8 ms·

All the example replies to this I’ve seen so far are where the power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So I’ll give my anecdote which is from

• esoterica 6y ago
  No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class. Showing my work: > My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1] >His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).
  • ndespres 6y ago
    Food service, maintenance, landscaping, small tetail.. plenty of possible examples come to mind.
  • acolumb 6y ago
    I disagree. Lower middle class people can open businesses propped up on loans, in which their drive to hit their margin is even higher.
  • vageli 6y ago
    I've owned a cafe and was able to pay myself and the head cook roughly $1000/week (each) when things were great. If that's not middle class, I'm not sure what is.
    • esoterica 6y ago
      $1000/week is higher than the median American personal income. That's by definition not lower middle class.
      • lostcolony 6y ago
        Depends on the area. The national median doesn't really give you insight into whether someone is middle class or not. I'd also point out it's 15% higher than the median. How small do you feel the middle class is? You mentioned "lower middle class"; I only see them mention "middle class". But even for the lower middle class, it rather depends on how you choose to count it, no? I've seen some economists define middle class as the middle 60%. Given that range (~$46k - $140k), they're in the lower end, if you want to hold them to that statement (that they never made).
      • gertlex 6y ago
        If wikipedia is any indication, the definition of middle class is nebulous. My hunch is most people don't base it on dividing the population in to equal fractions, which is kind of how I read your comments.
        • chipotle_coyote 6y ago
          I think your hunch is right, but economists' definitions do tend to be tied to numbers. Pew Research and others -- although I doubt this is a universal definition—usually treat "middle class" as being two-thirds to double the median income in an area. That seems like an unusually high range -- I would have assumed two-thirds to four-thirds would make more sense, but I suspect it's to account for how sharply incomes rise at the high end of the scale (e.g., the median salary in the top quintile compared to that of the middle quintile is many times greater than the median salary in the middle quintile is compared to the lowest). Even with that there's an awful lot of caveats, though; as folks have noted, regional differences can be huge. The median income in Silicon Valley as of last year is just under $100K (despite the picture that Hacker News can sometimes paint!), but in Tampa Bay, Florida, it was just under $60K.
  • jamil7 6y ago
    You should speak to a few more cafe and restaurant owners if you believe that.
  • jariel 6y ago
    This is definitely not true. Literally drive down the street and look at those little no-name shops and stores: each of them have owners who employ other people. The lady who owns the salon and has 10 other ladies + receptionist working there is not wealthy, and is probably taking on a lot of risk. 'Small business owner' is one of the most precarious positions to be in - it's like all the low pay and crap of 'working class' life - but with all the risk and stress of capital class. I don't know why people do it. I wonder maybe if this class just 'gave up on it' it'd be interesting to see how we would all cope.
    • hysan 6y ago
      > I don't know why people do it. I can't answer this myself, but I've gotten some hints at it over my lifetime of hearing my dad's stories (repeated over and over...) One is that it's part of the American dream. As immigrants, being able to say that you made it and are self-made can mean a lot. Second and probably more importantly, successfully running a business, along with all the financial risks included like loans, can give you a leg up in one crucial area that is very hard to acquire as a poor immigrant - high credit score. This let's you get far better loans, mortgages, etc. Having that history where you can prove that "yeah, I make good on my debts" goes a very long way. Especially if you're as savvy as my dad.
    • Czarcasm 6y ago
      As you point out, the risk is what people often forget. My parent's have run a small business for over 20 years. Between 10 and 20 employees depending on the season and the economic situation. When everything goes great, they can sometimes clear a few hundred thousand in the year. They are doing well and appear wealth. But then a bad job comes around, and they can lose their shirts. 3-4 times over the last 20 years, a big job has gone south and they have actually personally lost money for the year. One year in particular, they had to remortgage their house to meet payroll because conditions out of their control lost them a big contract. All the employees still get paid, but my parents have to go into debt and deal with the repercussions. The stress they deal with is immense. I've worked some high-stress corporate jobs, and it still has no compare to what I watched my parents deal with.
    • 6y ago
  • bumby 6y ago
    In general, you are correct but it is very location dependent. Low income in SF is anything below $82k according to HUD
  • pwinnski 6y ago
    $50k/year where? And where did you get that number? I know someone who made $23k last year, less than any of their several employees. If not for his partner's job, he'd be flat-out poor.
