You’re going to have to back that assertion up.
Actually the giveaway is making over $35,000 a month.
I always thought about it by the distinction between can pay others or not.
(Wikipedia, naturally)
If you just mean high income when you write upper-class, you’re not communicating clearly.
> You’re going to have to back that assertion up.
Yes, it does.
Being in the top 1% is extraordinary. It’s a tautology, it’s not really arguable.
There are only a few hundred billionaires in this country, and they didn't get that money by being paid a salary.
So all the retired people living off their 401k are now part of the upper class?
Of course there is a class difference between people at retirement age:
- Has enough wealth to pay for daily life with interest/dividends. Nearly all wealth sill be left to family+friends upon death. (Upper class)
- Has enough wealth to retire, drawing upon this wealth to survive. Must work late into life in order to leave a significant inheritance. (Middle class)
- Not enough wealth to survive without working or leave significant inheritance. Must rely on friends, family, or the state when unable to work in old age. (Lower class)
Are they in their 30s with inherited wealth that allows them to spend like someone with a top 1% incone?
> Ballmer was offered a salary of $50,000 as well as 5-10% of the company.[17] When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8% of the company.
> While CEO of Microsoft in 2009, Ballmer earned a total compensation of $1,276,627, which included a base salary of $665,833, a cash bonus of $600,000, no stock or options, and other compensation of $10,794.
His billions came from the ~10% of the company he got when he started, not from his wages. This is closer to a co-founder than a typical employee.
If the top 1% is an household income of $475,116, and you have 2 working people, they each need to make $237,558
That's certainly a lot, but on the coasts, a college grad can get a $120k or more offer straight out of school. I've heard of much higher ones, but lets use this number.
So to be a 1%, you could simply have a couple where both techies that make twice as much as a new grad. That's not exactly far fetched, when you include equity at a public company.
Of course, these people likely spend 3-5k/month on housing, are paying 6 figure in student debt each, might be sending their toddlers to a day care or a private school and saving for said toddlers' college, and putting a bunch in equity to supplement their 401k and emergencies. Clearly way better off than most, but also probably having discussions as if they should eat out less often to save some money and if they really need 2 cars or not, because gas and maintenance is starting to add up.
So in a good (great even) place, but certainly not the same world as what comes to mind when people say "1 percenter". High income doesn't really mean upper class.
Yes, it is.
> High income doesn't really mean upper class.
Yes it does. Making 10x the annual average family income makes you upper class. That’s what the words mean.
The cognitive dissonance you’re experiencing here is not that the rest of the world is confused about the obvious fact that the top 1% is way above average, it’s that you’re confused about where the average is.
NFL players get paid very high salaries, but the average career is only three years. many of them blow through it and have only meager pensions and the aftermath of injuries to look forward to in their old age. are they "upper class" for the brief part of their life when they have the cash flow or just an edge case of the exploited worker?
Yes. Highly paid professional athletes are upper class.
No that's not what the words mean.
Social class is what circle you run in. It's what kind of car you can see yourself driving. It's how you think about financial security. It's what rec activities you think about doing. It's how you get involved politically.
Income is only a tiny part of that equation. You can be upper class and dirt poor. And you can be lower class and have millions in the bank.
Don't use class to refer to wealth or income. These three concepts are totally different and can exist independently of each other.
It's not your fault you don't understand this. America failed you.
There are many people who have modest incomes, but high wealth. Those people are upper class.
On the other hand, there are a small number of people with high income, but who have a lot of drains on their money (support a large family, donate a lot), and who I would not consider upper class because they do not have a large amount of wealth
No it doesn’t! You can be a millionaire but still be from the working class.
I said being in the 1% doesn’t make you upper class.
I recommend reading this article https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/wealth.html
The top 1% does not make such a small amount. The top 1% has a net worth of $18 million after accounting for loans and other debts, and an income north of 1.7million... And that's in 2013. It's even worse now.
We should be talking about net worth, not about income, or else people who pay themselves a salary of $1 but are billionaires are classed as "lower class", which is obviously nonsense.
That was the point I was making. 1% is not the same as upper class.
My wife and I are income 1%ers, but we're also first-generation college graduates. We live in a city with a tremendously high cost-of-living, because it's where our jobs are. If we are lucky, we will inherit some small amount of equity in our parents homes. We have no political connections or clout. Our income is virtually 100% in the form of pay from our employers.
From your point of view, we're better candidates to be "upper class" than say, Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York (salary: ~$180K) despite the fact that Cuomo's father was also Governor of New York, he was married to a Kennedy, and he presided at Billy Joel's wedding to his fourth wife?
that was a bit snarky so I'll expand a little. I think people typically use "upper class" to signify the highest echelon in the power structure of society. but there are a lot of ways to have power over others, and it doesn't map perfectly onto money. an influential media personality may have more influence than someone far richer but unknown to the public. someone with a high worth on paper might have liquidity issues that force them to be careful with their spending. you might be wealthy and politically connected, but excluded from certain social circles anyway.
I think a more reliable distinction would be whether a person's income predominantly comes from their labour, or whether it proedominantly comes from what they own.
The threshhold for being in the top 1% of income is that 99% or more of people make less than you.
