No, they've got it right. The distinction between middle class and lower class is entirely about wealth, but the distinction between middle class and upper class is not. Wealth is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for being upper class; the distinguishing features are flexibility and power, not money. It is possible to convert money into these things, but most middle-class people who acquire sufficient wealth nevertheless fail to become upper-class because they lack the mental toolkit, or are embedded in power structures that won't let them.
With that freedom comes a responsibility to acknowledge it and to not act like complete idiots. Unfortunately, even the rich to a large extent aren't aware of how rich they truly are.
Sorry I refuse to believe in this victim hood mentality. We seriously need to get out of this 'Somebody needs to do it for me' ideology. Nobody is going to help you and shouldn't. Because frankly no matter whom you can speak to is going through a little battle of their own.
I am working hard here pushing 19 hour schedules to ensure I have a good life. Somebody else is all welcome to do so. I can understand if the person is ill or is physically disabled. But a healthy person who doesn't work hard deserves his condition.
And in a country like India, expecting somebody to come and help is not a unrealistic expectation but a 'unjust' expectation.
>>By comparison those who have acquired sufficient wealth are free to do whatever they please!
You make acquiring wealth sound like somebody just woke up one day and found a sack of gold biscuits at their door step.
>>With that freedom comes a responsibility to acknowledge it and to not act like complete idiots
Exactly.
There by each man for his own and shall deserve net result of his own work.
>>Unfortunately, even the rich to a large extent aren't aware of how rich they truly are.
Because nothing is really enough but that's a totally different discussion altogether.
> I am working hard here pushing 19 hour schedules to ensure I have a good life. Somebody else is all welcome to do so. I can understand if the person is ill or is physically disabled. But a healthy person who doesn't work hard deserves his condition.
> And in a country like India, expecting somebody to come and help is not a unrealistic expectation but a 'unjust' expectation.
I think you misunderstood what he's talking about. India isn't the United States.
Until recently India had a rigid caste system where it was simply impossible for people to move outside of their caste. If a person's parents were laborers, they became laborers - that was their caste. It had nothing to do with how hard they worked or if other people helped them. Their caste was "laborer," so that's the only job they'd be able to get.
It's not as strict as it used to be, and it's slowly dying out, but it does still exist.
Caste system is a option, you can either associate yourself to it or leave it. This is true at least in modern day India and has been the the case for nearly 20 years now. You can easily ditch your caste, just like atheists ditch their religion.
The fact is caste system offers a comfortable cushion of victim hood and gives you enough reasons to justify failure or even not trying.
These days belonging to a lower caste is a gift because you get reservations nearly every where. There are protests by many communities to include them in back ward communities because of the reservations. People are fighting to be backward, Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Gurjar_unrest_in_Rajasthan
The situation is such that people want to belong to backward communities and castes.
True freedom is dangerous, many people know it, and they don't even want it.
Caste system is not just reservations/backward communities. It includes the different sub-castes (Ex - Different sub-castes in the Brahmin caste). This is very relevant in vote bank politics. A candidate belonging to sub-caste X will not get elected if the region has majority people from sub-caste Y, even if the candidate is known to be capable.
The main reason for the terrible infrastructure conditions in India is politics and corruption. These are strongly rooted in the caste/sub-caste system. Money has always been flowing freely in politics and it is what makes politics attractive.
The terrible infrastructure I refer to is basic - water, electricity, medicines. Malls, fancy cars cannot substitute water. In India, People are dying for water these days. This will only increase exponentially. There has been research showing that 24 hour water supply is possible with the current fresh water resources in India, but it won't happen, thanks to politics, corruption and the caste system.
The SUV situation brought up in the article is not caste based. It was money based and money is the new, bonus caste system on top of existing ones.
They don't really know another way of life. That is all they have ever been exposed to. They don't know about Apple/Google/iPhone or Steve Jobs or what a computer is because their village is so fucking remote that the Government of India decided it would be a hassle to provide electricity, and their parents decided to make additional income by renting out a few kids to make ends meet.
