“New Yorker Alexandra Penney relates how she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff and is now faced with having to lay off her three-day- a-week maid, Yolanda. ‘I wear a classic clean white shirt every day of the week. I have about 40 white shirts. They make me feel fresh and ready to face whatever battles I may be fighting …’ she wrote, but without Yolanda, ‘How am I going to iron those shirts so I can still feel like a poor civilized person?’ excerpt from “The Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore” by Brabara Ehrenreich on AlterNet Based on the account above, which of the following socioeconomic “class distinctions” best describes Alexandra Penney? A. poor
B. middle-class
C. lower-class
D. nouveau richer
E. nouveau poor