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The most concise modern class definition I have seen goes something like this: Working class: work to survive. Middle class: work to do other things. Upper mid

• nostrademons 8y ago
  "What we are seeing now is that between education, housing and financial insecurity it is hard to be even upper middle class anymore without existing wealth." I'm not sure that's really true - or at least, it's an incomplete model. Rather, what's happening with education, health care, & housing is that you have three sectors with flat productivity growth and large barriers to entry, which implies that the number of people they can serve remains constant. The population is growing. When you can provide a service to X people but there are Y > X people who need that service, Y - X people will necessarily end up going without. The financial insecurity is because of the mad scramble to avoid being part of the Y - X who get left out in this game of musical chairs. The reason the middle class (using danan's definition of "employees with a comfortable and secure lifestyle") expanded so much after WW2 was because we had a number of technological breakthroughs that dramatically increased the productivity of these sectors. Antibiotics and vaccines meant that illnesses which previously would kill or require long medical care could be prevented by a simple shot. The green revolution increased the yields on crops by 10x. The interstate highway system and automobile opened up vast suburban areas for development, and developers (like our current president's father) became wealthy applying mass-production techniques to building housing. The number of skilled scientists in the U.S. increased dramatically during WW2 as they left turmoil in the rest of the world, which could support larger college populations. We still see those technological breakthroughs in other areas like computers & media, but they don't happen anymore in fundamental areas of life like health care & education. Some of this is probably inherent in the problem domain (with all the easy diseases cured, we now die of heart disease, cancer, suicide, overdoses, etc, most of which have proven stubbornly resistant to cures) while some is because of artificial restrictions (like housing zoning laws).
  • grigjd3 8y ago
    In higher ed, at least, we have an abundance of people with PhDs that could theoretically teach at a college level - which is why a single tenure-track job will have 300 applicants. Not saying that supply and demand aren't involved here, but a simple application of supply and demand like you suggest isn't an adequate description.
    • nostrademons 8y ago
      Don't many of them actually teach (for bargain-basement wages)? At least, most of my friends who went to grad school had to teach undergrads at some point. There's probably some artificial barriers to entry for education as well - it's hard to explain how Ph.Ds have no job prospects at the same time that college tuition keeps on rising. And I suspect that has to do with college's role as a signaling device for job prospects. If a bunch of Ph.Ds wanted to open a new college where they personally tutor a bunch of incoming college freshmen for much less than college costs, those kids would probably get a better education than any of their college-bound peers, but they also wouldn't have a degree from any credible university or much in the way of job prospects. ...come to think of it, I wonder if colleges know that their primary value is as a signaling mechanism, and intentionally restrict the size of the incoming class to preserve that signal. In other words, they're aware that they don't actually add any educational value, they just ensure that they only admit students who would've succeeded anyway and then point to all their successful graduates.
      • danans 8y ago
        > ...come to think of it, I wonder if colleges know that their primary value is as a signaling mechanism, and intentionally restrict the size of the incoming class to preserve that signal. In other words, they're aware that they don't actually add any educational value, they just ensure that they only admit students who would've succeeded anyway and then point to all their successful graduates. I think what you're saying is that they don't add any additional educational value beyond what your hypothetical band of PhDs could. They do provide educational value and also the signalling, though perhaps they don't acknowledge the latter so much. But at least with pre-university education, as far I've seen, the process you describe is what most private preschools, primary and secondary schools engage in: They can essentially select their student population for the children who are most prepared, either by means (== family support system) or by their natural abilities. Even those private schools that have scholarship programs for underprivileged students only accept students who are exceptional and don't have serious social functioning issues. These schools then point to the achievement of their students as an indication of their superior educational process (which in some cases might be true, due to just having more money to provide better educational services). Public schools, by contrast, must accept students of all abilities, and thus look worse on paper, when they are often dealing with a much more diverse, and often more challenging set of student backgrounds.
• malandrew 8y ago
  It's not even just that it's hard to be upper middle class (build wealth), but that people aren't even being taught to build wealth. Learning to build wealth isn't taught in schools. It's passed down from parents to children and it was far more common to find families where the parents taught these skills when there were lots more mom&pop businesses and homesteads where they built their own wealth and taught the skills to their progeny. The rise of the company man and the firm all but eliminated the need to teach about wealth building. People outsourced thinking about wealth building to pension plans. Now that pension plans have failed we have 2-3 generations now that have lost a lot of the teachings of how to build wealth.
  • war1025 8y ago
    This is something I think a lot about. If you have a pension plan, you have zero incentive not to spend all your money. You have guaranteed income to maintain your standard of living. Having money for a rainy day becomes someone else's problem, just like you said. I guess I don't have anything to add, just struck a nerve because that is exactly how I feel, so I wanted to say something.
    • malandrew 8y ago
      I would also add that if you had a pension and pensions are a cultural norm, you not only have an incentive to spend everything, you also have no incentive to teach your children to save and invest in anything except maybe education (so they can get a job with a good pension), since you expect pensions to still be a thing when they hit retirement age. Pensions were a form a corporate welfare that essentially wiped out the cultural norm/practice of investing in your own future and made people dependent on the firm. No one foresaw a time when pensions would end up being a massive corporate expense that would lead bigger companies with them to fall behind nimbler upstarts without them.
  • Latteland 8y ago
    So can you give more detail about this strategy to build wealth? Today the strategy might be get a good education, marry someone also well educated, get good jobs in lifetime possible careers (uh, doctors or programmers), buy a house of lasting and increasing value, buy stocks in low-cost mutual funds, don't waste money. This worked for me but this world was barely beginning in 1950, even though it was probably common in the 1960s. It's only available to a few fortunate fields today.
• bobthechef 8y ago
  The upper middle class is actually growing.
  • tokyodude 8y ago
    it's it growing as a percentage of total population or only in absolute terms?
• randomdata 8y ago
  For a modern definition, I like: Working class: One who makes money by collecting a wage. Upper class: One who makes money through investments or similar business dealings. Middle class: One who partially makes money by collecting a wage and partially through investing.
  • rtpg 8y ago
    I don't believe that "makes money partially through investing" is true for a significant part of the population given that 60+% of Americans don't have $500 in savings. Though perhaps that is the point
    • randomdata 8y ago
      The internet suggests that the median American household has closer to $5,000 in a savings account. Regardless, while you may see some paltry returns, savings is not really what I think most would consider any meaningful investment income. The primary purpose of a savings account is to keep a modest sum of liquid cash available for emergency purposes and not where one would want to keep most of their assets. Wealth figures are more difficult to come by, but the internet suggests the median household has a net worth of around $200,000. However, I would venture to guess that a large portion of that is tied up in a primary household which does not normally generate any income. It is not clear how much a typical person does make in investment income. If you are right that 60% of the population do not have investment income, that seems reasonable enough. I think it is fair to say that most people are working class. I am sure that we can agree that, under modern usage, the middle class is meant to represent something that is not easily attainable, but more attainable than upper class.
      • designtofly 8y ago
        In addition to most "middle class" wealth being tied up in home equity, I would wager that the vast majority of "investments" is tied up in retirement funds. Very few middle class people have regular income from investments. Outside of Silicon Valley where RSUs and ESPPs are common, few people can rely on stocks or other equities to generate any usable income outside of retirement.