4 ms·

The author of the article is misinformed about the true landscape of wealth and income inequality. The middle class is ultimately defined by the ability and ne

The author of the article is misinformed about the true landscape of wealth and income inequality. The middle class is ultimately defined by the ability and need to build your own safety net. The upper middle class is able to do this with plenty of wealth to spare for luxuries like private schooling for their kids, income security is provided by their network. Just tap your network and find another job. The upper middle class is unconcerned with skills and only concerned with leeching off of the upper class. The 'regular' middle class still needs to lean on their skill set and willingness to move in order to provide income security. If a layoff is enough to throw your lifestyle into disarray, you're not upper middle class, in fact you'll never be upper middle class because you probably spend too much time messing around with getting stuff done and not enough on greasing the political wheels. The upper class doesn't need to fool around with a network, they are networks unto themselves. At this level, enough ambient wealth is floating around that you can hire professionals to manage it for you and never have to do anything you don't want to. The difference between the lower class and the middle class boils down to whether you have enough to provide for your daily needs, much less a safety net. The lower class cannot meet expenses each month without assistance, has no ability to build a safety net and so has no safety other than what the government provides. What distinguishes the lower middle class from the regular middle class is whether they have enough left over every month to save for the future or a rainy day.

wolfspider 9y ago
This is so horribly wrong- I've known upper middle class that get there by not spending hardly anything and owning their own business and operating it (e.g. Gas Station + Auto Repair). No leeching there. No accounting for "Luck" here or proximity to resources and opportunity. Do they actually teach this in schools or what nowadays? starting to seem prevalent. Life is what you make it, tomorrow holds no promises, opportunity doesn't knock it looks backwards through your peephole, can't take it with you, go where the food is(!!) Heh, how about some more pragmatic advice huh?
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  The idea behind talking about classes isn't that there aren't people who don't fit the mold, but to just discuss the broader trends. For every frugal business owner making upper middle class incomes, (and deeply concerned that the economy will continue to support their livelihoods) there's fifty filling up middle management spots in midsize organizations or upper management spots in small organizations, safe in the understanding that the firm they're working for will insulate them from market trends and confident that they can find a new berth if it doesn't. Also, my descriptions aren't intended to be prescriptive, just descriptive. You want to know what the landscape looks like before you try to safely navigate it.
  - ericd 9y ago
    The problem is that unless I'm interpreting it completely incorrectly, your descriptions are comic book renditions based on common prejudices that don't really map to reality, which makes me question whether this is based on experience and exposure to people in the middle and upper class or just an amalgamation of memes you've been exposed to online and have taken as evidence. Doctors and lawyers typically work incredibly demanding jobs that require a lot of up-front investment of time and money to make their outsized salaries, and they make up a huge portion of the class you called "leeches". And far from not needing to maintain their network, networking is incredibly important for upper middle and upper classes.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      I consider professionals to be middle and not upper middle class.
      - ericd 9y ago
        Why? Many of them pull down in excess of $500k/yr. Who do you consider to be upper middle class, if not them? You mention middle management, most of whom make less than financially successful doctors/lawyers.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  Of upper middle class folks who own their own businesses that I have met, more of them own their parents business or a spinoff of their parents business. Those that do not, often have come from an upper or upper middle class background where it was a very low risk situation for them to spend a year trying to get an odd business off the ground - they could always fall back to their parents, or their personal network. There are a few who built their own businesses from the ground up, but many of them will tell you that it was luck at multiple points that they were able to latch onto a workable cashflow (not to discount the hard work to explore that cashflow, and smarts to recognize and expand it...). Edit: Addendum, access to capital is key to reducing risk on the path to success, and it can be formally there or informally there. If you listen to podcasts, try "How I built this", interviewing a range of business founders. You have to listen for it, but a huge number start as, oh I worked in the financial industry and then had this idea..., or oh my parents were a lawyer and a physician... etc... The founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz was saved from being ripped off from his business by a Seattle mogul by Bill Gates, Sr (yes father of that Bill Gates...).
- awakeasleep 9y ago
  You're using a gradational view of class to address points made from a relational analysis. A gradational view would be looking to sort people into grades, for example based on income. A relational view addresses how groups of people relate to each other, like one class might direct the labor of another. Neither view is wrong, but to intelligently talk about class you should realize that it's not a two dimensional spectrum, there are probably 4 or 5 dimensions to consider.
taurath 9y ago
Both the middle class and upper middle class can and frequently do operate with no "real" safety net, especially before age 40. Those people sending their kids to private school and have a nice house can and are leveraged like crazy, and can't afford a big layoff, economic downturn, or huge emergency medical bills. Upper middle class delineation to me isn't about security, its about being able to scrounge better quality things. Sure, there's money put away in a 401k, investments etc. > The upper middle class is unconcerned with skills and only concerned with leeching off of the upper class. I've seen in broken down before as separate ladders according to social class - Lower class, Working class, Upper Middle class, and Elite class, with different values and principles for each. Is the successful county plumber who owns several businesses upper class, despite blue collar values? There's a delineation here between economic and social classes.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  Small business owner was the original middle class, "bourgeoisie". Ben Franklin was a member of the middle class,and he believed that middle class -- where anyone could take a vacation to run for government office -- was essentially to democt Im modern world, the working class started being called middle class so they woul stop complaining about their poor lot in life.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Small business owner was the original middle class, "bourgeoisie". “Business owner” was the original (well, feudal) middle class named the “bourgeoisie”, they became the capitalist upper class (with the same name.) Small business owners (more particularly, those who live by applying largely their own labor to their own capital) are the middle class (“petit bourgeoisie”) in the original descriptions of capitalist economies. > Im modern world, the working class started being called middle class so they woul stop complaining about their poor lot in life. No, the higher income subset of the working class got called the middle class to forestall the development of common working class identity.
- notabee 9y ago
  This is the link you're referencing, right? I also found it a useful model of how social and economic ranks can substantially but not completely overlap. https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/the-3-ladder-system-of-social-class-in-the-u-s/ https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaeloc...
ynniv 9y ago
This is the difference between American and British usage of "[upper] middle class". Americans use it to mean "[upper] middle income", which unfortunately discards much of the understanding conveyed by the British usage.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The upper class doesn't need to fool around with a network, they are networks unto themselves. At this level, enough ambient wealth is floating around that you can hire professionals to manage it for you and never have to do anything you don't want to This is incorrect. Elites in every society are highly politically exposed. Their network is critical to maintain. America's elite also consist of a large number of self-made men and women--they don't stop fighting just because they're billionaires. And those who turn into trust fund kiddies tend to dissipate their wealth within a generation or two.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Sure. I didn't mean to say that. They just don't need them for direct financial security the same way the middle class does.
zanny 9y ago
The problem with all these discussions on economics involving a middle class comes back to how everyones definition of "middle class" is different. Especially when you are rich and/or poor - you might have millions in the bank but you are paid a salary so you are still "working / middle class" despite being in the top .1% of wealth. You are living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net and any illness could leave you homeless but you have the latest smartphone so you are "middle class". Its completely anecdotal - we don't have an international standard definition of "middle class" but if you have an upper class of wealth owners who live off capital, and a lower class that has no wealth and lives off labor, middle is the hybridization of the two. To be truly middle class you would need half your income coming from investments and half from labor, which means at todays rates you would need about a million in investments to make the median salary and have the same income coming from your savings. A lot of people do fall in that category, but I'm of the opinion nowadays that the dilution of the term is an actively intentional weapon of the globalist elite - when people admit they are poor, working class, or lower class they recognize they have much to gain and little to lose opposing the status quo of society. If you can convince everyone, including the rich (who can shamelessly exploit markets so long as they don't see themselves as the elite ownership class) and the poor (who would rather not recognize their own exploitation) to call themselves middle class you can abuse the poor as much as you want, they can never collectively act against you if you are all claiming to be in the same economic class. A middle class does exist, but its not nearly as large as anyone - rich or poor - likes to think it is.

