Dear Futureworkers,
Can anyone out there tell me about or refer me to information
about the World Bank? Who set up this small body of people
with such immense influence in the world and when, for
instance and how do they relate to these other world financial
bodies, like the World Bank?
While I am making this request for information, I am also
curious about the US or North American use of the terms
'middle' and 'working class'. They seem different to the way
these terms were used in the past in England but perhaps we
have moved towards a North American type of class system,
along with everything else that has become so Americanised
(for good and ill) over here. In this new class system, as I
understand it, a new respectable middle-working class is
differentiated from a resurrected new rough more or less
permanently unemployed so-called 'underclass' that is
regionally and racially stigmatised as well as being policed,
housed/ghettoised and subject to social security regulations
and workfare etc. Education and training also contributes to
this social segregation by ensuring the so-called 'underclass'
lack any worthwhile qualifications. Meanwhile those in the
middle work desperately to conform so that they do not fall
into this social abyss beneath them and the same old ruling
class of big employers and capitalists carry on as ever even
though they get dropped out of the usual class categorisations
- whether in common parlance or in academic understandings.
What makes this confusing is that the old understandings of
the terms 'middle' and 'working' continue to exist and can
become reanimated in certain circumstances. Is this how it is
in the USA? It looks that way in many of your films.
Another idea I get about the USA from films mainly - never
having been there, tho I wld like to visit New England and New
York on day - is that one part of it is incredibly different
from another part and that often these differences - despite
the size of the country spreading them out - can be almost
cheek by jowl, unlike eg. in the UK where classically there
were middle-class suburbs and working-class districts. Now
however, one place is become more different to another, though
the basic pattern - inner city 'underclass' council estates
Cf. 'middle-working' suburbs/ the rest - is the same but the
pattern, especially evident in the different patterns of
education provision, is different and government policy
encourages that differentiation - against former national
norms and standards, eg. of wages. Any thoughts of this also?
Hoping for an answer to one or both of these questions.
with thanks also to Ed Weick - was it? who responded
thoughtfully to my previous post. (The argument that the rich
have benefitted at the expense of the poor through tax and
benefit changes plus privatisation of former public services
which leads to trapping poor people in deteriorating housing,
reliant upon irregular bus services without cars, a basic
minimalist health service without private insurance etc etc,
could be sustained I think.)
Patrick Ainley
