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:Yes, police officers and teachers are middle class espacially as college degrees become more common amongs these professions. But ''"the clerical workers, have -- unlike the accountants and blue-collar supervisors"'' are not middle middle class, but rather still lower middle class according to Weber - and according to what you have stated above, perfectly fit the lower middle class criteris with ''"incomes have fallen so dramatically from near the median, their work has become more mechanistic, and their job security has vanished. They are now subject to mass layoffs, and their subordinate role in life is broadcast at almost every turn."'' So, if I understand your point correctly, Fussell states that poice officers, elementry school teachers and nurses have risen into the middle class, while the other lower middle class professions those of clerical nature have fallen below the middle class treshold and are now working class. Is that correct? Thank you for your quick reply and contributing to Wikipedia! Regards, <b><font face="Arial" color="1F860E">[[User:gerdbrendel|Signature]]</font><font color="20038A"><sup>[[User:gerdbrendel|brendel]]</sup></font></b> 06:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Again, it is Fussell and not I who make the distinction. He still puts police officers, prison guards, and firefighters in the "high prole" category (skilled workers) due to danger on the job and nurses, likewise, because they do heavy lifting. Such people are not inferior to the middle class (Fussell's category) in income, but any change in the class status of their work requires a major shift of their educational axhievements to push them into different careers. Perhaps in nursing the RNs are middle-class due to their education, in contrast to the less professional LPNs and LVNs.
Clerical workers have, in contrast, been terribly debased in the sort of work that they do, in the pay that they receive, and the respect that they get. When full high-school educations were not the norm, these clerks had something to distinguish them against those who worked in factories as laborers. Now almost all of them have jobs run by machines as if they were on assembly lines. The job security that clerks used to have is no more, and for many the abandonment of the hope that clerical work offers a ladder of success leads them to improved economic conditions as factory workers.
Weber was right about the existence of a 'lower middle class', one that could improve itself through thrift and earnestness when he wrote about the classes. Those times are past. The clerks have been proletarized as completely as workers in the nastiest of sweatshops.
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