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A clever manipulation piece: It melds 1% multi-millionaires with upper-middle class to create some kind of bourgeois enemy. In reality these 32 million people h

A clever manipulation piece: It melds 1% multi-millionaires with upper-middle class to create some kind of bourgeois enemy. In reality these 32 million people have different lifestyles, sources of income and their networth does not indicate true wealth: they could be living in an expensive house that they bought much cheaper, but a few trips into a hospital will bankrupt them. The whole concept of "net worth" is highly deceptive and can be manipulated into framing economic importance as function of potential wealth(if "X sold all their property" vs actual currency reserves).

CamTin 8y ago
Not accounting for people's home equity when determining their wealth is one of the most bonkers bougie things I've ever heard. Should we not count their 401k savings either, because "if X took the early withdrawal penalty" isn't fair either? If you're rich, you're rich. It makes no difference if that wealth is tied up in illiquid assets. If the precarity if your financial situation is based on the fact that you're worth millions but have decided for some reason to leave it invested in one large, volatile asset, then you don't get to claim you're in the same boat as someone who is pawning their wedding ring until payday to make rent. Being rich but poorly invested (90% of your net worth is in your home equity) is a decision you made, not a situation you found yourself born into.
- matthewdgreen 8y ago
  If every single person in the country made exactly the same salary, and saved the same percentage of their income to cover the exact same modest retirement lifestyle, you'd still have people (close to retirement) who appeared "rich" and people early in their career who appeared relatively "poor". Using wealth data without normalizing for age you could also make it look like there was a vastly unequal society, and of course there would no policy you could adopt to "fix" the problem that wasn't there. What the author is doing here is literally the definition of bad data science.
- FrozenVoid 8y ago
  >If you're rich, you're rich. I'm not even middle class, i don't own a house or a car. I just see that people easily overgeneralize the well-off 30 million upper-middle class with truly rich people who have entirely different lifestyle. Believing the there is 32million strong aristocracy is delusional, all these SJW privilege Olympics make your kind seem insane and full of envy. You want to lump middle-class people with multi-millionaires with financial security and proclaim them the unified burgeios enemy that must be dealt with. "If they have some money, They're rich capitalist pigs" Its like some soviet union guilt trip: If you own jeans your dangerous bourgie class traitor! If you listen to foreign radio = capitalist lapdog. If you own foreign currency = speculator and capitalist. Soviet Union glamorized poverty and struggle, everyone was LARPing as some poor, honest worker despite a black market,blat and bribery being commonplace. If you dislike Bourgeois(aka Middle class) so much, why don't take one-way ticket flight to socialist paradise of Venezuela? They're getting rid of their toxic privileged Bourgeois class. Just for the record i'm NOT some "free-market will fix it" capitalist: I'm in favor of sane, Scandinavian-like system of democracy(also promoted by Bernie Sanders as democratic socialism) which exist with support of high taxes. I'm against gulags, wealth redistribution and marking people as class traitors/privileged/"eat the Rich", to which any communist country eventually devolves.
  - CamTin 8y ago
    Well that escalated quickly. I'm not saying "people with adequate, diversified retirement savings are evil capitalists." I'm just saying that "We shouldn't count the value of people's houses when determining how wealthy they are." is absurd. Clearly it should count. They own it. It's not a political stance, just a pro-accuracy one.
    - FrozenVoid 8y ago
      The problem with it these people will not sell their houses. Its not a liquid capital. Selling their only house would be something like once-in-lifetime decision. What i'm saying, and you're failing to understand is that a if citizen A has a million dollar house and 10K in savings but his income is very low, he is actually much much poorer than citizen B who has 1.01million in cash, 80K salary and rents an apartment. >"Pro-accuracy" Its clearly obvious B has more economic impact, but with networth they seem as identical.

CamTin 8y ago

Not accounting for people's home equity when determining their wealth is one of the most bonkers bougie things I've ever heard. Should we not count their 401k savings either, because "if X took the early withdrawal penalty" isn't fair either? If you're rich, you're rich. It makes no difference if that wealth is tied up in illiquid assets. If the precarity if your financial situation is based on the fact that you're worth millions but have decided for some reason to leave it invested in one large, volatile asset, then you don't get to claim you're in the same boat as someone who is pawning their wedding ring until payday to make rent. Being rich but poorly invested (90% of your net worth is in your home equity) is a decision you made, not a situation you found yourself born into.

matthewdgreen 8y ago
If every single person in the country made exactly the same salary, and saved the same percentage of their income to cover the exact same modest retirement lifestyle, you'd still have people (close to retirement) who appeared "rich" and people early in their career who appeared relatively "poor". Using wealth data without normalizing for age you could also make it look like there was a vastly unequal society, and of course there would no policy you could adopt to "fix" the problem that wasn't there. What the author is doing here is literally the definition of bad data science.
FrozenVoid 8y ago
>If you're rich, you're rich. I'm not even middle class, i don't own a house or a car. I just see that people easily overgeneralize the well-off 30 million upper-middle class with truly rich people who have entirely different lifestyle. Believing the there is 32million strong aristocracy is delusional, all these SJW privilege Olympics make your kind seem insane and full of envy. You want to lump middle-class people with multi-millionaires with financial security and proclaim them the unified burgeios enemy that must be dealt with. "If they have some money, They're rich capitalist pigs" Its like some soviet union guilt trip: If you own jeans your dangerous bourgie class traitor! If you listen to foreign radio = capitalist lapdog. If you own foreign currency = speculator and capitalist. Soviet Union glamorized poverty and struggle, everyone was LARPing as some poor, honest worker despite a black market,blat and bribery being commonplace. If you dislike Bourgeois(aka Middle class) so much, why don't take one-way ticket flight to socialist paradise of Venezuela? They're getting rid of their toxic privileged Bourgeois class. Just for the record i'm NOT some "free-market will fix it" capitalist: I'm in favor of sane, Scandinavian-like system of democracy(also promoted by Bernie Sanders as democratic socialism) which exist with support of high taxes. I'm against gulags, wealth redistribution and marking people as class traitors/privileged/"eat the Rich", to which any communist country eventually devolves.
- CamTin 8y ago
  Well that escalated quickly. I'm not saying "people with adequate, diversified retirement savings are evil capitalists." I'm just saying that "We shouldn't count the value of people's houses when determining how wealthy they are." is absurd. Clearly it should count. They own it. It's not a political stance, just a pro-accuracy one.
  - FrozenVoid 8y ago
    The problem with it these people will not sell their houses. Its not a liquid capital. Selling their only house would be something like once-in-lifetime decision. What i'm saying, and you're failing to understand is that a if citizen A has a million dollar house and 10K in savings but his income is very low, he is actually much much poorer than citizen B who has 1.01million in cash, 80K salary and rents an apartment. >"Pro-accuracy" Its clearly obvious B has more economic impact, but with networth they seem as identical.