While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely. Alissa Quart More Quotes by Alissa Quart More Quotes From Alissa Quart Instead of working to give robots personhood status, we should concentrate on protecting our human workers. If that means developing a more cooperative approach to ownership of autonomous trucks so millions of drivers are not left out in the literal cold, so be it. Alissa Quart statusmorerobotscold To be 'squeezed' is to be bound by a very American psychological and socio-economic predicament. Being squeezed involves one's finances, one's social status, and one's self-image. Alissa Quart self-imagestatusamericanbeing Economically anxious, many parents see their children's accomplishments as a sort of insurance against the financial challenges of old age; high-achieving kids, this logic goes, will become high-earning adults and therefore be better able to help Mom and Dad pay for the assisted-living facility in a few decades. Alissa Quart parentsagechallengeschildren 'Middle class' used to mean having two children and sending them to high-quality public schools, or even occasionally to private schools. It meant new brown Stride Rite Mary Janes with little purple and silver flowers when the old shoes were pinching the toes. Alissa Quart flowersnewshoeschildren Money and one of its embodiments, social class, are both riveting and mysterious to children. And if we don't challenge today's stigma around class status, it will warp a new generation's experience of an even more important class - the kind in which they learn. And that's one thing we simply can't afford. Alissa Quart experiencemoneytodaychildren Our social fabric is sundered. GoFundMe and the other crowdfunding sites that have proliferated since 2010 are an example of what has sprung up in its place, what I have called America's dystopian social net. That is, we now require private solutions to what are public problems. Alissa Quart problemsplacenowamerica The increasingly progressive messages in marketing campaigns are clearly a mercenary attempt to entice millennials: they are trying to be 'woke.' Alissa Quart wokemillennialsmarketingtrying If we could support school curricula about social class, we might discuss the full complexity of 'wealth' within the parameters of our children's educational lives. Out of these lesson plans, we might talk more about what society values - and whether it rewards the right things. Alissa Quart supportsocietychildrenschool The daily deluge of tales of lechery and trauma holds a hidden but crucial truism: sexual harassment routinely feeds on income inequality. After all, it's much harder to exploit an equal. Alissa Quart hiddendailyharassmentinequality The middle class is a group defined by more than just money: it also leans on credentials, education, aspirations, assets, and, of course, household income. Alissa Quart groupmoneyeducationclass There are things that neuroscience is useful for in terms of understanding behavior, but there are also things it is not all that useful for, like understanding the nuances of our reactions to poetry. Alissa Quart likebehaviorunderstandingpoetry Giftedness gives you this amazing tool kit for handling self-discipline and gives you an area of knowledge, but then it also gives you this weird set of aspirations. Alissa Quart weirdamazingyouknowledge Piercing minds go mute around poetry. It is imagined to be overly technical, like advanced arithmetic; otherworldly, priestess-like; suffocatingly personal; excessively decorative; exhaustingly bourgeois or tiringly avant-garde. Alissa Quart personalgolikepoetry As consumers, we can pressure corporations both to monitor and improve workplace conditions overseas - when inspections reveal violations, these companies should address the gaps immediately. Alissa Quart revealworkplaceshouldpressure In a lot of ways, I had a wonderful childhood. Alissa Quart wayshadchildhoodwonderful The United States is the richest and also the most unequal country in the world. Alissa Quart richestmostcountryworld Having been built in the fashion I was as a child - created and then deflated - has left me with a distinct feeling of failure. Because I did not live up to my precocity, I experience it to be like a cross between a has-been and a never-was. Alissa Quart mefailureexperiencefashion There are schoolteachers around the country that work second jobs after their teaching duties are done: one woman in North Dakota I spoke to was heading off to clean houses after the final bell in order to pay her rent. Alissa Quart womandoneworkcountry Precariousness is not just a working-class thing. Alissa Quart working-classthingjust Like politics, all status is ultimately local - people compare themselves to those they live near. Alissa Quart statuslivepoliticspeople
