to be that very classical son of the French middle class.

[opebo]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

Back in the city of Castres. Area of the Albinque. Between the Jean Jaurès museum and the supermarket Champion (which is going to be a Carrefour one). That's a corner of the center of the city. See?

Yes, my rent is reasonable, I didn't precise it is 340€/month (483$) for the flat I described, which is also in a decent part of the city. Though I've to say the prices of rent in Castres are very reasonable too, compared to a lot of other places in France, the city is small (about 40,000 habitants) but is also pretty decent and there is everything to live here.

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

Castres is here:

[Hash]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

You must be sad to learn that it was passed under a right-wing government.

And the Socialists and PCF did not vote in favour, the Communists even voting against. Ah, yes, the left. They're so great, no?

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

You must be sad to learn that it was passed under a right-wing government.

Héhé.

And I would even add that, in Castres, the bus network is totally free! For everyone! And this is Mr Bugis, the UMP mayor of the city, a kind of small Sarkozy, except the fact that with him, there are not only words, there are facts too, who promised him for his reelection who did it. Héhé, the left is screwed here too, I don't agree with everything he does, and sometimes really disagree, but globally it seems Bugis makes enough decent work.

[opebo]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

You must be sad to learn that it was passed under a right-wing government.

And the Socialists and PCF did not vote in favour, the Communists even voting against. Ah, yes, the left. They're so great, no?

Well, I suspect that 'right-wing' in France is not quite the same or so bad as the right wing in america.. anyway this policy sounds rather left.  Perhaps those left-wing parties voted against it because it is to parsimonious or has too draconian a work-seeking requirement?

In any case, 'right' or left, I support a vastly expanded Welfare State.

[Хahar 🤔]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

You must be sad to learn that it was passed under a right-wing government.

And the Socialists and PCF did not vote in favour, the Communists even voting against. Ah, yes, the left. They're so great, no?

Well, I suspect that 'right-wing' in France is not quite the same or so bad as the right wing in america.. anyway this policy sounds rather left.  Perhaps those left-wing parties voted against it because it is to parsimonious or has too draconian a work-seeking requirement?

In any case, 'right' or left, I support a vastly expanded Welfare State.

From what I know about France, the Socialists and Communists likely opposed it because the right-wingers supported it.

[Badger]

#1

IIRC from your "all about yourself" thread post, you are a hisotrian by trade.

If I'd only known it paid so well, I'd never have gone to law school. ;-)

[Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]]

RSA sounds great, B.C., particularly to an american, where there is no social assistance at all.  Also your rent seems very reasonable.  In what city do you live?

You must be sad to learn that it was passed under a right-wing government.

And the Socialists and PCF did not vote in favour, the Communists even voting against. Ah, yes, the left. They're so great, no?

Well, I suspect that 'right-wing' in France is not quite the same or so bad as the right wing in america.. anyway this policy sounds rather left.  Perhaps those left-wing parties voted against it because it is to parsimonious or has too draconian a work-seeking requirement?

In any case, 'right' or left, I support a vastly expanded Welfare State.

And to be totally complete about what Hashemite said, and to be totally fair too, this has been passed by this right-wing govt, and by a right wing assembly, *but*, this is the idea of the *only* real people from the left who carried with him his ideas in this right-wing govt, among people from the left who accepted the invitation of Sarkozy in his govt, what we call the "ouverture", it is the idea of the only real people of the "ouverture" as we say here, Mr Martin Hirsh. On a side note, the only real guy of the ouverture is the one who wasn't from a political party. ^^