4 ms·

It means that paying a settlement of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to make legal troubles disappear is out of reach.

skyyler 3y ago
That's true of whatever class is lesser than the middle class, as well. I was just curious what separates the "middle" from the "bottom".
- dylan604 3y ago
  you gotta be in the upper middle at least to even come close to racking up $377 million of anything, right?
  - skyyler 3y ago
    Sure. But what separates the middle from the lower?
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > what separates the middle from the lower Property. Historically, this meant land. Today, it means assets. Savings of any kind. The poor live pay check to pay check; the middle class could survive a bad harvest.
      - skyyler 3y ago
        Thank you for responding to my curiosity with discussion, not mockery. This makes sense to me. Owning things at all makes you middle class, and not destitute. Why is this distinction important?
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Why is this distinction important? The safety buffer it provides lets you take more risk, personally, civically and societally. That lets you access rewards someone fighting for sustenance can’t countenance. Consider the years we, as a society, spend educating our youth when they could be working a field to produce food. It also means leverage. If a harvest failed, the poor in the army got fed. The others didn’t. The middle class, on the other hand, wasn’t forced into that choice simply to survive. (We use the term “survive” nowadays to mean maintain some arbitrary quality of life, but I’m speaking literally.)
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - dylan604 3y ago
        there are plenty of middle class living pay check to pay check and do not own things.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > there are plenty of middle class living pay check to pay check and do not own things And there are plenty of the very rich who go bankrupt and die penniless. Someone relying solely on income from labour to sustain their standard of living may live as the middle class do, just as a poor person accumulating debt may sustain a middle-class lifestyle, but that doesn’t change their fundamental economic situation. Also: When middle class folk talk about living paycheck to paycheck, they’re usually ignoring retirement assets. But I don’t deny that plenty of people consume their economic security because they, and many times rightly, don’t believe they need it.
      - coding123 3y ago
        This does not agree with wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class Roughly, today middle class is directly related to the amount of discretionary income, not assets.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        From an economic standpoint, the Wikipedia definition is correct. From a sociopolitical angle, especially a cultural one, it’s quite different. Broadly, what constitutes a middle class depends on the society we are observing. Every society has its elites. Some had slaves, some have destitutes. In between is gradation defined, variously, by income, assets, education and lineage. (See the history section; modern/British middle class was originally defined by education.) In America, discretionary income is a good definition because most people have a reasonable expectation of lifelong economic stability. (We gripe when it isn’t improving.) In Europe (and most of the world), the asset test is far more sturdy. And even within America, you see this vary.
        coding123 3y ago
        I fully disagree because if that was the case, it would be highlighted in the wikipedia article. Go ahead and add it, let it go through the rounds of thousands of people trying to be on the same page about it - then I will believe you. I'd rather trust that source that backhanded comments here.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > it would be highlighted in the wikipedia article Did you read the history and evolution of the term section? “Friedrich Engels saw the category as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry in late-feudalist society. While the nobility owned much of the countryside, and the peasantry worked it, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city.” In the French Revolution, “the new ruling class or bourgeoisie in the new capitalist-dominated societies.” Capital, it’s there in the term. The Stevenson definition, which follows in the next paragraph, cites the “chief defining characteristic of membership in the middle-class [as] control of significant human capital.” This British education-and-skill-derived definition is the basis of the top-of-the-article summary definition, since that human capital produces excess income. Would note that the article appears poorly cited (as many notes on it claim), despite a cursory review of the bibliography shows they’ve covered the basics.

skyyler 3y ago

That's true of whatever class is lesser than the middle class, as well. I was just curious what separates the "middle" from the "bottom".

dylan604 3y ago
you gotta be in the upper middle at least to even come close to racking up $377 million of anything, right?
- skyyler 3y ago
  Sure. But what separates the middle from the lower?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > what separates the middle from the lower Property. Historically, this meant land. Today, it means assets. Savings of any kind. The poor live pay check to pay check; the middle class could survive a bad harvest.
    - skyyler 3y ago
      Thank you for responding to my curiosity with discussion, not mockery. This makes sense to me. Owning things at all makes you middle class, and not destitute. Why is this distinction important?
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Why is this distinction important? The safety buffer it provides lets you take more risk, personally, civically and societally. That lets you access rewards someone fighting for sustenance can’t countenance. Consider the years we, as a society, spend educating our youth when they could be working a field to produce food. It also means leverage. If a harvest failed, the poor in the army got fed. The others didn’t. The middle class, on the other hand, wasn’t forced into that choice simply to survive. (We use the term “survive” nowadays to mean maintain some arbitrary quality of life, but I’m speaking literally.)
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - dylan604 3y ago
      there are plenty of middle class living pay check to pay check and do not own things.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > there are plenty of middle class living pay check to pay check and do not own things And there are plenty of the very rich who go bankrupt and die penniless. Someone relying solely on income from labour to sustain their standard of living may live as the middle class do, just as a poor person accumulating debt may sustain a middle-class lifestyle, but that doesn’t change their fundamental economic situation. Also: When middle class folk talk about living paycheck to paycheck, they’re usually ignoring retirement assets. But I don’t deny that plenty of people consume their economic security because they, and many times rightly, don’t believe they need it.
    - coding123 3y ago
      This does not agree with wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class Roughly, today middle class is directly related to the amount of discretionary income, not assets.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        From an economic standpoint, the Wikipedia definition is correct. From a sociopolitical angle, especially a cultural one, it’s quite different. Broadly, what constitutes a middle class depends on the society we are observing. Every society has its elites. Some had slaves, some have destitutes. In between is gradation defined, variously, by income, assets, education and lineage. (See the history section; modern/British middle class was originally defined by education.) In America, discretionary income is a good definition because most people have a reasonable expectation of lifelong economic stability. (We gripe when it isn’t improving.) In Europe (and most of the world), the asset test is far more sturdy. And even within America, you see this vary.
        coding123 3y ago
        I fully disagree because if that was the case, it would be highlighted in the wikipedia article. Go ahead and add it, let it go through the rounds of thousands of people trying to be on the same page about it - then I will believe you. I'd rather trust that source that backhanded comments here.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > it would be highlighted in the wikipedia article Did you read the history and evolution of the term section? “Friedrich Engels saw the category as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry in late-feudalist society. While the nobility owned much of the countryside, and the peasantry worked it, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city.” In the French Revolution, “the new ruling class or bourgeoisie in the new capitalist-dominated societies.” Capital, it’s there in the term. The Stevenson definition, which follows in the next paragraph, cites the “chief defining characteristic of membership in the middle-class [as] control of significant human capital.” This British education-and-skill-derived definition is the basis of the top-of-the-article summary definition, since that human capital produces excess income. Would note that the article appears poorly cited (as many notes on it claim), despite a cursory review of the bibliography shows they’ve covered the basics.