9 ms·
There is a linguistic problem here - extending the term 'middle class' to hide prevailing poverty in the US. You are not middle class if: - you will lose home
by tempz 9y ago
There is a linguistic problem here - extending the term 'middle class' to hide prevailing poverty in the US.
You are not middle class if:
- you will lose home, car if you are out of job for 6-10 months;
- you don't take 30 days vacation a year;
- you cannot afford health services without going to debt;
- you cannot send your kids to university;
- your diet is mostly junk food because you can't afford fresh stuff.
If some of the above is true, you are poor.
- solotronics 9y agoby your measure most people in the USA are poor I would guess about 80%+
- johnchristopher 9y agoWhich bullet points - if not all- would you exclude from the list to make it relevant ?
- jaggederest 9y agoThe only one which is not a routine part of the middle class experience these days is eating strictly junk food because you can't afford anything better. Every other part of that entire list is, sadly enough, "normal middle class" in the US.
- TaylorAlexander 9y agoOne interesting factoid I know is that 50% of Americans represent 2% of the income in America. “The shrinking middle class” is a phrase that is part of common discourse here for a reason - I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of Americans fit the parent comment’s definition.
- orangecat 9y agoOne interesting factoid I know is that 50% of Americans represent 2% of the income in America. More like 15%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203247/shares-of-household-income-of-quintiles-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203247/shares-of-househo...
- metaphor 9y ago> One interesting factoid I know is that 50% of Americans represent 2% of the income in America. Reference? This recent study[1] suggests the bottom 50% income represents 12.5% pre-tax, 19.3% post-tax based on 2014 data. [1] http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2018QJE.pdf http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/PSZ2018QJE.pdf see p. 39, Table I
- Feniks 9y agoI would like to remind everyone that the trillions of US debt is financed by a global elite who LITERALLY own America.
- tomjakubowski 9y agoThat’s probably 2% of the wealth, not income. I believe that the bottom 80% of Americans together have something like 7 or 8% of US wealth.
- twobyfour 9y agoPerhaps that's indicative not of a problem with the measure but rather of a) a disconnect between our society's self-perception and its reality and/or b) a problem with our economic system, the opportunities available in it, and the saving/spending norms it propagates?
- chii 9y agothis video tells what the average american thinks of the wealth distribution, vs reality (vs ideal): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM it's very enlightening.
- joshuamorton 9y agoDo you mean 30 days total vacation, or 30 days of elective pto in addition to company wide vacation days?
- drdeadringer 9y agoI don't know how this matters.
- joshuamorton 9y agoRelatively few companies I'm aware of offer 6 weeks pto. That requirement would put a senior engineer at google or Facebook not in the middle class, despite being in the top 1% of incomes.
- strictnein 9y agoHow doesn't it matter? It's, for most employers, an 10-11 day difference.
- totalZero 9y ago> take 30 days vacation a year I know people who earn seven figures who don't, and honestly can't, do this. Vacation is also a function of workplace culture, not just discretionary income and allotted vacation days.
- lisper 9y agoIf you're making 7 figures (i.e. >$1M/year) you can afford to save $0.5M/year. After ten years or so you can retire. I think that counts as being able to "afford" (an average of) 30 days off/year.
- lsc 9y agoso, there's what, 11 standard paid holidays, so 30 days off would be 'four weeks of vacation' - The set of people who make more than a million dollars a year who can't negotiate four weeks of vacation... I think is small. There's this persistent myth of the driven executive... I mean, I guess it's possible that other fields of endeavor are different? but everywhere I've worked? the more they pay you, the better they treat you, the more vacation you get, and ultimately the less you are expected to actually work.
- chii 9y ago> the less you are expected to actually work. if you're talking about actual time spent working, may be. But the output for an expensive person needs to be high. Granted, how does one measure the output of a typical multi-million dollar CEO on bottom line performance (vs just good general economic conditions)?
- chaosbutters314 9y agoSo pretty much every scientist at my (US) company is poor? Even uppermanagement in r&d. None of us see 30 days off per year. At most of is 25 after 2 decades. I'd say 15 days instead of 30 seems fair number for America and probably 30 for europe
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- martin_bech 9y agoI feel sorry for you.. buy yes.
- dnautics 9y agoyou've never been a scientist, have you? The experiments don't care about how much vacation you're legally entitled to.
- QAPereo 9y agoSure, if you’re a lab rat or a PhD student.
- fuzzfactor 9y agoI believe the correct terms are ambitious or accomplished.
- QAPereo 9y agoAmbitious. Sure, but accomplished? Oh if only hard work necessarily equates to that...
