"Just because you get into a PhD program at Harvard or freelance for a magazine doesn’t mean you don’t come from a rural town or aren’t still part of a community that includes your blue-collar or Trump-voting relatives."
I'm trying to get a grasp on this and it seems like you're making the argument that a PhD student should be considered the working class because all jobs should simply be reduced into jobs in the previous argument but here you then extend the definition of the working class beyond the job to cultural ties. I get that's supposed to address another point but your argument very strongly hinges on all jobs being reduced into jobs. A 15 usd per hour full time job is not that far off from 25k a year but the payoff is entirely different. You're expected to get a PhD which simply opens up more job opportunities than any Starbucks worker may expect. There are tons of people working minimum wage jobs for a decade in the same position and these can be really physical jobs like construction or something. Besides that, there needs to be an impetus for a worker to feel like they're in a different class and the discussion is about whether PhD candidates actually are in a worker class or are wholly separate from it. The inconsistency here doesn't seem to serve your point.
Regarding perceived class positions: Any occupation that requires physical leisure is by definition of a different class than manual labor and service. From Plato to now I don't think the perception of that has changed. The guy who is ruining his knees installing floors and making 80k is perceived beneath the professor who grades papers and lectures for 45k, despite the real class difference. I think Sessions is correct that any attempt to collapse those classes and elide those differences on mere economic grounds is off on the wrong foot.
"Just because you get into a PhD program at Harvard or freelance for a magazine doesn’t mean you don’t come from a rural town or aren’t still part of a community that includes your blue-collar or Trump-voting relatives."
I'm trying to get a grasp on this and it seems like you're making the argument that a PhD student should be considered the working class because all jobs should simply be reduced into jobs in the previous argument but here you then extend the definition of the working class beyond the job to cultural ties. I get that's supposed to address another point but your argument very strongly hinges on all jobs being reduced into jobs. A 15 usd per hour full time job is not that far off from 25k a year but the payoff is entirely different. You're expected to get a PhD which simply opens up more job opportunities than any Starbucks worker may expect. There are tons of people working minimum wage jobs for a decade in the same position and these can be really physical jobs like construction or something. Besides that, there needs to be an impetus for a worker to feel like they're in a different class and the discussion is about whether PhD candidates actually are in a worker class or are wholly separate from it. The inconsistency here doesn't seem to serve your point.
Regarding perceived class positions: Any occupation that requires physical leisure is by definition of a different class than manual labor and service. From Plato to now I don't think the perception of that has changed. The guy who is ruining his knees installing floors and making 80k is perceived beneath the professor who grades papers and lectures for 45k, despite the real class difference. I think Sessions is correct that any attempt to collapse those classes and elide those differences on mere economic grounds is off on the wrong foot.