That's ok, everybody in the lower class are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
21–30 of 205 posts
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#22I have a real, honest to goodness question. I live in the Bay Area. I make $200,000 a year. I just had a mini-exit where I netted about $300K after taxes. I still rent for $2700/month. I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the bay in the suburbs (I wish we had for-sale condos like Toronto everywhere... still don't know why) I do well. I'm 32. I'm on an upwards path. But I don't feel upper class. I feel middle cla…
It depends how much you value material possessions. Is "winning" the rat race important to you?
Money, after a certain threshold, has very little incremental value.
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The graph isn't about absolute levels, but income distribution. The point I think they are trying to make is that higher total income countries tend to have a more equal income distribution. The US doesn't fit that trend, though also some of the lower total income countries such as the Czech Republic have more equal distribution as well.
It’s incredibly deceptive because not only is almost everyone in the US wealthier than their counterparts in the distribution in Europe, but they have much higher purchasing power due to much lower prices.
Do we though? I spend most of my income on rent, healthcare, and student loans. I don't buy much because at the end of the day there's not much left over.
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#24I'd be interested to see how this graph looks if the USA were replaced by data points for each of the states. The USA is unusually big as countries go, and that will tend to increase the dispersion.
(Or conversely: Replace all the European countries with a single EU data point -- you'll probably see an even smaller "middle class" for the EU than for the USA.)
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#25I have a real, honest to goodness question. I live in the Bay Area. I make $200,000 a year. I just had a mini-exit where I netted about $300K after taxes. I still rent for $2700/month. I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the bay in the suburbs (I wish we had for-sale condos like Toronto everywhere... still don't know why) I do well. I'm 32. I'm on an upwards path. But I don't feel upper class. I feel middle cla…
It sounds like you need some perspective. You have more wealth than nearly everyone else on Earth. What more do you want?
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#26I have a real, honest to goodness question. I live in the Bay Area. I make $200,000 a year. I just had a mini-exit where I netted about $300K after taxes. I still rent for $2700/month. I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the bay in the suburbs (I wish we had for-sale condos like Toronto everywhere... still don't know why) I do well. I'm 32. I'm on an upwards path. But I don't feel upper class. I feel middle cla…
Yes. With little effort, assuming prior to your exit you had a $0 net worth, you could be financially independent in ~5 years, able to spend more than an average American every year for the rest of your life. You're killing it.
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#27I have a real, honest to goodness question. I live in the Bay Area. I make $200,000 a year. I just had a mini-exit where I netted about $300K after taxes. I still rent for $2700/month. I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the bay in the suburbs (I wish we had for-sale condos like Toronto everywhere... still don't know why) I do well. I'm 32. I'm on an upwards path. But I don't feel upper class. I feel middle cla…
So the marxist line is that you dont feel upper class because you're not! I mean by some older definitions you're not even really middle class. The "orthodox" explanation of this is that if you own land you're middle class, if you profit off of it (e.g.: if you rent anything like land or people) then you're upper class. (The terms here are petite bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie.) It's clear to me that you definitely should feel like you're killing it but i think the reason why we think that is because we grew up in a different place at a different time and the working classes have a prohibition on discussing these things in detail so we dont update our view of the world regularly enough.
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#28I have a real, honest to goodness question. I live in the Bay Area. I make $200,000 a year. I just had a mini-exit where I netted about $300K after taxes. I still rent for $2700/month. I don't want to buy an overpriced home in the bay in the suburbs (I wish we had for-sale condos like Toronto everywhere... still don't know why) I do well. I'm 32. I'm on an upwards path. But I don't feel upper class. I feel middle cla…
I make a lot less than that and my rent is more than that now... I’m also 10 years younger.
How exactly does a 22-year-old have a $3k+ rent?
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#29My intuition about this as someone who grew up in America and has traveled internationally quite a bit is that nowhere else on earth are the middle classes so convinced that one day they will be "millionaires" than here. This causes them to act against their own best interests. (This was observed by Engels long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness )
Would you rather be richer and have more buying power in absolute terms, or just make sure the fellow next door doesn’t have more than you? This graph is misleading. It talks about middle class as a percent of national median income, which means large numbers of people counted as lower-class in the US would be counted as middle-class if they lived in Europe and made the same income.
I'd most like to have an existence where I don't worry about being bankrupted by a medical emergency or surviving on cat food once I retire[0].
[0] The cheap cat food, I mean, not the $10/meal cat food that rich Americans buy their pets.
Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I make a lot less than that and my rent is more than that now... I’m also 10 years younger.
How exactly does a 22-year-old have a $3k+ rent?
I mean if you graduate college, get a finance job and live and work in lower manhattan i could see this happening. Might not be a very good idea but its still certainly possible.