I agree with all the other Americans who have said that Americans pretend class doesn't exist in any real sense, when it totally totally does. This actually makes it harder for people who are trying for class mobility: no one told my cousin A to enunciate "shouldn't" instead of pronouncing it "shunnunt," she had to figure that out herself. The kid code switches like a champ, bless her; it's part of why it's easy to help her out.
One of the reasons Americans don't want to talk about class with all its money and education and priority variance is that it changed enough after WWII that you have a lot of people like me, whose family's class varies within the same side of the family rather than just by marriage. The GI Bill was a really big factor in this. (Basically you can never go wrong by looking into the GI Bill as an effect on American society post-WWII.) As a result, my grandmother was one of thirteen kids from a farm family, and their descendents range from comfortably lower-upper class to that range that has fallen out of working class due to lack of work available and is now just plain poor. People mostly don't want to go around elucidating that "we are intellectual upper middle whereas this cousin whom we see fairly often is lower working class clinging with teeth and nails to that." It's even less comfortable than it would be with people outside your family.
Confusing class and money seems deliberate to me, because it's easier. You can say, "Well, I have $x/year coming into my house, and that person has $y/year," there, done. That doesn't take into account where you vacation, what kind of car you drive (even if you bought it used), what you think are acceptable interests for your children, etc. I sometimes shorthand the class my dad and my roommate grew up in as "drove an old car but by God the kids got piano lessons," and Americans know who those people are even if they don't want to call it class.
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One of the reasons Americans don't want to talk about class with all its money and education and priority variance is that it changed enough after WWII that you have a lot of people like me, whose family's class varies within the same side of the family rather than just by marriage. The GI Bill was a really big factor in this. (Basically you can never go wrong by looking into the GI Bill as an effect on American society post-WWII.) As a result, my grandmother was one of thirteen kids from a farm family, and their descendents range from comfortably lower-upper class to that range that has fallen out of working class due to lack of work available and is now just plain poor. People mostly don't want to go around elucidating that "we are intellectual upper middle whereas this cousin whom we see fairly often is lower working class clinging with teeth and nails to that." It's even less comfortable than it would be with people outside your family.
Confusing class and money seems deliberate to me, because it's easier. You can say, "Well, I have $x/year coming into my house, and that person has $y/year," there, done. That doesn't take into account where you vacation, what kind of car you drive (even if you bought it used), what you think are acceptable interests for your children, etc. I sometimes shorthand the class my dad and my roommate grew up in as "drove an old car but by God the kids got piano lessons," and Americans know who those people are even if they don't want to call it class.