9 ms·

I disagree. What the article is trying to point out is that the 9.9% thinks he's not so wealthy, so he is against inequality, but he still, somehow, for his ow

by jokoon 8y ago

I disagree. What the article is trying to point out is that the 9.9% thinks he's not so wealthy, so he is against inequality, but he still, somehow, for his own comfort and merit belief system, likes his higher income. Trying to talk about ranges of income, would it the top N%, is pointless. You could strip out the hypocrisy like so: "I am not at the top, so I am still against inequality, but I am comfortable, but since I AM NOT AT THE TOP, YOU CANNOT BLAME ME, so blame the richest". This is the core problem about stretching inequality, because individualism makes people work for their own selves, and NEVER encourage anyone to "take one for the team". The whole story is about how people perceives their own selves. This is an important debate. I'm sure those 9.9% would be very surprised they belong to the top 10%. The graph of income is always growing exponentially, yet for some reason people are throwing away the idea that they might be the ones to blame, because people will naturally find argument that they're not to blame. It's always the responsibility of someone else. I personally have not lived the wealthiest life there is in term of income, but you know, at least I don't complain, because when I compare it to the rest of the world, being in the lower 50% or 60% or 30% in a modern and developed country is still a pretty good life.

refurb 8y ago
Yup! Asking someone "How much money makes a person rich?" is like asking someone "How many drinks makes you an alcoholic?". The answer is typically "Someone who drinks more than I do."
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Actually, there is a qualitative difference in play. It is reached at millions USD in (relatively) liquid assets or highly concentrated political power. It is the potential to do almost anything w here only another big player or a whole society can blunt it and not necessarily effectively. It is the difference between playing the rules and making the rules.
- k__ 8y ago
  If you can live entirely from investments you're rich.
  - empath75 8y ago
    Exactly this. I make well into six figures, but only recently. I’ve got a bunch of student loan debt to pay off, I don’t own a house. If I got laid off tomorrow, my family would have serious financial problems within a few months of living off of savings. I’m doing well, but I’m by no means rich. Now give me another ten years and it’s a different story.
    - stuntkite 8y ago
      I've made six figures going on three years now. I came from nothing. I was an emancipated minor at 15, made every mistake I possibly could from there to 35(now). I'm climbing out from under it quickly in some respects. My teeth are getting fixed, I'm paying off debt, etc. I know for a fact that I'm one bad lift and twist moving a couch or peculiar mental/physical incident from being homeless. When I fret to my partner, she says "Honey, you're being to hard on yourself, we are doing great!" But when I look at the stakes and the people I know; The only ones insulated have established families. Having established family even has it's own curse in this day and age. Insulated, sure, but kids that are too insulated via trust fund can get stuck in this weird developmental purgatory that even though they have and won't want, it's hard to find meaning or even give a shit to look for it and take on the risk for what it's worth if they weren't groomed. I've seen lack of meaning take lives. In the next year I might break loose because I have some ownership in something interesting, but I'm acutely aware of how much it costs to transcend being the wretched of the earth. The treadmill we are on as a human race isn't sustainable. Something I think the article points out succinctly is that with greater inequality we all lose. His grandmother bet it all on the dot com boom and went to work at Wendy's. Anything that isn't an ivy league education is indentured servitude. I'm lucky to have technology and because I have it, I guess all I can see is potentially a technological equalizer in the near future (at least I hope we can find it near), but we are all being fleeced no matter how you shake it. Globally we are in a race condition similar to a drug addict who didn't realize they were that far gone getting fired from their job. Yeah, the apartment and the girlfriend are up next. But, we have plenty of lies to stack up before then to mask like it's the status quo. This problem is going to take a good think to get solved and we'll need to get high and tight to deal with the stress. We can still pawn grandpa's coin collection to get a fix this weekend. We'll be back on top before anyone notices.
zjaffee 8y ago
This is a big debate in the HN world too, where tech workers in that top 10% think they are working class. The real breakdown here is that in todays day and age, there's hardly a middle class, there's the working class who struggles, lives basically paycheck to paycheck, and at the age of 45 has up to 40k in wealth to their name. Then there's that top 10% whose able to afford a million dollar home, take yearly vacations, send their kids to college, ect. The things the upper middle class think should be a given to them because they are within a certain economic strata are actually just regular luxuries.
- asdffdsa321 8y ago
  Huh? That's entirely incorrect. There's definitely a middle class that isn't working paycheck to paycheck but can't afford million dollar homes, vacas and college for their kids.
  - CM30 8y ago
