> People often categorise themselves as middle class just because they have a decent job and a mortgage - they are in fact just labour. None of their income comes from capital.
> Middle class is mostly a myth, unless you can quit your job and maintain your lifestyle, you are labour, not capital.
I think you are taking my comments completely out of this context and mistakenly inferring lots of things that I didn't say. To wit:
> the tables still need waiting, food still needs harvesting etc. You can't run an economy on just middle managers, software engineers and financiers; what do you think happens to everybody else who doesn't get the "personal choice" to earn above the average wage?
People can develop skills throughout their lives. I don't disagree that there are some people who have to spend their entire lives working as unskilled labor, but I think this is a minority of the working population. Again, I said "most", not "all", which is what you seem to have inferred.
> But the point is that wealth does not correlate with hard-workingness or spend-thriftiness or whatever implication your argument from personal choice is meant to create
My only intended implication is that, contrary to ClumsyPilot's claim that the middle class is "mostly a myth", members of the middle classes are often capable of achieving financial independence, but end up not doing so as a consequence of their personal choices. You seem to be again inferring some all-or-nothing absolute statement that I didn't make.
> "Working poor" is a real concept, perhaps one you're too abstracted from to be aware of.
You seem to be inferring that I claim the working poor don't exist. I only said the working poor are a minority of the working population. Another all-or-nothing inference.
Good for you. This whole subthread started when I was arguing with this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28617665), which states:
> People often categorise themselves as middle class just because they have a decent job and a mortgage - they are in fact just labour. None of their income comes from capital.
> Middle class is mostly a myth, unless you can quit your job and maintain your lifestyle, you are labour, not capital.
I think you are taking my comments completely out of this context and mistakenly inferring lots of things that I didn't say. To wit:
> the tables still need waiting, food still needs harvesting etc. You can't run an economy on just middle managers, software engineers and financiers; what do you think happens to everybody else who doesn't get the "personal choice" to earn above the average wage?
People can develop skills throughout their lives. I don't disagree that there are some people who have to spend their entire lives working as unskilled labor, but I think this is a minority of the working population. Again, I said "most", not "all", which is what you seem to have inferred.
> But the point is that wealth does not correlate with hard-workingness or spend-thriftiness or whatever implication your argument from personal choice is meant to create
My only intended implication is that, contrary to ClumsyPilot's claim that the middle class is "mostly a myth", members of the middle classes are often capable of achieving financial independence, but end up not doing so as a consequence of their personal choices. You seem to be again inferring some all-or-nothing absolute statement that I didn't make.
> "Working poor" is a real concept, perhaps one you're too abstracted from to be aware of.
You seem to be inferring that I claim the working poor don't exist. I only said the working poor are a minority of the working population. Another all-or-nothing inference.