I'm from the UK and I think that the majority of people think you can't change class. You're born into a class, you can have the lifestyle of a different class if you make or lose a lot of money, if you then have children, they inherit your lifestyle class. This is not a formal rule in the slightest, but it's how most people here think/operate. I'm working class, enjoying a middle class lifestyle now, if I decide to have kids and my situation remains the same, they're middle class; I'm still working class.

In the US, we both deflate the open class-ist discussion prevalent in the UK by pretending we are above that, while hypocritically we conflate class with cash -- in effect you buy 'pedigree' which is why our growing nouveau riche are such exceptionally gormless, gaudy jackwagons who often exhibit the worst of all trait-sets: often milquetoast but boorish, pearl-clutching yet belligerent, all while terrified of everything "different"...and we're the greatest place on Earth.

It should be a condition in the DSM-V.

The thing that is so foreign to me in the UK is their academic culture.

There are people who literally think there are only two universities worth being at: Cambridge and Oxford. They are shocked when they find candidates from abroad turning down offers for permanent positions there or leaving their positions for somewhere else.

As a Brit, I’d agree that classicism is bad here, and it feels worse than the US. However, much of Europe is the same. E.g. France.

There's a facinating article on by Scott Alexander about classism in the US https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-fussell-on...

> No matter if you made millions, unless you have pedigree, you don't belong.

It works the other way also......... plenty members of our upper class aristocracy are penniless, but are, and remain, upper class.

I always find the US approach to equating money with class rather amusing.