Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/07/2016
12:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Location
The Draft House Westbridge
Dr. Helena Marconell
Abstract:
The concept of social class is changing rapidly with many mainstreams influencing the way we view it not only on ourselves but in others too. You might have less means than others but you still think you’re fine, in a normal kind of class; you go by, you like what you like and this is fine, should you need anything else?
And this seems to apply to poorer and richer alike. The feeling of being more or less seems to have transformed onto ‘I’m fine, I survive, I make ends meet’. However, before the advent of media platforms and hidden investments in tax havens, people had a more rigid way of who was who with a regular tension in the middle and poorer strata of society.
Let’s face it, the rich have always been the rich and like a plague, they pass it on to their descendants. The problem I see now is that the rich are continuously being richer and the poor are poorer than ever. This is baffling in an era of equality and supposedly more work, shouldn’t it be easier to be upwardly mobile? This is reinforced by the fact that the middle class seems to move like a wave according to the job availabilities, property prospects and so on. You might have a job today, and be in the street tomorrow, literally in the street and suddenly become as poor as you could be with many people ending up going back to parental homes in order to survive. And then going to the parental home does not make them any richer, they still feel poor, without the means to be independent. This is what I call a social dissolution, one day you‘ve got money, a rented or a mortgaged flat, the following day car is gone, even the door mat disappears. But the rich seem to be doing alright, as long as there are tax heavens to hide their wealth and create these massive black holes where the wealth of the whole world is being absorbed into, they are fine. Do you think that we need a social class revolution?
I will also bring a little quiz to prove some of these points and more, see how we all fair. For instance, would going to the opera make you feel more ‘upwardly mobile’ than you are now? Do you like going to the opera? Would you go if that was considered the ‘thing’ to do in the new group you just joined in that big promotion at work?