Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence' • Hacker News Board

Re: Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence'

#11

Post by true_religion » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 12:55 AM UTC

ClosureChain wrote: post #10

I liked this article, except for this part: "...his home country, where the middle class is burgeoning but almost half the population still lives in poverty." This is a naive claim, it may appear so because people here in Mexico (specially in urban areas) spend a lot on bars, restaurants, vacations, gadgets and even cars. What the author oversees is that this same people have not enough savings in the bank to survive…

It depends on how you want to define the middle class.

Some people define it via income characteristics. So a college graduate, with no house or car, can be middle class if they land a good job.

Some people define it via wealth, so a retiree with no income can be middle class if they own their own home, and have a decent amount of savings.

Some people use the 'classical' (ala Marx) definition, in which the middle class are the socio-economic group that can buy the labour of working class, but typically work along-side them. For example, a mom-and-pop shop would have middle class owners, and working class employees.

Re: Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence'

#12

Post by ClosureChain » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 6:16 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #11

ClosureChain wrote: post #10

I liked this article, except for this part: "...his home country, where the middle class is burgeoning but almost half the population still lives in poverty." This is a naive claim, it may appear so because people here in Mexico (specially in urban areas) spend a lot on bars, restaurants, vacations, gadgets and even cars. What the author oversees is that this same people have not enough savings in the bank to survive…

It depends on how you want to define the middle class. Some people define it via income characteristics. So a college graduate, with no house or car, can be middle class if they land a good job. Some people define it via wealth, so a retiree with no income can be middle class if they own their own home, and have a decent amount of savings. Some people use the 'classical' (ala Marx) definition, in which the middle cla…

Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should be simply the average in a certain country.

However, for a lot of people including myself, "middle class" means people who own at least a little bit of wealth in the form of savings, enough to be able to survive for six months or a year without a job while not needing to cut costs on anything.

This of course is not the reality for maybe 95% of Mexican Citizens who live in perpetual debt with the banks and would go completely bankrupt if they ever stop working for as little as one month or maybe two.

I live here and believe me, there is not such a thing as a "burgeoning middle class" in Mexico; in fact, such claims sound like the typical BS politicians try to sell to the people.

Re: Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence'

#13

Post by endrebak » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #8

endrebak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is just a blog post. I hope someone will pick up the threads and see whether there is anything of interest there. If you want to read highbrow material, do not click on hacker news submissions with such impish titles :) (what lead me to post it was this HN submission: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/business/media/reporter... )

By the way, the title you originally submitted ("Reporters at NYT Try Not to Crack Case of Who Owns Their Newspaper") breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to rewrite titles unless they are misleading or linkbait. Using HN titles to editorialize is something we specifically ask people not to do, so please don't do that.

I'm sorry for both not being aware of and breaking the rules. There is no excuse for either.

Re: Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence'

#14

Post by dang » Sun, Dec 20, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

endrebak wrote: post #13

dang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, the title you originally submitted ("Reporters at NYT Try Not to Crack Case of Who Owns Their Newspaper") breaks the HN guidelines, which ask you not to rewrite titles unless they are misleading or linkbait. Using HN titles to editorialize is something we specifically ask people not to do, so please don't do that.

I'm sorry for both not being aware of and breaking the rules. There is no excuse for either.

No worries! The rules remain rather obscure no matter how often we post things like this.

Re: Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence'

#15

Post by kafkaesq » Mon, Dec 21, 2015, 12:46 AM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #2

This article is of brutal quality. I am all for uncloaking the superrich and their agendas but this is about spurious links to wife's uncle's and whatnots for at least 50% of the article. Then I stopped reading because I have better things to do. Please lead with better material.

And yet, its basic point -- that given how the NYT seems to have abstained from any serious investigation of Carlos Slim's empire, since he became a shareholder -- and the irony of its attempting to give kudos to the LV paper for investigating its ownership -- seems quite valid.

Re: Carlos Slim: biography of Mexico's richest man penetrates 'cloak of silence'

#16

Post by true_religion » Tue, Dec 22, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

ClosureChain wrote: post #12

true_religion wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you want to define the middle class. Some people define it via income characteristics. So a college graduate, with no house or car, can be middle class if they land a good job. Some people define it via wealth, so a retiree with no income can be middle class if they own their own home, and have a decent amount of savings. Some people use the 'classical' (ala Marx) definition, in which the middle cla…

Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should be simply the average in a certain country. However, for a lot of people including myself, "middle class" means people who own at least a little bit of wealth in the form of savings, enough to be able to survive for six months or a year without a job while not needing to cut costs on anything. This of course is not the reality for maybe 95% o…

> Good point. Actually I think the strict definition of "middle class" should be simply the average in a certain country.

That assumes a normal distribution of wealth. In an authoritarian aristocracy or another similar government structure, you'd see pareto distribution wherein the leadership has 99% of the wealth and the average person is sharing 1%.

Therein by the 'average', there is no middle class.

I think... economically, this is quite true: there is no middle class. Yet we still call people who look like the classical middle class of yesteryear, middle class: professionals, white-collar workers, freelancers, small business owners. It's more of a social class now, than an economic one.