During past centuries, when most "traditional" folk songs first appeared, today's class structure simply didn't exist. Yes, sure, there were class distinctions then as there are now, but society as a whole was quite different.

Prior to the mid 19th century, the "average" person, or "most people," lived in small agricultural communities. There was not such thing as a proletariat, or true "working class," in those days. A peasant is not exactly the same thing as an industrial worker ~ they're exploited by the ruling minority in entirely different manners.

In the 21st century, the average person works for a business of some sort, more or less as a "wage slave," whether one's emploper is a huge faceless corporation, a friendly mon-and-pop small business, or even one's own sole-propietorship (in which case, your clients can become your demanding and unreasonable "bosses."). Because most of our jobs are "white collar" office jobs with no heavy lifting, we all tend to think of ourselves as "middle class," even though our paycheck-to-paycheck existence may be very financially precarious.

It is undoubtedly true that Britain is more "class-obsessed" than the US, with a much deeper psychological involvement in an age-old class system.

In the US, everyone sees themselves as "middle class," but there are gigantic differences between the "lower-middle-class" person who has to think twice about spending every penny, and the "upper-middle-class" guy who can charge anything at any time on one of a dozen plastic cards, who can buy each of his kids a new car on the day they become old enough to drive, etc.

In both societies, however ~ indeed, in ALL current-day societies ~ our ideas about social and economic "class" are obsolete, and getting moreso everyday.

One of the above comments pretty much sums up the real issue: if a person has led an overprivileged life and has no experience of oppression, injustice, etc., that person is ill-equipped to sing much of our traditional repertoire with much genuine expressiveness. However, the ways in which a person can acquire an adequate "school-of-hard-knocks" education are quite different now from what they have been in the past.