wolfspider 9y ago

This is so horribly wrong- I've known upper middle class that get there by not spending hardly anything and owning their own business and operating it (e.g. Gas Station + Auto Repair). No leeching there. No accounting for "Luck" here or proximity to resources and opportunity. Do they actually teach this in schools or what nowadays? starting to seem prevalent. Life is what you make it, tomorrow holds no promises, opportunity doesn't knock it looks backwards through your peephole, can't take it with you, go where the food is(!!) Heh, how about some more pragmatic advice huh?

vinceguidry 9y ago
The idea behind talking about classes isn't that there aren't people who don't fit the mold, but to just discuss the broader trends. For every frugal business owner making upper middle class incomes, (and deeply concerned that the economy will continue to support their livelihoods) there's fifty filling up middle management spots in midsize organizations or upper management spots in small organizations, safe in the understanding that the firm they're working for will insulate them from market trends and confident that they can find a new berth if it doesn't. Also, my descriptions aren't intended to be prescriptive, just descriptive. You want to know what the landscape looks like before you try to safely navigate it.
- ericd 9y ago
  The problem is that unless I'm interpreting it completely incorrectly, your descriptions are comic book renditions based on common prejudices that don't really map to reality, which makes me question whether this is based on experience and exposure to people in the middle and upper class or just an amalgamation of memes you've been exposed to online and have taken as evidence. Doctors and lawyers typically work incredibly demanding jobs that require a lot of up-front investment of time and money to make their outsized salaries, and they make up a huge portion of the class you called "leeches". And far from not needing to maintain their network, networking is incredibly important for upper middle and upper classes.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    I consider professionals to be middle and not upper middle class.
    - ericd 9y ago
      Why? Many of them pull down in excess of $500k/yr. Who do you consider to be upper middle class, if not them? You mention middle management, most of whom make less than financially successful doctors/lawyers.
dv_dt 9y ago
Of upper middle class folks who own their own businesses that I have met, more of them own their parents business or a spinoff of their parents business. Those that do not, often have come from an upper or upper middle class background where it was a very low risk situation for them to spend a year trying to get an odd business off the ground - they could always fall back to their parents, or their personal network. There are a few who built their own businesses from the ground up, but many of them will tell you that it was luck at multiple points that they were able to latch onto a workable cashflow (not to discount the hard work to explore that cashflow, and smarts to recognize and expand it...). Edit: Addendum, access to capital is key to reducing risk on the path to success, and it can be formally there or informally there. If you listen to podcasts, try "How I built this", interviewing a range of business founders. You have to listen for it, but a huge number start as, oh I worked in the financial industry and then had this idea..., or oh my parents were a lawyer and a physician... etc... The founder of Starbucks, Howard Schultz was saved from being ripped off from his business by a Seattle mogul by Bill Gates, Sr (yes father of that Bill Gates...).
awakeasleep 9y ago
You're using a gradational view of class to address points made from a relational analysis. A gradational view would be looking to sort people into grades, for example based on income. A relational view addresses how groups of people relate to each other, like one class might direct the labor of another. Neither view is wrong, but to intelligently talk about class you should realize that it's not a two dimensional spectrum, there are probably 4 or 5 dimensions to consider.

