Having recently finished "Hillbilly Elegy," this interview reminded me of similar themes. America doesn't really have a meaningful discourse on class I suspect because the Soviet machine dominated it for so long it became a kind of third-rail topic. If you are from a working class background, or find yourself navigating it, what you notice about people who have left it is they leave behind that very "dignity," (or ho…
I think there is a specific problem in the discussion of how class is discussed in the US today, which is that Americans think of class in quantitative terms, i.e. it is about how much money you make. But these theories start with Adam Smith who saw the primary division as being between working class (labor), landlord, and employer classes. To Smith, you have two different rentier classes and a working class, and the difference is qualitative. (Now, assuming Picketty is right that returns on capital are greater than economic growth, qualitative differences lead to quantitative differences, but one is cart and one is horse.)
Until we start recognizing that we as software developers are working class too at least until we cash in enough options to own real assets, we can't have this discussion.