    There's also a part of that middle class who can afford vacations and college for their kids, but not million dollar homes. Even if that group is likely bigger outside of the US (since hey, college in European countries like the UK is damn cheap by comparison), it still exists over there in the US too. Neither of those things necessarily require a millionaire income.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    To me the point is that "other middle class" you mention, call it lower middle class, is shrinking, falling into the lower class. Because of loss of decent paying factory jobs, retail shrinking, etc. If you are an adult today without special education, it's really hard to have a decent lifestyle. Most of my friends are programmers or teachers, and they most all of them have decent jobs. The teachers are increasingly in that lower middle class category. Software engineers are more fortunate.
    - noir_lord 8y ago
      > Software engineers are more fortunate. We are, I earn significantly more than my partner who has a degree and I don't have a degree. It's one of the last fields that without a degree you can still earn a good living if you can break into it somehow (in my case it was side gigs/contracting to crappy full time position to none-crappy full time position to decent full time position). Though I'm in the UK, I gather the degree requirement is a harder line in the US, also worth noting that by and large university education has had no correlation with programmer ability (in business settings) in my experience, I've met good/bad with degree/without degree. Interestingly the one correlation I have observed is how fascinating people find the field when they are children, young geeks become older geeks. On an unrelated note, this is why I think the programs that encourage young girls to get into computing/programming are the ones with the best likely RoI in terms of re-balancing the field.
InfiniteBeing 8y ago
There's a human tendency to want to blame other humans for everything that happens including weather events.
doktrin 8y ago
> I'm sure those 9.9% would be very surprised they belong to the top 10% Someone with over $1 million in assets is going to be surprised they're in the top 10% of the country? I don't buy it. > You could strip out the hypocrisy like so: "I am not at the top, so I am still against inequality, but I am comfortable, but since I AM NOT AT THE TOP, YOU CANNOT BLAME ME, so blame the richest" My read of the article was almost the exact opposite, namely that the author was trying to call attention to the fact that the "top 9.9%" is in fact very much to blame, as evidenced by his concluding remarks : "It’s going to take something from each of us, too, and perhaps especially from those who happen to be the momentary winners of this cycle in the game. We need to peel our eyes away from the mirror of our own success and think about what we can do in our everyday lives for the people who aren’t our neighbors." > but you know, at least I don't complain because when I compare it to the rest of the world, being in the lower 50% or 60% or 30% in a modern and developed country is still a pretty good life. On the one hand, it's nice that you have a sense of perspective and can appreciate that you live a more comfortable life than most of the world's population. On the other, there's a fine line between a stiff upper lip and stoic complacency. There will always be a greater evil somewhere in the world. Just because Mogadishu is more dangerous than my neighborhood doesn't mean I'm cool with people getting robbed outside my house. Put more plainly : you have the right to ignore issues in your local community, but you should not try to shame others into silence simply because they're not starving.
anbende 8y ago
I see what you're saying. The next tier down from the rich are more culpable (and well-off) than they realize. I get that that is the authors point, and I agree that it's a good one and one worth making. What I'm saying, is that saying "the 9.9%" have the majority of the wealth (50-60%) is a little disingenuous, because while wealth goes up exponentially, at that point you start running out of money at the high end. If I said that 70% of the wealth is in the 9.99% and the remaining .01% only have 20% (or whatever it is), that would seem a little odd right? Or 9.999% have 75% and .001% only have 15%? Making cutoffs like this feels like the author is mishandling the numbers in order to make his point. Because there really is a pretty big difference between $1m (90th percentile) in net-worth and $6m (99th). $1m in net-worth quite comfortable but not "rich" by even a very liberal definition of the term in most cities (remember most of that is going to be locked up in a primary residence). And in the end, yes, it is important to recognize our wealth and privilege and the civic responsibility that comes with it. I just don't like it when numbers are mis-represented, whether the underlying point is valid or not.
- anonymouskimmer 8y ago
  "$1m in net-worth quite comfortable but not "rich" by even a very liberal definition of the term in most cities (remember most of that is going to be locked up in a primary residence)." Selling the $1M house nets about $800k after capital gains. 5% investment interest on that nets about $40k/year without touching the principal. It's definitely possible for a family of two to live on this amount fairly comfortably in a quite decent apartment in a quite decent neighborhood away from the coasts. I know because I was, and making debt service payments on top of it. Get a part time job as a package handler at UPS or FedEx - for the exercise, of course - and you're sitting pretty. A middle-income lifestyle without having to work meets the cutoff for my definition of rich.
jhbadger 8y ago
But can't you see it's just part of the plan of the really wealthy to distract attention to themselves? "Don't blame us; blame your neighbor who has a bit more than you do".