Clearly I mean the threshold for being upper class a term mentioned in your actual comment... unlike "top 1%" which was not.
But all members of the top 1% are in the upper class.
If you have to work for a living you are not upper class, period.
Im most certainly not upper class, as I can't even afford to buy department store clothes or go out to eat more than once a week.
My expenses, due to my location, education, medical status and job, eat up a lot of my income. I'm VERY thrifty and am about 75% over the poverty line after job/education expenses. Throw in medical, transportation and the ridiculous housing costs and I can't even afford mcdonalds for breakfast.
That can easily be true, but it’s so ludicrously far from what normal people mean when they say that they “can’t afford McDonald’s for breakfast” that I think it drives the point home pretty well.
You aren’t poor because you already spent your allowance.
The fact that people in the upper echelons of the global upper echelons of financial resources don’t “feel rich” because we have to make “financial decisions” only when we’ve already spent all of the rest of our money is exactly the problem.
This isn’t, like, an upper-class character flaw. There’s some kind of normal human scale insensitivity that makes it really hard to understand how much a dollar is worth to someone else.
But it seems like if you do the math, you should acknowledge that you genuinely are one of the people getting paid off by the pyramid scheme. If you still feel constrained in your options, it’s because everyone at every level feels that way, because the whole system is lubricated from top to bottom by a pervasive sense of personal insufficiency. And actual poverty is still a lot worse.
If that's true and you're making over $400k per year, you're doing something wrong.
As I said in my comment, non-negotiable expenses are high.
You're going to have to go into a lot more detail if you want anybody to believe expenses that high are possible.
I'm currently an educator in a high income area, teaching students of significant wealth. I make about 450k a year.
We are required to live within a specific radius of the campus, which significantly limits my housing choices to high income, low space options. I'm around the middle of housing costs among my peers, and I'm paying 5k a month for 600 sq/ft.
We are expected to provide all resources for our courses, as is fairly normal in the primary/secondary teaching profession. Resource costs are around 200k a year, and this is fairly common among the staff. We are expected to bear it based on the idea that we're "over compensated" for our position, and that this "gives us flexibility to provide tailored education experiences". Nonsense, but I do love the job.
Taxes and health insurance take a bit over 100k a year.
That puts me around 90k gross for a family of 4 (which I have). "Very low income" level for a family of for in my area us 58k. That puts me at 55% above the VLI line. My original estimate was 75%.
I have a significant medical issue that puts a financial burden on us in monthly prescription copays, plus 4 three month specialist checkups, plus the cost of 2 children.
I am NOT saying this is normal by any means. My single healthy peers live fairly well.
I also expect most people to think, "Just get a new job!", which is understandable. However if I were to move back to my previous southern US appointment, doing the exact same job, Id have less net income and not be working in such a cool place.
> Resource costs are around 200k a year, and this is fairly common among the staff.
That certainly explains everything. I'm curious where that money goes? If you're teaching a class of 30 students, you could buy each one a laptop and go on a two-week field trip with individual hotel rooms and still have 100k left from that budget.
We pay for trips, electronics, "lab kits", license fees, PPE, raw materials, rental fees for heavy equipment and due to the nature of the content we pay probably more than we should due to inflated costs related to the specialized nature of the topic and school contracts.
AND we pay sales tax on all of it, which isnt insignificant on already ridiculous costs.
I don't believe that is an ethical choice, even if the students are already extremely privileged.
I do struggle with this every few months though, it is a difficult concept to grapple with, but I always side with trying to provide the best educational experience that I can.
And FWIW, among the other instructors, my costs aren't even particularly high.
I dont want to discuss my medical costs directly, but the uninsured cash cost for my monthly medications is about 5.5k month. Insurance does help significantly, but the final cost is still greater than 10% of cash price.
If you're unable to manage your money it's your fault, but you're not working class
Here's the difference between rich and wealthy. Shaq, is rich, the white guy that signs his check is wealthy.
Rich is something you can lose over the summer in Vegas with a drug habit.
Im not sure why it's difficult to grasp that the difference between gross and net income can be large for some job in some areas, but that is the case for a small number of individuals.
If your after-tax income is $250k and you're spending $130k on loans and medical expenses, it would be foolish to sign up for a mortgage that costs $120k per year.
No they aren't! You can be working class but a millionaire, and you can be upper class but destitute.
What should be the focus is on the total wealth. Who controls the resources eating up all that income? And how much of that controls is concentrated into a few individuals?
Ok I'll add that to my priorities list somewhere below figuring out how to pay for healthcare.
"One-percenter" isn't a real thing. It's just math. There is absolutely nothing tying the 'one-percenter' class together. They're not banding together to make it so their kids have a straight run into the Ivy League. They're not trying to stay politically dominant by passing poll taxes.
One-percenters aren't doing that. The upper class is. And there's plenty of "one-percenters" that aren't part of the upper class, most notably tech workers.
Social classes each have their own institutions of which they dominate. They have industry segments in which they maintain presence. But apparently we can't talk about that anymore. Sadly it's probably less to do with anything more nefarious than the gutting of funding for journalism, so all the stories are getting lazier and lazier.