4 ms·

Wait, so 10% of the county is millionaires (more or less, if 9.9% are 1.2-millionaires), and these people have such “good family, good health, and good jobs” th

Wait, so 10% of the county is millionaires (more or less, if 9.9% are 1.2-millionaires), and these people have such “good family, good health, and good jobs” that they might as well be a different species? If I tell you how “good” someone’s family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not? I think the author’s intent was to acknowledge privilege, but the article is just making more weird caricatures. I think it’s better to put a spotlight on particular ways people might not be able to advance themselves as much as the usual narrative would suggest.

hobls 8y ago
edit: Whoops. My recollection of the article was quite wrong! ---- No, the article states that the average wealth of the 9.9% is 1.2m. This is of course heavily influenced by people at in the top 1%; people in the 10th percentile are not all millionaires.
- dgreensp 8y ago
  “As of 2016, it took $1.2 million in net worth to make it into the 9.9 percent; $2.4 million to reach the group’s median; and $10 million to get into the top 0.9 percent.”
LateRuin 8y ago
>If I tell you how “good” someone’s family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not? Yes, I can. That's the point -- the rich and poor are far more visually distinct today. Take for example obesity/overweight and marriage status. The poor are far more likely to have both an elevated BMI and to be single parents / divorced / never married
- analog31 8y ago
  I wouldn't have thought this until I had kids, who "forced" me to greatly expand my social milieu beyond my fellow geeks and musicians. Our kids got involved in some activities (e.g., violin lessons) that are almost exclusively the domain of the upper middle class. I remember attending a large group recital with maybe 100 kids, and virtually none of them were obese.
  - dgreensp 8y ago
    I have young kids. If violin lessons are apparently so expensive as to require you to be a millionaire (not merely, say, a six-figure-earner), what is a class or event I can go to to see all the poor, obese kids that I haven’t come across yet? I don’t live in a frou frou part of my town. It seems more likely to me that cultural forces are at play.
    - marnett 8y ago
      > what is a class or event I can go to they are poor. they don't go to events or extracurricular classes...those cost money.
- stillsut 8y ago
  > the rich and poor are far more visually distinct today. That is one narrative - the stepford wife vs the welfare mom, the soylent drinking tech worker vs the beer drinking factory worker. True to some extent. But it was Taleb in Antifragile that noted in a room full of banking exec and policy guys, only the wait staff will exude physical dignity. I think you can extend that observation further and see the lower working class (like waiters, personal trainers) opening up an appearance advantage on the upper intellectual class (lab rats and office workaholics). Not so for the true elite though - vc's, celeb's, etc. To generalize: The comfortable and sedentary elite have an advantage of appearance over the comfortable and sedentary poor. But being poor and trying to escape it is a more healthy lifestyle than to be upper middle class and try to escape into the elite.
roywiggins 8y ago
The correlation doesn't have to be exact to have explanatory power. It's much easier to be healthy and stable if you're in the 9.9%, and if you are, the odds that you're in that bucket is higher than if you're not.
segmondy 8y ago
Yup, there's about 10 million millionaire households in US

hobls 8y ago

edit: Whoops. My recollection of the article was quite wrong! ---- No, the article states that the average wealth of the 9.9% is 1.2m. This is of course heavily influenced by people at in the top 1%; people in the 10th percentile are not all millionaires.

dgreensp 8y ago
“As of 2016, it took $1.2 million in net worth to make it into the 9.9 percent; $2.4 million to reach the group’s median; and $10 million to get into the top 0.9 percent.”

LateRuin 8y ago

>If I tell you how “good” someone’s family or health is, you can tell me if they are a millionaire or not? Yes, I can. That's the point -- the rich and poor are far more visually distinct today. Take for example obesity/overweight and marriage status. The poor are far more likely to have both an elevated BMI and to be single parents / divorced / never married

analog31 8y ago
I wouldn't have thought this until I had kids, who "forced" me to greatly expand my social milieu beyond my fellow geeks and musicians. Our kids got involved in some activities (e.g., violin lessons) that are almost exclusively the domain of the upper middle class. I remember attending a large group recital with maybe 100 kids, and virtually none of them were obese.
- dgreensp 8y ago
  I have young kids. If violin lessons are apparently so expensive as to require you to be a millionaire (not merely, say, a six-figure-earner), what is a class or event I can go to to see all the poor, obese kids that I haven’t come across yet? I don’t live in a frou frou part of my town. It seems more likely to me that cultural forces are at play.
  - marnett 8y ago
    > what is a class or event I can go to they are poor. they don't go to events or extracurricular classes...those cost money.
stillsut 8y ago
> the rich and poor are far more visually distinct today. That is one narrative - the stepford wife vs the welfare mom, the soylent drinking tech worker vs the beer drinking factory worker. True to some extent. But it was Taleb in Antifragile that noted in a room full of banking exec and policy guys, only the wait staff will exude physical dignity. I think you can extend that observation further and see the lower working class (like waiters, personal trainers) opening up an appearance advantage on the upper intellectual class (lab rats and office workaholics). Not so for the true elite though - vc's, celeb's, etc. To generalize: The comfortable and sedentary elite have an advantage of appearance over the comfortable and sedentary poor. But being poor and trying to escape it is a more healthy lifestyle than to be upper middle class and try to escape into the elite.

roywiggins 8y ago

The correlation doesn't have to be exact to have explanatory power. It's much easier to be healthy and stable if you're in the 9.9%, and if you are, the odds that you're in that bucket is higher than if you're not.

segmondy 8y ago

Yup, there's about 10 million millionaire households in US