by jokoon 8y ago

refurb 8y ago

Yup! Asking someone "How much money makes a person rich?" is like asking someone "How many drinks makes you an alcoholic?". The answer is typically "Someone who drinks more than I do."

AstralStorm 8y ago
Actually, there is a qualitative difference in play. It is reached at millions USD in (relatively) liquid assets or highly concentrated political power. It is the potential to do almost anything w here only another big player or a whole society can blunt it and not necessarily effectively. It is the difference between playing the rules and making the rules.
k__ 8y ago
If you can live entirely from investments you're rich.
- empath75 8y ago
  Exactly this. I make well into six figures, but only recently. I’ve got a bunch of student loan debt to pay off, I don’t own a house. If I got laid off tomorrow, my family would have serious financial problems within a few months of living off of savings. I’m doing well, but I’m by no means rich. Now give me another ten years and it’s a different story.
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    I've made six figures going on three years now. I came from nothing. I was an emancipated minor at 15, made every mistake I possibly could from there to 35(now). I'm climbing out from under it quickly in some respects. My teeth are getting fixed, I'm paying off debt, etc. I know for a fact that I'm one bad lift and twist moving a couch or peculiar mental/physical incident from being homeless. When I fret to my partner, she says "Honey, you're being to hard on yourself, we are doing great!" But when I look at the stakes and the people I know; The only ones insulated have established families. Having established family even has it's own curse in this day and age. Insulated, sure, but kids that are too insulated via trust fund can get stuck in this weird developmental purgatory that even though they have and won't want, it's hard to find meaning or even give a shit to look for it and take on the risk for what it's worth if they weren't groomed. I've seen lack of meaning take lives. In the next year I might break loose because I have some ownership in something interesting, but I'm acutely aware of how much it costs to transcend being the wretched of the earth. The treadmill we are on as a human race isn't sustainable. Something I think the article points out succinctly is that with greater inequality we all lose. His grandmother bet it all on the dot com boom and went to work at Wendy's. Anything that isn't an ivy league education is indentured servitude. I'm lucky to have technology and because I have it, I guess all I can see is potentially a technological equalizer in the near future (at least I hope we can find it near), but we are all being fleeced no matter how you shake it. Globally we are in a race condition similar to a drug addict who didn't realize they were that far gone getting fired from their job. Yeah, the apartment and the girlfriend are up next. But, we have plenty of lies to stack up before then to mask like it's the status quo. This problem is going to take a good think to get solved and we'll need to get high and tight to deal with the stress. We can still pawn grandpa's coin collection to get a fix this weekend. We'll be back on top before anyone notices.

zjaffee 8y ago

This is a big debate in the HN world too, where tech workers in that top 10% think they are working class. The real breakdown here is that in todays day and age, there's hardly a middle class, there's the working class who struggles, lives basically paycheck to paycheck, and at the age of 45 has up to 40k in wealth to their name. Then there's that top 10% whose able to afford a million dollar home, take yearly vacations, send their kids to college, ect. The things the upper middle class think should be a given to them because they are within a certain economic strata are actually just regular luxuries.