These people don't really consider themselves victims, because they don't think they have been wronged. They were mostly unlucky in the lottery of life and born in poor circumstances.
You can refuse to believe whatever you want but the fact is that you were extremely lucky in life to be either born in a relatively well to do family or in circumstances that exposed you technology, educational experiences over the course of your life. Having an internet connection can be a life changing effect, because of the access to information it provides.
>> Nobody is going to help you and shouldn't.
>> But a healthy person who doesn't work hard deserves his condition.
>> expecting somebody to come and help is not a unrealistic expectation but a 'unjust' expectation.
>> There by each man for his own and shall deserve net result of his own work.
^^ I am glad that everyone doesn't think like you because the world truly would be an awful place if they did.
I never denied that. My whole point was, now that you are- What next?
If you think you are happy with poverty then the story ends there. If you aren't then, the government can do little, Sorry but there are simply too many people in our country. The ordinary citizen will not and can't do anything about you.
It will be your and your problem alone.
It will be difficult, hard and a tiring lifelong worth of work. Just like it is for everybody else.
What else were you thinking?
The situation is very similar in South Africa. The poor makes up such a large proportion of the population that their situation cannot be improved significantly without major wealth redistribution (combined with a massive reduction in government corruption, preferably). Neither of these things are likely to happen (unless there is a revolution), so a poor person can only realisticly rely on himself to improve his situation.
Kamaal's point does not contradict the OP's. It's just a statement of reality from the perspective of the poor.
Arguing they have only themselves to rely on, feels like a rationalisation to not help them.
EDIT: I see where you're coming from now that I've seen his higher-up posts.
Not to mention that in the end, even if everyone did 'just work hard', there isn't enough wealth to go around. The civilised thing is at least to give people basic services and let themselves work to higher wealth from there.
And I am not saying that most poor people expect handouts. If anything I would guess that most of them are hard-working. I only brought it up because of the parent post. I realise I owe my own middle-class status to the fact that my parents are middle-class.
And I am all for the well-off helping the poor. I only wish the (South African, in my case) government would do their part.
My position is less about handouts, and more about the assumption that poor people know how to get out of poverty and all that's missing is the elbow grease. Yes, relying on the government for handouts isn't going to work, and you also want to be careful of welfare dependence. But education is a significant wealth-enabler, and merely knowing how to deal with various things can give people a leg up. Kamaal's point is about giving a giant shrug and saying "eh, what can you do?". It reflects the current realities of the situation, but the lazy part is not bothering to think of better ways forward.
Though one often reads that acquiring/making wealth isn't a zero sum game.
There was actually a revolution. When I was a kid, Nelson Mandela was in jail. Did the revolution improve matters?
One thing is very different between .in and .za: .za is one of the most violent countries in the world, while .in is one of the least violent.
(b) to recognize the caste system, you have to go somewhere it doesn't exist. Right now you know as much about it as a typical fish knows about water.
(c) we're human beings, and none of us gets ahead alone; we all have people to help us. We can't even survive infancy without help from other people. The people a kilometer from you who have expensive SUVs without having to work 19-hour days? That's mostly because they got a lot of help from other people, such as their parents, and only partly because they worked hard — in some cases, not at all. Working hard is really, really important, but far from enough.
Many unmarried techies live in the same apartment and share a room and still have a maid/servant. These guys earn $500-$1000usd a month. They have a TV but it isn't a flat screen. They have a decent mobile phone but it is not an iphone 5. They might have a decent motorcycle but not a car..
They split the cost of the servant who comes from another part of India. The servant might cost $150 a month, split 4 ways. The techies are not above middle class at all. The guy they employee is just really poor.
Make a million dollars a year, and you can go to all the charity balls and opera galas you want. And your kids can go to whatever prep school you want to send them to. That tells me it's about your wallet, not where your parents went to school.
The article takes one event, and then reapplies it liberally to a popular narrative.
