GURPS: Beverly Hillbillies (or: annoyed by GURPS' handling of the nouveau riche)

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Or maybe the rules about "classless meritocracies" that limit purchased Status to 2 levels do not accurately describe US society, and were actually intended for societies that are more meritocratic than the US?

I would not call the US a 'classless meritocracy'. The modern US is somewhat less class-conscious than the USA of WWII, and certainly less so than the USA of the Gilded Age, but classless we certainly are not. We have an upper class that can be divided into 'upper upper (the 1% of the population that controls so much of the wealth), 'middle upper', and 'lower upper', the latter overlapping a bit with the vanishing upper middle class. Then we have a shrinking middle class, and a growing lower class, both of which can likewise be divided in three or more. Just because it's possible to get out of the class you were born in (though it's getting harder to do that), and people in the class above yours aren't generally allowed to screw you over without consequences nearly as badly as they used to be, doesn't men social classes don't exist.

I don't so much want to start an argument about this, but you hit a point that I felt really needed correction. I suppose you might be using a different definition of 'classless meritocracy' than I've ever seen before, though (that's not sarcasm, and I'm not trying to be rude).