>I don't know many people who would consider someone at the 96% percentile of income as "rich".
Hmm? I'm getting $240,000 in household income yearly. I'd call that rich, I think lots of people I know would call that rich. Quarter mil per year is good money.
>Even folks at the 99% are still basically just upper middle class.
Huh? I'm getting $400,000 a year in income. That's rich
This strikes me as the same thing poor people do, to always define poverty as just below themselves but since this community has many people with large salaries, we define rich as just above us, just out of reach enough. If you pull in $400,000 a year you aren't middle class, you're rich. Accept it.
I agree. Someone making $240,000 per year makes consumer choices every hour that half or more of Americans cannot fathom. And likewise, someone making $25k/year is making completely different choices. From what I understand, a large portion of both considers themselves middle class.
"Middle Class" is the taxonomic equivalent to silly putty. It can be stretched any which way. We need it to be so to deal with the vast inequalities of our society.
"If you pull in $400,000 a year you aren't middle class, you're rich."
This is from the character Gordon Gecko, in the 1987 movie "Wall Street":
"Wake up, will ya, pal? If you're not inside, you're outside, okay? And I'm not talking a $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable, I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player, or nothing. Now, you had what it took to get into my office; the real question is whether you got what it takes to stay."
Wealthy people live on capital. That is a traditional definition of what it means to be wealthy. If you have to work, at all, then you are not wealthy.
No, that's my point, you're just defining 'rich' as the next step up. If you are earning a 99 percentile income you're rich. Gordon Gecko or not, you may not be uber-wealthy yacht-buying or anything like that but there's no way someone who makes $400,000 can be called middle-class at all.
>Wealthy people live on capital. That is a traditional definition of what it means to be wealthy. If you have to work, at all, then you are not wealthy.
That's not traditional at all. Doctors are traditionally referred to as wealthy and they work. You're saying a CEO (of a smaller company) isn't wealthy? A hedge fund manager isn't wealthy? Of course these people are wealthy and yet they'd all probably still have to work.
It's totally inane to define middle class as everything from 25%-99.5%.
I think you’re defining middle class differently. To you, it’s by some definition “middle income”. To the grandparent it’s more about social class (having to work for a living).
Doctors achieve higher social status despite having to work. So do celebrities, etc.
I think you’re both right. Some people can turn 400k a year into real wealth, others will just be working joes with bigger car payments.
Also iirc in California you need like 1.5mm in hhi for top 1% so that’s factoring into this too.
Doctors are rich. If they have to work to keep their nice car/house/boat/lifestyle then they aren't wealthy. Of course, there are wealthy doctors, but the definition of wealth is financial independence, not any set income level.
Rich and wealthy are usually synonyms, and seem to match pretty well what you call wealthy. I think what you label “rich” would be better labeled “high income”.
> If you pull in $400,000 a year you aren't middle class, you're rich. Accept it.
In the simplest form, in a basically capitalist economy, if you live off the proceeds of selling labor to capitalists, you are working class; if you live off a balanced mix of labor and capital income, or by applying your own labor to your own capital, you are middle class; if you live by renting other people's labor to apply to your capital, you are in the capitalist class.
Just as in a feudal economy, no amount of income will, by itself, move one from the merchant class to the nobility (though it might help buy influence which might be used to effect such a transition), no amount of income on its own will move you out of the working class in a capitalist economy, though investing that income in productive capital might.
Ridiculous. So Kevin Garnett, who earned $334m playing in the NBA is working class, but the guy next door to me who owns a flooring business (run out of his van & home) with one employee is in the capitalist class... A difference without distinction.
One is rich beyond most people's wildest dreams, the other is very much middle class.
> but the guy next door to me who owns a flooring business (run out of his van & home) with one employee is in the capitalist class
Probably middle class, since presunably if the business is run out of his van and home, his applying his own labor to it is vital.
> One is rich beyond most people's wildest dreams
Wealth and class are correlated but separate axes of variation.
You know how many pro-athletes end up destitute shortly after they stop being able to sell their labor at high prices? They dependence is the hallmark of the working class.
Now, it's true, they if you are making what a star player does in any of the major sports, you have enough money coming in that you could easily buy yourself into the capitalist class; but until and unless you do that, you haven't changed the basic manner in which you relate to the economic system, and remain a rich worker, not a member of any other class.
You missed where I said he had one employee. So he's a capitalist? These definitions are useless when it comes to evaluating wealth and the meaning of being rich. Being a "capitalist" by your definition doesn't mean being wealthy or rich by any stretch, while being a "worker" can result in unimaginable wealth.
He'd be a capitalist if his own labor was an insignificant share of the labor applied to his capital; a small business with one non-owner employee rarely would be that way (it could be, if, e.g., the employee did all the work and the owner was purely a passive investor.)
> These definitions are useless when it comes to evaluating wealth and the meaning of being rich.
They have a lot more to do with wealth than income level does, though, yes, class and wealth are not identical.
> Being a "capitalist" by your definition doesn't mean being wealthy or rich by any stretch
Surviving as one certainly does, unless you can consistently, year over year, manage improbably high returns (and if you can, you'll probably be quite wealthy before long even if you didn't start there; instantaneous inconsistencies between class economic patterns and wealth are more common than durable ones.)
> while being a "worker" can result in unimaginable wealth.
It can in theory, though it doesn't very often in practice, even among the narrow slice of the labor-selling population who experience some period with the kind of income which suggests the possibility of such an outcome.
Well if we wanna talk about the difference between bourgeois and proletariat that's one thing but that's not the same thing as lower/middle/upper class.
I would even refute the notion that you must be a capitalist in that sense to be in the modern nobility.
$200k yearly, consistently, for N years, managed well, is almost certainly rich. 200k yearly without any further context doesn't say as much. Yearly income, by itself, may be here today and gone tomorrow (or next year).
Hmm? I'm getting $240,000 in household income yearly. I'd call that rich, I think lots of people I know would call that rich. Quarter mil per year is good money.
>Even folks at the 99% are still basically just upper middle class.
Huh? I'm getting $400,000 a year in income. That's rich
This strikes me as the same thing poor people do, to always define poverty as just below themselves but since this community has many people with large salaries, we define rich as just above us, just out of reach enough. If you pull in $400,000 a year you aren't middle class, you're rich. Accept it.