“And though upper-class status doesn’t always entail having money, it does entail some social proximity to money. Real poverty, it has been observed, is about social isolation as much as it is about material deprivation; the poor don’t have the sort of friendship networks that the advantaged draw upon.29 That’s why we may balk at calling a penniless graduate student “poor.” Class is one way that you benefit from the money in the pockets of friends and acquaintances.”
