My blue collar friends are more fun than my white collar friends? (wife, children)
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???? Enzyme detergents are what ages blue collared rednecks???
(please note - "redneck" is my take of GG's description, not my own description or opinion of blue collar workers).
Among the many other things I listed, yes... they do contribute to premature aging, by interfering with the body's self-regulation (...and by contributing to allergy. A severely allergic person is likely to become less active, etc.).
Among the many other things I listed, yes... they do contribute to premature aging, by interfering with the body's self-regulation (...and by contributing to allergy. A severely allergic person is likely to become less active, etc.).
Interesting. Can you share some links to this info.? I'd like to learn more. Thanks.
Wow. Do you stereotype much? I go to ballgames and talk about sports, and I am a white-collar woman.
Extensive grounds? Social strategies? My parents are both white-collar people but they would never fit with the group you describe. Is this an Oregon thing? It is not descriptive of white-collar people I know. Also, there are blue-collar people where I live that could buy and sell the people you describe. They are farmers and they own thousands upon thousands of acres of land, and they are healthy because they work for a living. My friends are white-collar because that just happens to be who I am around, but I don't think I am better than blue-collar people. I don't like snobs of any kind.
Are you 'white collar' or 'grey collar'?
Yes. We live in (or will return to, if the new house is ever finished) the more expensive part of the wealthiest town in Oregon. There is a minimum homesite size. Our old house was on a parcel over an acre and under 5 acres, with neighboring properties of similar size. The women tended to be economists or attorneys, and their husbands tended to be in STEM fields. The new house is on a site over 20 and under 80 acres. The new neighbors, I'm told, tend to have inherited larger corporations, or are founders/owners of IT or biotech concerns. I may or may not ever meet them. Can't see their houses from ours, except from one dormer in the uppermost attic....or via GoogleMap. I'll probably meet them at the private athletic club in the city (where our 'minority' status bumped us to the top of the waiting list). It will be nice to say, when introduced, "You know, we may be neighbors..."
Anyway, I grew up in a tarpaper shack without running water. My wildest dreams included working myself up to the point where I'd be good enough to work for rich people, having enough food, and having enough money saved up to not have to worry about it all the time. Oh, yes! And I even dreamed of owning a used car, and having a glamorous garage apartment of my very own. Everything else has been lagniappe. Never dreamed an 'ugly skag' like me would find a man - or that I'd have kids. Being 'liked' was not even on my wish list as a child. I did dream, though, of having nice enough clothes, and being clean enough, that people would not hit me or scream insults at me any more. So, if people like me, that's great. If not, I'm getting more out of life than I ever dared dream was possible... Liked? Respected? Mneh!
Big farmers are not really 'blue collar'. Depending upon the individual, they could be described as aristocrats, business owners, etc. Agribusiness is a profession in its own right. The farmers I know have degrees in Business Administration and/or Agronomy, and hardly live the happy-go-lucky, irresponsible lives the OP describes. If anything, they live the sort of lives that white collar professionals do. They start preparing for their careers as children, work very long days throughout work lives which extend into their seventies... or eighties (if cancer from the farm chemicals doesn't kill them first), and live very prudently.
The farmers I know start estate planning as soon as they are out of school (if not before), and devote considerable effort toward passing on the means of production (the land, implements, co-op stock...) to future generations. And really it's important to remember that farming is horrendously capital-intensive, with a profit picture which has to be averaged out over decades - even generations. Some entire generations never see an average profit. The time lag between effort and reward is astonishingly long. And I will add that many farmers, despite lifetimes of extreme effort, lose everything.
When I arrived at college as a seventeen-year-old, the aristocratic girls who took me, the ragged little Indian girl, under their collective wing were from families of big farmers. The agricultural crisis caused by Kennedy and Johnson had bankrupted their hard-working families. They may have been aristocrats, but they could and did drive tractors. Some had 'scrapped cotton' (picking remnants by hand) to buy their school supplies, their prom gown, even their deb gowns. Or they picked up pecans. During Economics study group sessions, while we were quizzing each other, or reading highlighted text, multitasking, they would meticulously extract the meat from Black Walnuts, to sell. Or, they'd hand-shell Pecans... or hand-alter Italian knits we'd dug out of Steinmart's now-gone Saks Fifth Avenue sales... carefully stitching each row of loops in a knit seam...