I could never have imagined that this was HN material.
Care to elaborate on said traits?
To save so much that you ultimately have a lot but spend none of it.
"Let me tell you another story: my neighbour in the upper-middle-class area where I live is a man who owns luxury hotels. His house is huge, but no sooner had he moved in than he appropriated about half of the pavement space to the front and side of his house, claiming it for his own. This means less parking for others, less pavement for children, less walking space for everyone. Of the 400-odd houses in this area, at least half have done this. At the same time they have also collectively seen off the only roadside tea stall in the area that served all the service providers – the guards, the drivers, the domestics, the sweepers. "
Both the writer and you are discounting the 200 odd houses in the area that have not claimed an entitlement on the pavement, by doing so you are discrediting the willingness of those who are playing by the rules to further an argument that does no hold scrutiny. Further more as others have stated in comments, there is nothing in the article that is uniquely Indian.
> In India this is quite possible, a middle class person could easily hire 3-4 people and therefore start to create change.
Most people do not have a need to hire 3-4 people. Growing up it was common to have a maid who helped with household chores due to the absence of amenities like a dish washer or washing machine. As these services become available there is no need to hire folks to do such work. Hiring folks and having them laze around only to take home wages is a ridiculous idea, moreover wealth saved by not hiring these folks is spent on other purposes (movies, restaurants etc.) that the so called wealth might consider a good return on investment. These in turn create jobs for services that are required (taxi drivers, ticket vendors, waiters, restaurant managers etc.). The fact that the so called upper class people do not hire folks to do their dishes and laundry is if anything a move towards a society with fewer artificial classes.
I completely agree with this. When I was living in New York, I rarely felt a need to "hire" someone to do stuff for me. Apartment didn't get dirty so easily. Clothes didn't get dirty so easily. Very easy and convenient access to laundromats. Dish washer at home. Easy access to fairly high quality groceries. Lots of places to eat around which had healthy food options at reasonable prices (relative to your salary). Anything you wanted could be ordered online.
If on top of all this, you just hired a maid by the hour, for a couple of hours, to come clean your house like once in two weeks, you didn't need anything else.
Here in India, it's hard to get by without a maid. Clothes get dirty fast, house gets dirty fast, no laundromats, no dishwasher, no space to keep a washing machine at home, poor availability of healthy food options, groceries sellers have bad quality of food and vegetables so you need to spend time picking them out, supermarkets have massive checkout lines etc.
And then yes your usual dowry, caste system issues thrown here and there.
And those who leave India to settle else where too, find these topics indulging. It gives all them all the reasons in the world why they were right to leave the country.
You see the same thing here in the U.S., and to be honest, I think it's somewhat accurate. The vast majority of the United States is middle class, and there is a huge range of privilege within it. Some parts of the middle class are virtually inaccessible from other parts. The mistake is not in labeling those rich, privileged people "middle class," but rather in thinking that there is no such thing as middle class privilege. In fact, being born into the middle class is a privilege, and there is a vast range of privilege within the middle class. In the U.S. a middle class kid could have parents with high school diplomas or parents with PhDs, parents with no connections or parents with Ivy League connections, parents who have never been more than a few hundred miles from home or cosmopolitan globe-hopping parents, parents who force them to take out loans for college or parents who pay the entire cost of an Ivy League education with a break year plus professional school afterwards and apartments and cars the whole time. The label "middle class" just doesn't mean much these days.
In that sense, even the SV millionaires are outsiders to the real power brokers, the real upper class, the real movers of the country.
Although that is probably also a bit of an overstatement in Europe as well, this issue is really one of the major historical distinctions between the US and Europe.
If these are people who have "made" the money themselves in their own generation, I can see why/how they still view themselves as middle class. It's a mindset.
I have had the fortune of getting to know many SV millionaires who grew up in modesty/poverty, and still buy shorts from Target and pinch pennies madly. They have their mansions and their fancy cars, but they're still bound by the mindset of their lower/middle class background where they fought ferociously and squeezed themselves and their financial abilities to get to where they are today.
