One way to think of a person’s position in society is to imagine a hand of cards. Everyone is dealt four cards, one from each suit: education, income, occupation and wealth, the four commonly used criteria for gauging class. [Click here to see where you fit in the American population.] Face cards in a few categories may land a player in the upper middle class. At first, a person’s class is his parents’ class. Later, he may pick up a new hand of his own; it is likely to resemble that of his parents, but not always.
Bill Clinton traded in a hand of low cards with the help of a college education and a Rhodes scholarship and emerged decades later with four face cards. Bill Gates, who started off squarely in the upper middle class, made a fortune without finishing college, drawing three aces.
And some get the joker and some the Old Maid.
I’m well below having a Bellaire mansion and apersonal aroma therapist but comfortably higher than “squatting in a ditch shoving berries up my nose.” *
* Hugh Parkfield- The Simpsons
I’d also like to add that I fell from 72 at Dubya’s first innaugeral to 61 now.