taurath 9y ago

Both the middle class and upper middle class can and frequently do operate with no "real" safety net, especially before age 40. Those people sending their kids to private school and have a nice house can and are leveraged like crazy, and can't afford a big layoff, economic downturn, or huge emergency medical bills. Upper middle class delineation to me isn't about security, its about being able to scrounge better quality things. Sure, there's money put away in a 401k, investments etc. > The upper middle class is unconcerned with skills and only concerned with leeching off of the upper class. I've seen in broken down before as separate ladders according to social class - Lower class, Working class, Upper Middle class, and Elite class, with different values and principles for each. Is the successful county plumber who owns several businesses upper class, despite blue collar values? There's a delineation here between economic and social classes.

fjsolwmv 9y ago
Small business owner was the original middle class, "bourgeoisie". Ben Franklin was a member of the middle class,and he believed that middle class -- where anyone could take a vacation to run for government office -- was essentially to democt Im modern world, the working class started being called middle class so they woul stop complaining about their poor lot in life.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Small business owner was the original middle class, "bourgeoisie". “Business owner” was the original (well, feudal) middle class named the “bourgeoisie”, they became the capitalist upper class (with the same name.) Small business owners (more particularly, those who live by applying largely their own labor to their own capital) are the middle class (“petit bourgeoisie”) in the original descriptions of capitalist economies. > Im modern world, the working class started being called middle class so they woul stop complaining about their poor lot in life. No, the higher income subset of the working class got called the middle class to forestall the development of common working class identity.
notabee 9y ago
This is the link you're referencing, right? I also found it a useful model of how social and economic ranks can substantially but not completely overlap. https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/the-3-ladder-system-of-social-class-in-the-u-s/ https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaeloc...

ynniv 9y ago

This is the difference between American and British usage of "[upper] middle class". Americans use it to mean "[upper] middle income", which unfortunately discards much of the understanding conveyed by the British usage.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> The upper class doesn't need to fool around with a network, they are networks unto themselves. At this level, enough ambient wealth is floating around that you can hire professionals to manage it for you and never have to do anything you don't want to This is incorrect. Elites in every society are highly politically exposed. Their network is critical to maintain. America's elite also consist of a large number of self-made men and women--they don't stop fighting just because they're billionaires. And those who turn into trust fund kiddies tend to dissipate their wealth within a generation or two.

vinceguidry 9y ago
Sure. I didn't mean to say that. They just don't need them for direct financial security the same way the middle class does.

zanny 9y ago

The problem with all these discussions on economics involving a middle class comes back to how everyones definition of "middle class" is different. Especially when you are rich and/or poor - you might have millions in the bank but you are paid a salary so you are still "working / middle class" despite being in the top .1% of wealth. You are living paycheck to paycheck with no safety net and any illness could leave you homeless but you have the latest smartphone so you are "middle class". Its completely anecdotal - we don't have an international standard definition of "middle class" but if you have an upper class of wealth owners who live off capital, and a lower class that has no wealth and lives off labor, middle is the hybridization of the two. To be truly middle class you would need half your income coming from investments and half from labor, which means at todays rates you would need about a million in investments to make the median salary and have the same income coming from your savings. A lot of people do fall in that category, but I'm of the opinion nowadays that the dilution of the term is an actively intentional weapon of the globalist elite - when people admit they are poor, working class, or lower class they recognize they have much to gain and little to lose opposing the status quo of society. If you can convince everyone, including the rich (who can shamelessly exploit markets so long as they don't see themselves as the elite ownership class) and the poor (who would rather not recognize their own exploitation) to call themselves middle class you can abuse the poor as much as you want, they can never collectively act against you if you are all claiming to be in the same economic class. A middle class does exist, but its not nearly as large as anyone - rich or poor - likes to think it is.