I got a 33; I also am a first generation upper middle class person with middle class parents. I took long distance buses, for example, when I was a college student, but not in the last 20 years (I am 60 years old). I had a job where I ached aftet a days work, but only for a few weeks when I was 18 years old. It is certainly true, however, that I have a better appreciation of lower middle class life than my friends whose parents were doctors or lawyers.

People making over $200,000 per year voted over 60% for Republican House candidates in 2010, and over 60% for Bush in 2004 (from CNN exit polls). It is true that the over $200,000 group voted narrowly for Obama over McCain, but that was due in part to McCain's inability to make a coherent economic argument. If Romney is the Republican nominee, I would expect him to win the over $200,000 demographic by at least 3-2 over Obama. The folks on Martha's Vineyard do not represent a random sample of wealthy people. The folks that work for my hedge fund are pretty solidly against Obama.

I went to graduate school at Purdue University, which is located in a small city in Indiana (West Lafayette). Much of the area's social life outside the university seems to be church-related, and young singles seem to join mainstream Protestant churches in order to meet people. I think this is common in small cities and towns in the Midwest, but it doesn't really make the region part of the Bible Belt in the sense that Alabama and Mississippi are. Most of the people I met in Young Republicans in the Lafayette-West Lafayette area seemed fairly secular in outlook, even though most belonged to Protestant churches. This was in the 1970s, however, and perhaps things have changed since then. But I suspect that there is still limited opportunity for social networking in small Midwestern towns other than the Protestant churches.

A joint major in Economics and Applied Mathematics is a good way to get hired onto a Wall Street trading floor. I encouraged my son to do this major at Brown University, and he in now trading credit default swaps at Citi. There are many people with STEM degrees employed as traders or quantitative research analysts on Wall Street, and those jobs pay very well.

Actuaries and statisticians are still predominantly male.