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The new elites are in tech, but they're not the rank and file. Making even $250k/yr may be top-5% for income and give you breathing room to make a few investmen

The new elites are in tech, but they're not the rank and file. Making even $250k/yr may be top-5% for income and give you breathing room to make a few investments, but it will never make you wealthy. That's lifetime earnings of about $10m before taxes, so you likely wouldn't get to fuck-you money ever, let alone with time to use it. There's a very serious discontinuity somewhere around the $1m/year mark where you get to the point that you don't have to work for the rest of your life while you're still young. There's another huge difference between that and the guys worth $100m+ who can have whatever they want, including financing insane research and construction projects, not just the normal comfortable middle-class lifestyle, and never run out of money. Putting those people in the same group as your average software engineer for socioeconomic purposes is ridiculous. Sure, I might have more in common with Zuckerberg than with a coal miner, but only just, and that's not saying much.

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CPLX 10y ago
> it will never make you wealthy. That's lifetime earnings of about $10m before taxes This thread has taught me that people in the valley or the HN echo chamber really sort of have no idea how most people live in this country, let alone around the world.
- rckclmbr 10y ago
  and you must have no idea how much it costs to live in the bay area. a dentist in arizona will have a higher net worth at retirement than a tech worker in the bay area.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    > and you must have no idea how much it costs to live in the bay area I live in New York City. I could probably grok the basic concept.
- refurb 10y ago
  The average American household (no individual) income is $52,000 (2014). You've got people on HN claiming that making 5x that makes them solidly middle class because they can't afford a home in one of the most expensive places in the world.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Exactly. The parent comment ignores the fact that in their scenario of "only" making $10MM in an entire career, they could spend as much as the average family for 20 years and have $9MM lying around in cash, plus interest. But, supposedly, not be wealthy.
    - GeneralMayhem 10y ago
      Well, if you make $10MM at $250k/yr over 40 years in California, you're only taking home maybe 65% of that. And you're presumably paying rent. Let's be generous and call it $24,000/yr, and say that you do incredibly well at saving and manage to put together a down payment after 5 years, so after that only $5000/yr (wild ballparking, I haven't done the math since I'm so far from being a homeowner) goes to interest/taxes rather than your own equity. At the end of 40 years, that puts you at $6.2M - a further 20% of which is tied up in housing equity - before any other expenses. That's a decent retirement, yes, but it's not rich in the way that the elites are rich. Not even close.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  I think what you don't realize is that most people are, in traditional terms, working class (proletariat). Relative to them, tech workers -- who are quite often in what is, in traditional terms, the middle class (the petit bourgeoisie) -- may seem like a narrow elite. This is an understandable perception, and there is a sense in which it is correct -- tech workers are elite workers. But they aren't the elite within the country, and the gap between tech workers and the elite is much greater than the gap between the average worker and the average tech worker. The elite (the haut bourgeoisie) are not "workers" at all.
- GeneralMayhem 10y ago
  I don't see the contradiction between what I said and what you said. Most people in this country, let alone around the world, aren't wealthy. Most of the "middle class", as used in contemporary American political rhetoric, are poor. Just because tech employees aren't generally wondering where their next meal (or even next few rent checks) will come from doesn't mean they're wealthy. The levels of income we're talking about for tech employees, especially in the SF area but also in most places in the US, will still force you to continue working for a salary for your entire adult life (until retirement age) or else eventually starve. You never get to the point where you can just quit. That's the distinction between us and Zuckerberg that comparing us to somebody making $50k doesn't expose: like them, we have to work and will probably never be anything more than comfortable with some luxuries. We're all proletariat - maybe bordering on petit bourgeoisie at the upper end, but still working for our money rather than having our money work for us.

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CPLX 10y ago

> it will never make you wealthy. That's lifetime earnings of about $10m before taxes This thread has taught me that people in the valley or the HN echo chamber really sort of have no idea how most people live in this country, let alone around the world.

rckclmbr 10y ago
and you must have no idea how much it costs to live in the bay area. a dentist in arizona will have a higher net worth at retirement than a tech worker in the bay area.
- CPLX 10y ago
  > and you must have no idea how much it costs to live in the bay area I live in New York City. I could probably grok the basic concept.
refurb 10y ago
The average American household (no individual) income is $52,000 (2014). You've got people on HN claiming that making 5x that makes them solidly middle class because they can't afford a home in one of the most expensive places in the world.
- CPLX 10y ago
  Exactly. The parent comment ignores the fact that in their scenario of "only" making $10MM in an entire career, they could spend as much as the average family for 20 years and have $9MM lying around in cash, plus interest. But, supposedly, not be wealthy.
  - GeneralMayhem 10y ago
    Well, if you make $10MM at $250k/yr over 40 years in California, you're only taking home maybe 65% of that. And you're presumably paying rent. Let's be generous and call it $24,000/yr, and say that you do incredibly well at saving and manage to put together a down payment after 5 years, so after that only $5000/yr (wild ballparking, I haven't done the math since I'm so far from being a homeowner) goes to interest/taxes rather than your own equity. At the end of 40 years, that puts you at $6.2M - a further 20% of which is tied up in housing equity - before any other expenses. That's a decent retirement, yes, but it's not rich in the way that the elites are rich. Not even close.
dragonwriter 10y ago
I think what you don't realize is that most people are, in traditional terms, working class (proletariat). Relative to them, tech workers -- who are quite often in what is, in traditional terms, the middle class (the petit bourgeoisie) -- may seem like a narrow elite. This is an understandable perception, and there is a sense in which it is correct -- tech workers are elite workers. But they aren't the elite within the country, and the gap between tech workers and the elite is much greater than the gap between the average worker and the average tech worker. The elite (the haut bourgeoisie) are not "workers" at all.
GeneralMayhem 10y ago
I don't see the contradiction between what I said and what you said. Most people in this country, let alone around the world, aren't wealthy. Most of the "middle class", as used in contemporary American political rhetoric, are poor. Just because tech employees aren't generally wondering where their next meal (or even next few rent checks) will come from doesn't mean they're wealthy. The levels of income we're talking about for tech employees, especially in the SF area but also in most places in the US, will still force you to continue working for a salary for your entire adult life (until retirement age) or else eventually starve. You never get to the point where you can just quit. That's the distinction between us and Zuckerberg that comparing us to somebody making $50k doesn't expose: like them, we have to work and will probably never be anything more than comfortable with some luxuries. We're all proletariat - maybe bordering on petit bourgeoisie at the upper end, but still working for our money rather than having our money work for us.