America does have social classes, to some extent, based on all sorts of familial tribal signaling and shared understanding, but the mystery to most pundits especially on the Left is income mobility among economic levels. Social class and income are not the same thing. See "genteel poverty." Via The poor don't stay poor, the rich don't stay rich:
The data showed that fully 56 percent of those who in 2001 were in the lowest 20 percent quintile of income earners had moved up to a higher income quintile by 2007. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 66 percent of those who in 2001 were in the highest quintile of income earners dropped at least one quintile by 2007. And, as Perry notes on his Carpe Diem blog, lest anybody think the period spanning those years might not be representative because of the housing boom that triggered the Great Recession of 2008, data cited by the Fed point to the same pattern of high income mobility from 1996 to 2005. Fully 57.5 percent of those in the top 1 percent of income earners dropped to a lower quintile by 2005, while 57.8 percent of those in the lowest quintile in 1996 moved to a higher one by 2005.
In America, economic "class" is just a moment in time for most people.