As long as that mindset persists, even very wealthy people won't consider themselves to be "upper class".
Give it one or two generations though. Their kids and grandkids will probably behave and believe that they're upper class.
It's actually a problem in Australia where we all sort of treat each other as equals, for example our hospitality classes won't scrape and bow and call you sir, and everyone is ok with that. Racism has started to emerge because the only Indians who can get to Australia are the rich ones. All it takes is a few bad interactions and people start to write off the entire race, when I'm sure that 99%+ of Indians are actually pretty damn nice people.
I just wonder if those new generations will be less cheap but more entitled than ever.
I don't know about India, but in the US there is a bizzare cultural phenomenon where everyone wants to see himself as middle class. Being identified as rich is somehow faintly embarrassing.
You see all kinds of strange verbal gymnastics in trying to justify middle class status. Heck there is plenty of it in this thread!
So I suspect that is going on with your wealthy friends, and that it will continue in thier kids and grandkids (unless the overall culture shifts).
There are a few advantages. One difference is I don't worry about how I'm going to pay for e.g. a $1000 car repair (but it's still painful). I'm also more likely to hire someone for maintenance or gardening. Also, I theoretically could quit my job and live off my investments, but that's unlikely to happen.
Of course this is partially a linguistic argument. If you define upper class as the top income quintile, for instance, than I'm upper class, but that's meaningless.
I do wonder if I'm doing things wrong, and there's some secret for admission to the upper class. Maybe I should start flying first class, buy a Ferrari, stop shopping at Target, and hang out with rich people. (Although I think that would just make me nouveau riche, not upper class.)
(My motivation in this comment is that these HN threads tend to be entirely speculation, and the semi-rich never comment, so I hope to provide a useful perspective.)
What I wonder is what you think the upper class (as you define it) have that's so great or special that you don't. Sure you could cabin it so narrowly as to be people that e.g. get personal access to the President, or can get there kids into Harvard with a single phone call or something, but that definition is so narrow as to be useless (which gets back to the whole all Americans are middle class thing).
Having known several people with net worths in the 7-9 figure range, from brand new money through came over on the Mayflower, it really is a continuum. There's no secret handshake.
But that doesn't mean that somewhere along the continuum you really are living a different lifestyle than a family of four living in Northern California with both one parent working as a teacher and the other as a hygienist, each making $40,000 a year. They've got credit card balances, student loans, a long commute because that's where the affordable houses are, stress over how they are ever going to pay for college, and so on. You may shop at the same stores, but is that really a good indicator? Call what you have upper middle class if you feel like it, but that family is solidly middle class by any reasonable definition. So if there's a difference in kind, and someone has to give up the label, it shouldn't be them.
Finally, I should note that I find this little quirk of American culture fairly harmless. The one area where it can be pernicious is when it effects certain policy areas. For example, many people agree that the "rich" should be paying higher taxes, but since hardly anyone sees himself as rich, it is always a little farther out that the tax burden needs to fall. A good litmus test is the home mortgage income deduction, which is massively tilted to the high end of the income scale. If in justifying a high phase out you start to hear yourself say things like $1.5 million doesn't really buy you that much -- then you may be in the problematic zone.
For example, if some, but not all (or even most), of your family members need to work in order to maintain a comfortable lifestyle (which includes healthy food, a home that is not crowded, access to decent education, and one to four vehicles) then you are middle class. If you have to work but don't have these things, then you are lower-income. If you can have these things without working at all in perpetuity, then you are well-off.
The stark contrast between such a person and another that drives around in an air conditioned SUV is what often shocks people. By comparison, a western middle class person in India would be considered pretty well off! Unfortunately, the Indian upper middle class/upper class do not apply those standards to themselves.
