[Martina]

I'm a boomer, and my friends are all teachers, social workers, admins at colleges, plus an under employed architect and an MPH who works construction. I have one friend in tech, so there's an exception. She makes a ton of money, but never seems to have a dime. Living in the Bay Area, I guess.

We never became real yuppies IMO. We never owned McMansions or bought new cars or valued that stuff. Good thing. We could not have afforded it.

We swim at public pools and go camping for vacations. I do think everyone has taken their kids to Europe once or twice, which is a privilege lots of folk do not have. People in my circle found work arounds for paying for their kids' college. Two of them got work at colleges so their kids could get free tuition. Two families relied on grandparents to help fund it. One was poor enough that her kids got good financial aid. That's it. The rest of us don't have kids.

My point is not all boomers became yuppies. Most of my friends did things like devoting huge amounts of time to their food coops or la leche league or slightly alternative institutions.

I do have connections, friends of friends, who did the yuppie transformation. They became lawyers, and after ten years at the ACLU or being a public defender, took a job at a firm and made serious money. Probably the most politically radical guy from my graduate school ended up at Harvard Law and then afterwards became a labor lawyer who helps big corporations fight discrimination lawsuits. What was that? A brain transplant? Actually he was originally from wealth. None of the rest of my friends were. One had lawyer parents but they grew up poor.

I am very wary of the entrenched upper middle class. They will do whatever it takes to keep their status, and they seem very anxious about it. I had an acquaintance, a lawyer, who didn't have a generous bone in his body. He ripped his ex-wife off in a divorce settlement. His lawyer daughter was the same. She lied on a mortgage application, which could have gotten her disbarred, to save a few bucks. One of his kids made a shitload of money in software, but didn't help another sister when she was transitioning out of a relationship. When my acquaintance's house got robbed, and his insurance didn't cover an expensive bike, his family members all made him feel like a fool. Right after he got robbed. Lovely people.

From my point of view, yuppies are a different breed. I know that a lot of people in my circle are relatively privileged. Home owners, health insurance, etc. But that is not the same as being wealth and status obsessed.