- fuzzfactor 9y agoNot as good a scientist as possibe unless it is so. That's why they call it a LABORatory . . .
- gozur88 9y agoIt's cheaper to buy fresh food than junk food. If you're buying junk food it's because you don't have a place to cook or you're too lazy to cook.
- HarryHirsch 9y agoIt could also be that you are too overworked to cook or that you are so illiquid that you cannot afford needed repairs.
- NikolaeVarius 9y agoYou don't need to cook in order to eat well. Salads are a thing.
- HarryHirsch 9y agoYou need to do the dishes when done. I am familiar with people who are saving money in order to have the sewer lateral fixed.
- overcast 9y agoWe're talking a single bowl here, and fork. If you're that hard up that you can't even wash something out with water. Clean it out with a towel, and use it again. Shit, as a bachelor, I do that now, and I've got plenty of cash.
- NikolaeVarius 9y agoEat it out of the package that the stuff came in instead if cleaning is an issue Poor student tricks work past being a student.
- CuriouslyC 9y agoI cook stews in a rice cooker w/ slow cook setting, and I eat the stew right out of the cooker pan. Cheap, healthy, quick and one (nonstick) dish to deal with.
- cmurf 9y agoMiddle class definitions vary but one of the easier to remember metrics is between 2/3rds and 2x the national median per capita gross income. (Tax burden, geography, number of dependents, all skew this simplistic measure.) I'd like to agree with the vacation value, but I don't know any Americans other than myself taking 30 days of vacation a year. The very idea of 30 days vacation makes my friends panic, what would they do?! Also, poor diet is related to poverty due mainly to bad nutritional education and bad habits learned at home, not affordability. Processed foods with a lot of sugar, salt, MSG added, manipulate the brain into wanting disproportionately more of these foods, which are primarily empty calories.
- grecy 9y agoI agree with you, though in the replies you are seeing the difference between how OECD countries define "poor" and how Americans defines "poor". The vast majority of people in Canada, Australia, Western Europe, etc. would be disgusted by how much "middle class" Americans work, how little vacation they get and how much they get for their tax dollars. In the eyes of virtually every Developed Country, "middle class" Americans are poor. Of course, Americans don't have this perspective, because they are in it, they can't see it.
- johnnyb9 9y agoYou seem to have left out the fact that Americans make much more than their Canadian, Western European, or Australian counterparts?
- konschubert 9y agoMake much more money yes. But how much of that gap is left if you factor in things like health care, access to education and infrastructure?
- Thlom 9y agoJust checked. Scandinavian countries, Australia and Luxembourg have higher median household income than the U.S.
- scythe 9y agoThose countries are small; the total population between them is less than any of UK, France, Japan or Germany, which indeed have a lower PPP per capita than the US. The nations you mentioned also have the advantage of being the "best" countries in their respective regions attracting lots of high skilled immigrants and FDI etc.
- p1esk 9y agoThis summer I worked at a startup in Luxembourg. I overheard a job interview my boss conducted, where an Australian with a PhD in machine learning asked for EUR60k as a salary. My boss decided to offer him EUR50k. Costs of living in Luxembourg are about the same as in Santa Barbara (where I currently live). I think median salaries in Luxembourg might be skewed by the presence of a large financial market (it's kind of a Wall St of Europe).
- NikolaeVarius 9y ago30 Days of vacation a year? That's insane.
- morsch 9y agoFor regular, full time employees, 28 is typical in Germany. 24 is the legal minimum.
- martinp 9y agoNorwegian here. 20 days a year is the legal minimum, while 25 days is the norm. I get 30 days a year while working for an American company, which is a bit ironic.
- Thlom 9y agoDon’t forget all the inneklemt days. May next year is a inneklemt bonanza. I doubt there will be much done at all in the country in May. (It’s common in Norway to take any day that is between two off days off. So May 1st is a national holiday, next year it falls on a Tuesday, so that means many will take the Monday off, a so called innneklemt day. There’s a lot of holidays in May, and next year all of them creates inneklemt days.)
- tmnvix 9y agoNZ has a minimum 4 weeks annual leave (20 days not counting weekends) plus 11 statutory public holidays. Australia is basically the same.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- llamataboot 9y agoYes, and by that criteria, most Americans are poor.
- darreld 9y agoI’m a senior developer in the Washington DC area and 1) I definitely do not take 30 days vacation per year and 2) I can assure you that I would lose my house and probably more if I was out of a job for 6-10 months. So I guess regardless of the very good salary I make, I’m poor?
- khedoros1 9y agoYou can make a good salary and still live paycheck-to-paycheck. If you can't afford a good, strong cushion (regardless of how good or bad your salary is), I'd consider that a certain degree of poor.