There are some people commenting on this topic saying that SV millionaires are not upper class. That sounds ridiculous in India :)
Part of the issue is that lots of people talk about the USA being a "classless society". Some of them even believe it. More than most nations, America loves the idea that a person can arrive as a poor immigrant or be born the child of poor immigrants, apply uncommon drive and intelligence, and create a business that makes him extremely rich. (Whether that is the rule or the rare exception is another question.)
Any references for that? The one I found, partly disagrees with your claims [1]. [1] also suggests that wealth disparity in India is better when compared to world. I am not saying the situation is good, but it is not as bloddy and fearing as you suggest it is. And there isn't something very particular about India in this case, I think the problem is a more widespread. And yes, the rich in India compare themselves to global standards when they determine if they are wealthy - because the world is more global now than we would like to believe. You suggest elsewhere that these people are upper class because it takes so little to help the lower classes. If that is any metric, most of the western hemisphere should be categorized as upper class because it helping a significant majority of eastern hemisphere will not have significant negative impact on lifestyle or wealth of the west.
[1] http://www.wealthbull.com/stock-market-today/878-wealth-dist...
I agree but let's not lose track of the fact that empathy doesn't end at national borders. We Indians have a responsibility to help those of us who are less privileged than us, but so does everyone else in the world. And let's also not forget that our conditions are the way the are thanks largely to colonialism and that the British in particular and the western world in general profited massively from our suffering during that time. And finally let's also not forget that immigration and employment laws in the western world even today actively work towards denying economic opportunities to people in developing countries and this plays a huge part in countries like India staying poor.
My point is that it's a bit too simplistic to frame it as Indians need to do X instead of Y and then they will be fine. Indians are doing Y not because they're genetically deficient but because we've gotten stuck in a local maxima that is mostly not of our own making.
I find it quite hard to believe that most (or any) girls would be fine with anyone driving circles around them and honking. All women I know from Delhi are quite sick of eve teasing and don't really give a shit whether the guilty person is poor or rich.
In general it seems to take a couple of generations of security for any given elite to look around and decide that it has obligations. In an American context, think of the Rockefellers, Harrimans, and Kennedys.
By contrast, the Indian elites described in the OP seem to consider themselves above humanity and the law. Wealth alone does not make you a horrible person, though it's fun to believe that it does.
But of course, publishing an article that does not conform to the worst stereotyping of India will not get to to HN first page.
1. "I've had statements from rich girls in New Delhi who don't like 'these poor people who stare at us', but are completely fine with spoilt rich brats driving circles around them while honking away."
How many "statements" did you get?
2. "These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that. Perhaps that is why they seem to lack compassion and empathy."
Based on what do you conclude this?
3. "You know, rich people with 4 bedroom apartments on the 17th floor in and around the capital."
Rich?
4. "Most people who the 'middle class' perceive as lower class are almost sub humans in their eyes."
Based on what do you conclude this?
5. "The middle class got to point fingers once more at the lower classes who 'rape us'. They got to ask the government what they are doing to protect them from these 'evil immigrants who come into New Delhi and ruin our fair city'."
Did you participate in any of the protests? You know, this is an egg on the face of all who spent days protesting after the incident. Again, what is this based on? Can you point to any news articles or any research/survey that got this out?
Yes, situation is complicated but people have started debating about a lot of things. There is a lot more participation from the common man. This never happened in the past. This evolution of 1 billion people to a developed and civilized society is indeed slow as much as it is unique. But I am confident it will happen - India is still a democracy, people still have a say in determining their future...
India definitely makes you feel this. I know this one senior guy who lived for a very long time in New York (~10 years) after his grad school and moved a few years back to Mumbai. He is very rich but he says that he feels poorer in Mumbai than he ever felt in New York, even compared with the time when he working in his first job, fresh out of grad school.
Areas around New Delhi suffer from an acute nouveau riche problem. Most well educated (programmer like..) people wouldn't act out in such a callous and insensitive manner. However, they will most likely still view people from lower classes differently, this may not be evident in the way people act but you can catch onto it if you pay attention to certain remarks that people may make. (eg: I can't ride with those smelly people in the Delhi metro)
Again, these are generalizations, not everyone is an asshole. Most people aren't. However, there is a great deal of prejudice and I believe the only way forward is for people to acknowledge it in the first place.
unless you are with in the top 1%, i wouldn't say you are upper class.