  • hysan 6y ago
    I guess it depends on where you live. I'm going by the definition based on the income ranges in the city/state where we grew up where "middle class" is significantly higher than the rest of the US. If you prefer to average across the entire US, then sure, I'll be happy to edit that to say "middle class". However, I don't see how this is anything but a nitpick without addressing any of the content I wrote in my comment. Also, others have pointed out many examples where it's possible to hire many workers but still not be in a high income bracket.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • hysan 6y ago
      Interestingly, esoterica replied and then deleted before I could respond, but since this is actually bothering me (I know it's the internet, it shouldn't), I'm going to post this reply with the quote anyway. >> My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1], >>His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers. > Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage. > Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage). Like I said, I'd be happy to edit it (can't because of the time limit). However, you're nitpicking on a single part of the comment that honestly means very little. You're also doing that without even using any numbers or locations. My question to you is, do you have anything constructive to say in response to the spirit and content of my comment with regards to the discussion thread? Edit: Also, remember that the "fair wage" is based on what the union negotiated (including raises). We paid on the higher end compared to others in our industry. "Fair wage" does not automatically mean that the workers are middle or even lower middle class. So your calculation is already making a huge mistake there.
  • chirau 6y ago
    Lower middle class in America is 30 to 50k.
  • 101404 6y ago
    You are not "angrily" downvoted, you are downvoted because your statement is completely wrong.
  • dang 6y ago
    This comment was edited without saying so, which explains why some of the replies don't make sense. If you're going to make an edit that changes the meaning of what other people have already replied to, please say that you're doing that. The best way is to make the edit append-only.
    • tempestn 6y ago
      How feasible would it be to actually enforce that in the code? Would be great if edits were append-only after some period of time. So you could correct a typo immediately after posting still, but after a few minutes you'd just be able to append. (Replying to your own comment doesn't serve the same function, since it could be lost under other replies.)
      • krapp 6y ago
        It would probably be better to just disallow editing to any comment with replies.
        • saagarjha 6y ago
          Or have an auditable edit history.
          • krapp 6y ago
            That might work if you could link individual comments to a version of their parent, otherwise confusing over comments not making sense in the current context would still occur, since most people aren't going to read an edit history first. The very least they could do is add some visual cue that a comment has been edited, like showing the header in italics or adding an asterisk.
            • saagarjha 6y ago
              I think a visual indication that a comment was edited, then diffs of all their edits, would be very nice to have. I have run into (and caught) people that make provocative comments and then edit them to make the people responding to them look foolish.
  • jshevek 6y ago
    >I'm being angrily downvoted... Your claim regarding others' emotional states sounds like speculation based on insufficient information.
  • fchu 6y ago
    > Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage). That's terrible math that proves nothing, besides that the owners as a couple is making more (including by a tiny margin) than a couple of workers
  • pathseeker 6y ago
    Bad math. Two people making a "fair wage" in a single household does not make it suddenly unfair... unless your point is that people shouldn't be allowed to live together.
  • ryanwinchester 6y ago
    I once had two employees and was definitely not in a high income bracket.
  • derefr 6y ago
    The names of the classes are not economic; they're political†. They have to do with one's ability to influence politics. The "middle class", i.e., the borgeoisie, are the class of business owners (and/or people who have the ability to start a business, i.e. who have a professional skill that could be sold freelance or with a one-person company "wrapped" around it.) What do you call a lowest-income-bracket-for-business-owners business owner, other than "lower middle class"? Meanwhile, a laborer—even a rich laborer (e.g. a waiter who makes a lot in tips; or a unionized dock-worker; or a soldier)—is, definitionally, in the lower class. If your professional skills are only in demand in the context of a capitalist organizing and value-adding on top of them, then you're in the lower class. (For example: dentist? Middle class. Dental hygienist? Lower class. The dentist can start their own dental clinic, whereas the hygienist cannot. Even if they both took home the same salary from said clinic, one has access to corporate profits—capital—while the other does not.) People don't say "upper lower class", but the French equivalent "prolétariat riche" does make sense. (There are whole sectors of the economy that cater mostly to the prolétariat riche. Anything referred to as "bling" is marketed mainly to the prolétariat riche. Nightclubs cater mostly to the prolétariat riche.) † In English, the terms are mapped to positions on a city's height map (lower/middle/upper), because cities used to be basins of smoke and filth, and the people who could, would move to the outlying hills to be away from it. But this is still a political distinction, not an economic one. No matter how wealthy you are, you can't get away from city life entirely until you no longer need to work for a living at all. Once you don't need to work at all, you unlock the time+energy+liquid assets required to influence politics. It's all part-and-parcel.