asdffdsa321 8y ago
Huh? That's entirely incorrect. There's definitely a middle class that isn't working paycheck to paycheck but can't afford million dollar homes, vacas and college for their kids.
- CM30 8y ago
  There's also a part of that middle class who can afford vacations and college for their kids, but not million dollar homes. Even if that group is likely bigger outside of the US (since hey, college in European countries like the UK is damn cheap by comparison), it still exists over there in the US too. Neither of those things necessarily require a millionaire income.
- Latteland 8y ago
  To me the point is that "other middle class" you mention, call it lower middle class, is shrinking, falling into the lower class. Because of loss of decent paying factory jobs, retail shrinking, etc. If you are an adult today without special education, it's really hard to have a decent lifestyle. Most of my friends are programmers or teachers, and they most all of them have decent jobs. The teachers are increasingly in that lower middle class category. Software engineers are more fortunate.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    > Software engineers are more fortunate. We are, I earn significantly more than my partner who has a degree and I don't have a degree. It's one of the last fields that without a degree you can still earn a good living if you can break into it somehow (in my case it was side gigs/contracting to crappy full time position to none-crappy full time position to decent full time position). Though I'm in the UK, I gather the degree requirement is a harder line in the US, also worth noting that by and large university education has had no correlation with programmer ability (in business settings) in my experience, I've met good/bad with degree/without degree. Interestingly the one correlation I have observed is how fascinating people find the field when they are children, young geeks become older geeks. On an unrelated note, this is why I think the programs that encourage young girls to get into computing/programming are the ones with the best likely RoI in terms of re-balancing the field.

InfiniteBeing 8y ago

There's a human tendency to want to blame other humans for everything that happens including weather events.

doktrin 8y ago

> I'm sure those 9.9% would be very surprised they belong to the top 10% Someone with over $1 million in assets is going to be surprised they're in the top 10% of the country? I don't buy it. > You could strip out the hypocrisy like so: "I am not at the top, so I am still against inequality, but I am comfortable, but since I AM NOT AT THE TOP, YOU CANNOT BLAME ME, so blame the richest" My read of the article was almost the exact opposite, namely that the author was trying to call attention to the fact that the "top 9.9%" is in fact very much to blame, as evidenced by his concluding remarks : "It’s going to take something from each of us, too, and perhaps especially from those who happen to be the momentary winners of this cycle in the game. We need to peel our eyes away from the mirror of our own success and think about what we can do in our everyday lives for the people who aren’t our neighbors." > but you know, at least I don't complain because when I compare it to the rest of the world, being in the lower 50% or 60% or 30% in a modern and developed country is still a pretty good life. On the one hand, it's nice that you have a sense of perspective and can appreciate that you live a more comfortable life than most of the world's population. On the other, there's a fine line between a stiff upper lip and stoic complacency. There will always be a greater evil somewhere in the world. Just because Mogadishu is more dangerous than my neighborhood doesn't mean I'm cool with people getting robbed outside my house. Put more plainly : you have the right to ignore issues in your local community, but you should not try to shame others into silence simply because they're not starving.

anbende 8y ago

I see what you're saying. The next tier down from the rich are more culpable (and well-off) than they realize. I get that that is the authors point, and I agree that it's a good one and one worth making. What I'm saying, is that saying "the 9.9%" have the majority of the wealth (50-60%) is a little disingenuous, because while wealth goes up exponentially, at that point you start running out of money at the high end. If I said that 70% of the wealth is in the 9.99% and the remaining .01% only have 20% (or whatever it is), that would seem a little odd right? Or 9.999% have 75% and .001% only have 15%? Making cutoffs like this feels like the author is mishandling the numbers in order to make his point. Because there really is a pretty big difference between $1m (90th percentile) in net-worth and $6m (99th). $1m in net-worth quite comfortable but not "rich" by even a very liberal definition of the term in most cities (remember most of that is going to be locked up in a primary residence). And in the end, yes, it is important to recognize our wealth and privilege and the civic responsibility that comes with it. I just don't like it when numbers are mis-represented, whether the underlying point is valid or not.

anonymouskimmer 8y ago
"$1m in net-worth quite comfortable but not "rich" by even a very liberal definition of the term in most cities (remember most of that is going to be locked up in a primary residence)." Selling the $1M house nets about $800k after capital gains. 5% investment interest on that nets about $40k/year without touching the principal. It's definitely possible for a family of two to live on this amount fairly comfortably in a quite decent apartment in a quite decent neighborhood away from the coasts. I know because I was, and making debt service payments on top of it. Get a part time job as a package handler at UPS or FedEx - for the exercise, of course - and you're sitting pretty. A middle-income lifestyle without having to work meets the cutoff for my definition of rich.

jhbadger 8y ago

But can't you see it's just part of the plan of the really wealthy to distract attention to themselves? "Don't blame us; blame your neighbor who has a bit more than you do".