Debt and class

This effort by Zoe Williams is truly tragic - in that she makes a decent point without substantiating it.
She claims the middle class is more willing than the working class to get into debt to buy big-ticket items like housing and university education.
I reckon this is right. But Zoe doesn't spell out why. Here are three theories:
1. The availability heuristic. People from posher backgrounds grow up surrounded by rich people. People from poorer backgrounds are more likely to grow up surrounded by the the extreme poor. This is obvious. But the effect is not. It means posh  people are brought up to see the upside from borrowing - the successful business, the nice house. Scum like me, on the other hand, are brought up to see the downside - having to hide behind the settee when the debt collector comes round. So, posher people are more willing to borrow.
2. Self-confidence. Posh folk are brought up to believe they can succeed if only they work hard. Us scum have no such illusions. So we see debt as a millstone whilst posh folk see it as a stepping stone.
3. Family networks. Middle class youngsters have support networks - family and friends - to borrow from if things get rough. Working class kids have no such fall-back. They have no parents to help with the mortgage, or provide board and lodging whilst they do the unpaid work experience that sets them up for a well-paid job after university.
These mechanisms reveal something important. Class divisions scar us from childhood - more so, arguably, than paedophiles do.
Zoe should have spelt this out. Instead, she gives us this:

A neo-Marxist would say that wasting money on fripperies is a response to being excluded from the education (and, ultimately, power structure) of society.

It's a view - but it has little to do with Marx.
What we need is a little less pseudo-Marxism and a bit more real Marxism.

Comments

[Umbongo]

"What we need is a little less pseudo-Marxism and a bit more real Marxism" . . er . . like, for instance, the labour theory of value? Very profound and, of course, correct - well according to this analysis http://www.marxist.com/Economy/theory_of_value_1.html
I just hope you were joking.

[dearieme]

It wasn't all that long ago that respectable people, middle class and working class, shunned debt and pointed to the rough working class and their propensity for debt - the drink and the gee-gees, you know. When did it all change?

[chris]

Umbongo - of course the labour theory of value is gibberish. But, as John Roemer has shown, it's not an essential feature of Marxist economics.
Why does a belief in the LTV discredit Marx but not Adam Smith?

[Umbongo]

Agreed they were both wrong on the LTV. Unfortunately my ignorance encompasses Roemer's analysis so I'll provisionally take your word on that. However, although criticsm and/or support for any theory, if the argument is well founded, demands respect forgive me if I suspect that, given Roemer's political beliefs, his analysis might be a trifle self-serving.

[dsquared]

The labour theory of value is not gibberish; decidedly less so than the aggregate production function, which is regularly used on this blog.

[chris]

Do I really regularly use an aggregate production function? If so, it's a concession to neoclassical economics for rhetorical purposes only - you're entirely right that it's gibberish. (I'm pretty sure that pointing it out in job interviews has cost me a job or two.)

[bird dog]

What is all of this gibberish?

[Hilary Wade]

But all this is surely just an argument for the re-introduction of grammar schools? My mother came from what you'd call a working-class background (her mother was a cab driver) but got into Harrogate Grammar thanks to inherent brightness, and was thenceforth surrounded by what you've called a "heuristic" of middle-class people; hard-working, book-buying, aspirational. She's one of the best-read people I know.

Of course by the time my generation went to school, all that had gone by the board in the name of social engineering. So, if you've come away from it all with a lingering self-image as "scum", I'd say, blame Shirley Williams.

[Latex]

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