34 points. Not watching many of those shows or having money for anything apparently knocked me down quite a few. (also, can’t drink beer; it’s too bitter for me, as I’m a supertaster).
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I got a higher score than you, and my wife who was raised in a small, used trailer next to the freeway. My family was solidly in the 0-43 range.
EDIT
Read that wrong, I scored lower than you.
So what was your score?
Having worked in a factory and owned a pickup truck probably drove my score way up. Recognizing military ranks probably did as well, even though most of the ranks were officer ranks 
I got like two of the TV and movie things, so that couldn’t be it. Dumb quiz, kinda classist, and I’m not sure what point they were trying to make, because there were no questions about ideology and one bad one on religion.
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I’d have got a higher score if non-American neighbourhoods where people didn’t have degrees counted (I guess, anyway. I have no fucking idea who my 50 nearest neighbours are, let alone what education they have).
Ditto the < 50K population question.
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I answered no on the population question, because even the small rural towns I’ve lived in have been part of a metro area. I’ve never lived more than an hour and a half drive from a major city, even though I’ve lived in some nothing towns.
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I’m English. I’m not sure it’s possible to be 90 mins from a city anywhere. Depending on whether Truro counts, perhaps. Deepest Cornwall to Plymouth can be a bit of a drive.
I grew up in a village population ~6000, but there’s a city with a metro area of ~1m within walking distance (if you’re drunk enough and resent paying for taxis, anyway)
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I got a 60, I thought you wrote 53. My wife got like a 20-something.
I’m not actually sure he metrics, but I know having been around smokers was a full 7 points. I have been below the poverty line as an adult, and on a factory floor and worked seasonal labor work and recognized a few military ranks.
It seems to be more “real America” nonsense where urbanites are all magically rich folk and people from small towns are magically the driving force behind what is popular. To me it just seems geared to making people in the suburbs feel more “salt of the earth.”
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For someone who grew up in a trailer park, that should not be. Then again, the questions were not about growing up in a different socioeconomic class than one lives now, which seems important.
I have known several people with PhDs who smoke. Also IME artists and musicians smoke disproportionately. Then again, when I was in Indiana, about 1/3 of everybody (not just adults) smoked, and they weren’t exactly PhDs or artistic types. So yes, a huge proportion of blue collar people smoke, but there are also little smoker bubbles far outside that community.
That was probably a big part of it, and one that I feel they got right. I have worked factory work in college, where most kids were on their parents’ dime and those who weren’t wouldn’t do factory work. There are also people who started out blue collar but then went to college later on, but they are somewhat few and far between as well.
Seriously, have the people who made this quiz never met a military officer? Officers have almost always earned college degrees before becoming active duty military, and many of them are engineers. Some are from a suburban background, but by no means all. Officers also have their shit together like no other, but only on a superficial level.
BTW I have met a Major General maybe once, and that’s not exactly the type of person I hang out with 
All of this.
Also, the Bell Curve guy is also behind this…
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Boot might count, it’s about 90 minutes from Carlisle (depending on definition, see below) and Lancaster. There might be a few villages in Northumberland that are more than 90 minutes from Carlisle, Newcastle and Edinburgh. That’s only a few thousand people though
There are some oddities in the UK. The City of Carlisle has a population of 100,000 and an area of 1000km², but the urban area only has a population of about 75,000. Most of it is rural. Technically it is the biggest city in the UK.
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Having met a few people that came from nothing or worse, and are now doing well for themselves, they have tended to naturally adopt a hard line about the value of an individual - but they also had to in order to keep their ambitions alive through the circumstances. My wife acknowledges that she was extremely lucky, but she is very representative of the right-end of the Democratic Party.
EDIT
Also, how to you not recognize a two-star general? That seems painfully obvious, even if you don’t know Major General.
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I’m well past the left end of the Democratic Party because I realize that I mostly got to where I am through bumbling and luck. Individual effort matters, but everyone tries hard, so it’s not a differentiating factor. It’s more that there are some holes in the socioeconomic strata and I managed to slip through. The right wing wants to seal those holes because they’ve got theirs already, but I think we need more opportunity for advancement, not less. We need Democratic socialism. [quote=“emo_pinata, post:254, topic:94345”]
Also, how to you not recognize a two-star general? That seems painfully obvious, even if you don’t know Major General.
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There has to be someone who didn’t get that one
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But that’s what enlisted folks most have to get right: know your superiors.
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Aye. Like I said, dumb. But Gladwell dumb, so it’s only dumb if you think about it.
True, but when is a grunt going to meet a Major General? Those guys fight wars from thousands of miles away with pencils and paper. Maybe they’ll meet a full bird colonel… Maybe.
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You obviously haven’t traveled National Express. 
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I got 60…
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It was a weirdly oversampled statistical exercise, and done specifically to show that liberals are as insulated in their neighborhoods as neo-cons are in theirs.
We’re all in some kind of bubble, insulated from knowledge of what “others” are doing except filtered thru media of one kind or another. One of the big problems we’re facing in the US is that most people take their filtered knowledge and give it as much weight as a first-hand view. Add in social media that, through their clever algorithms, gives you ‘likes’ and hearts and other people who think just like you, and people may never see “the other side”, let alone know that there are more than two sides.
eta: I got 56.
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Not surprising at all… unless you have a conservative bubble understanding of who liberals are 
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True, but in my case, all my (somewhat substantial) experience on military bases was doing engineering work for military customers 
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