I completely respect your opinion, but the fact that you think that doesn't "surprise" me, it's in fact the very phenomenon I was pointing out. Do you think that curve looks any different in India or Colombia?
So here's the thing. This article is pretty spot on. We, the privileged of India, do indeed feel entitled. There's absolutely no doubt about that.
My theory is that the population pressure in India is so very high that you're always fighting for your piece of the pie and over extending yourself (such as the man with the large house who took over the pavement). Yes, it's greedy, but it's a particular mentality that comes out of being part of this massive rat race with millions.. billions.. of competitors. I have several friends in India who I would call upper class. You know, rich people with 4 bedroom apartments on the 17th floor in and around the capital.
You know what these people call themselves ?
Middle class.
They refuse to acknowledge that they are wealthy. That they are privileged. That they are truly upper class. I have a friend who drives an Audi presented to him by his father who thinks he's middle class.
These people struggle (or think that they do..) for so long in the rat race that they forget that they have risen above it and gone far beyond that. Perhaps that is why they seem to lack compassion and empathy. Maybe they feel that they are still struggling to survive and therefore can't spare a moment for someone else ?
The rich do need to take a moment to feel rich and then feel responsible. Unfortunately, as the article mentions the rich in India - to a great extent - are failing at this. Maybe it's desensitization due to the immensely large number of poor people. Maybe it's something else - further study is required.
Of course, I'm not even going into how hierarchical and class oriented Indian society truly is. Most people who the 'middle class' perceive as lower class are almost sub humans in their eyes. This is another reason in my opinion the Delhi gang rape case was such a big deal. The middle class got to point fingers once more at the lower classes who 'rape us'. They got to ask the government what they are doing to protect them from these 'evil immigrants who come into New Delhi and ruin our fair city'. I've had statements from rich girls in New Delhi who don't like 'these poor people who stare at us', but are completely fine with spoilt rich brats driving circles around them while honking away.
On the flip side though, this article mostly covers behavior in New Delhi. I'll go as far as to say that New Delhi is possibly the most horrible city in India when it comes to these things. Other cities tend to be more relaxed. There are far far better places than New Delhi.
The class system in Delhi is enforced and reinforced by the rich and poor collectively. I had a reservation at the Hilton for one night two years ago and I arrived on a friend's motorbike. The security at the hotel wouldn't let me through because I didn't look 'rich enough'. The security at the hotel by this logic, wouldn't let in people who looked like themselves either.
Situation's complicated.
EDIT:
There are a lot of replies to this post comparing the mentality I've mentioned above to that which exists in the west. I can see where that is coming from, but the main factor that needs to be taken into account is the kind and scale of poverty that exists in India. In India we say that if you have two meals a day, and a roof over your head, you're already rich!
Consider that, some posts here say that SV millionaires do not consider themselves upper class. That would be absolutely ridiculous in India! But, there are people here who go by the same ideals.
It's VERY EASY in India to make a difference in someone's life. Even if you're middle class, you can make a difference because people around you are way poorer than you. The problem is one of large scale apathy and complete indifference.
As an example, being middle class in the west, it's impossible to think that you could change someone's life by just hiring them to work in your house - by giving them reasonable pay and good working conditions. In India this is quite possible, a middle class person could easily hire 3-4 people and therefore start to create change. Maybe not the best example of how you can make a difference but the article is about how the privileged in India should feel more responsible and try harder to make a difference. For example, if you do hire people to work in your house, make sure that you encourage them to educate their children ? (stuff like that helps us move forward with these problems..)
My point is, being privileged in India is not really like being privileged in the west. You may not have government and industry connections but you can still make a massive difference at a personal level and if enough people start doing that, there will be a change. It's probably our only shot at it.