    • dzonga 6y ago
      well said. well said. boss, you seem like the only one who understands the dynamics of capitalism in this thread. political power is determined by money. & political power also determines money. seems a lot of people miss the historical context with these issues etc.
• ignoramous 6y ago
  > People don’t default to cheating the system. It’s action-reaction. If there is a huge imbalance, if people think they aren’t being treated fairly... One of my HR friends was dismayed at the treatment of warehouse workers at Amazon: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21217969
  • rexpop 6y ago
    That URL to search "Ring" on r/privacy is broken. This will work, for now: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/search?q=ring&restrict_sr=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/search?q=ring&restrict_sr=1
• wpietri 6y ago
  You're totally right on the action-reaction bit. And it's the same way at much bigger scales. This American Life did a story on NUMMI, a Toyota/GM joint venture. Toyota took one of GM's worst plants and made it well run and productive, in large part by treating the workers like people. It's very moving: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 The heartbreaking part is that even when GM saw it happen, they couldn't really get it. Manager-labor hostility was too baked in on the management side for them to really change.
  • pathseeker 6y ago
    >Manager-labor hostility was too baked in on the management side Don't forget that it's baked in on the labor side as well. NUMMI was not a 'fix' of a GM plant. It was a new venture started where a previous GM plant had closed.
    • wpietri 6y ago
      A new venture that rehired a lot of the same workers. If you listen to the TAL piece, you'll hear how they changed. It wasn't an overnight transformation, but ultimately the workers changed where GM managers couldn't.
      • pathseeker 6y ago
        The plant was open until GM went bankrupt. What do you mean the managers couldn't change?
        • wpietri 6y ago
          I mean that the purpose of the joint venture was for GM to learn Toyota's methods. That one plant was fine, but the broader purpose was for GM to learn how to do it everywhere. They never did. If you'd like to know more, I suggest you listen to the story linked above, or read the transcript which is linked from that.
• toasterlovin 6y ago
  > People don’t default to cheating the system. Some people don't. I think you may be underestimating the degree to which A) your parents were good judges of people, and B) having ownership close to the metal can make things work well.
  • luckylion 6y ago
    And being a small business. Things run very differently when there are ten people and you know everyone vs when there are ten thousand people and you only vaguely know what 1/10th of the departments actually do.
    • ryanbrunner 6y ago
      If it means that more employer-employee relationships are as strong as the one described, I'm more than happy to give small businesses a leg up over major corporations.
      • luckylion 6y ago
        In my experience, it very much does. It's usually not as profitable though, and even laws & taxes are often set up to reward large corporations.
• exolymph 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
• taurath 6y ago
  > The workers in response didn’t cheat hours, they were flexible when the times got really tough, and in the end, they greatly respected my parents for running business the “right way”. The best way to get people who show up for work on time, don't steal from the register and don't call out sick is to pay them enough to have a life that isn't sent into a stress spiral by an electricity bill thats 10% higher. Corporations especially in the service industry (Fast food, etc) have tested and to their bottom line workers stealing and missing shifts and calling out every 3 days isn't worth more to them than paying people less. Not because they're unprofitable, but because they can, and there's enough desperate people EVEN WITH FULL EMPLOYMENT to not raise wages as long as none of the other corporations do. So now you have cargoculting amonst the business administrators that pay as low as possible is the only way to run a business. Except of course, when it comes to business administrators and those who interact with them.
  • syshum 6y ago
    >>there's enough desperate people EVEN WITH FULL EMPLOYMENT to not raise wages as long as none of the other corporations do. There is evidence to the contrary, as these companies have infact (or did pre COVID) raise their wages beyond the minimum wage they were doing. Some of it is in response to Retail raise wages (i.e Walmart when to a $11/12 nation wide min wage) in response most fast food also had to raise their wages.
    • taurath 6y ago
      I don't disagree that there is some wage pressure - its the fact that wage increases only started to outdistance inflation only have 3 sustained years of basically no unemployment, which is likely a once in a century event, that there are more factors at play holding wages down.
      • syshum 6y ago
        Of course there is more than just the unemployment rate the effects wages but Fast food will always be the lowest paid job in the economy and the idea that work is entitled to a high wage simply because it exists is not something I can get behind Fast food requires almost no skills, and most likely as wages increase it will simply be automated out of existence completely, given that literally almost any human that is breathing can fill the job there is not going to be much that will push those wages up. These jobs are not intended to be long term employment where a person would support a family on, hell they are not even jobs that should be filled by people supporting themselves, they are tailored to people for their first jobs normally while they are a dependent of another person