Those girls' mothers and grandmothers, while they may have been former debutantes and Chi Omegas, could and would dig their own ditches, fell their own trees, run after an errant herd of cattle, fearlessly yelling "Hyaaaaaah hyaaaaah!" like their intrepid Viking ancestresses, patrolling the Fiords when the menfolk were at sea.
Anyway, those girls arrived at college almost as poor as was I. Their families have recovered, over the ensuing decades, going from deep-in-the-red to solidly in-the-black. Their fathers worked themselves to death by their fifties. So their brothers (and sisters...girls get Ag degrees too, these days) took over running the farm corporations. And the girls and their husbands have done well in their own right. So yes, I know about big farmers. I would hardly, though, call any of the ones I know "blue collar".
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 01-29-2013 at 06:42 PM..
Gloria, I am not going to get into a contest with you about who is the wealthiest. My family has never been the type to do that, and we do not lord it over people who have less than us. It does seem like people who are new to money are the ones who enjoy bragging about it and showing off their possessions. People who are born to money don't feel the need to prove their wealth because they know that wealth does not buy happiness or in your case a humble attitude.
I would say that people with bachelor's degrees ONLY, and who aren't uptight, are the most fun of all ... having friends who range from blue-collar (seen some reverse snobbery) to highly educated professionals (who have been programmed by their extensive education and can't let their hair down, with Top 10 MBA investment bankers being the worst). Clarification: I do not have investment banker friends, I only know them cursively and I'm certain they wouldn't want to hang out with me, which is fine.
My only contention with this post is how you lump all white collar workers together. Your post really describes a different calibre altogether. They're white collar, but the fabric used is Loro Piana. Not woven-in-Shanghai for Dockers.
The white collar workers I have encountered (middle and upper middle class; Long Island, NY) break several of your assertions, which fit more into the upper class or certain aspirant households of the upper middle class. Everyone has television. And worse still nattering on about sports is seemingly ubiquitous. Many in finance and i-banking are the worst. However, many of the established professionals in that (aged 40-55) were ballsy high-testosterone Irish and Italian high school athlete "types" from decidedly working class homes. The next generation are coming from elite colleges from higher up on the social ladder, but a number newly minted analysts with Citi/Goldman/JP Morgan/BNY Mellon/Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi/ANZ/RBS etc etc still fill up my facebook feed with sporting news of the day. Yet as one observes the seeming gradual shift upwards in born socioeconomic status in i-banking, the religious devotion to sports seems to be on the decline in that group.
The white collar workers I encounter in my region are generally too exhausted (or uninterested) to pursue much else beyond work. They get up, go to work, come home, eat, watch "Dancing with the Stars," "American Idol," or "Downton Abbey," and then proceed to collapse in bed. Occasionally, a gym session will sneak into the schedule. Few seem inclined to read much (I don't consider mass-market paperbacks to be of much significance), travel, explore new hobbies etc.
Yes, blue collar individuals are more fun with regard to their activities but it comes at a price. They are more fun and down-to-earth but they are also pretty intolerant and closed minded when it comes to race, religion, sexual orientation, and nationality. So that fun attitude comes with a price. I agree that white collar individuals can be boring with regard to their interests but at least the majority of them seem to be fairly open minded, well traveled, and well educated. Before people get mad at me and call me out for stereotyping, call a spade a spade. Look, if we are going to be un p.c. and candid, call it like it is. You can't say blue collar people are much more fun and grounded without also calling out their flaws.
Last edited by azriverfan.; 01-29-2013 at 09:44 PM..
Have you ever noticed this difference with white collar and blue collar people?
As I have a white collar job I suppose I am a white collar guy. However, I was raised in a working class family in a working class neighborhood. So, I think I have a sense of what you're experiencing but I have not experienced it with any significance myself.
[my blue and white collar friends are equally interesting]
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