131–140 of 199 posts
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It was from this article on the upper middle class: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-the-1-the... . The HuffPo article conveniently omits "upper".
I wouldn't call that upper "middle" class, I would just call that upper class...
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Do you also wince at paying money for your groceries?
If I feel like what I am obtaining from an exchange of money for some thing, is less valuable to me than the amount of my lifetime/mental and physical energies I spent to acquire that money originally, I am probably not going to feel good about the exchange. This seems like common sense to me? It makes me feel even worse on general principle when the exchange is coercive, using my example, I parked in a place that wa…
I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…
0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.
My wife hardly ever sleeps more that 6-6.5 hours so she basically gets 2 extra hours a day compared to me. This has been true for me as long as I can remember (36 year old male)
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I think it depends a lot on the specifics. Of course, there are certainly lots of Americans who are both poorer than the author and work harder. But in the US, the very poorest people tend to be those who don't work at all, or only work part-time. People who live their whole life in a small town with one or two big employers, which move away when the economy crashes; people whose skills go out-of-date, and can't affo…
That view that it it's "terribly depressing to be broke" and all the despair the poor in America feel because they can create no value could only be thought up by us smug hacker news software creators. I know first hand that much of the poor are content to live off the government, never had any aspirations and ultimately don't need much to survive and be content enough. They don't know what they don't know and theref…
Yet you are actually addressing a different point than the commenters in this thread. The rest of the commenters are talking about the unlucky poor, those who are trapped and aren't able to live comfortably with the support of family and friends.
As to what proportion of poor are the unlucky vs the lucky, this is less easily discovered. I imagine the "unlucky" poor are at least half. I don't have any data for that.
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I think it depends a lot on the specifics. Of course, there are certainly lots of Americans who are both poorer than the author and work harder. But in the US, the very poorest people tend to be those who don't work at all, or only work part-time. People who live their whole life in a small town with one or two big employers, which move away when the economy crashes; people whose skills go out-of-date, and can't affo…
That view that it it's "terribly depressing to be broke" and all the despair the poor in America feel because they can create no value could only be thought up by us smug hacker news software creators. I know first hand that much of the poor are content to live off the government, never had any aspirations and ultimately don't need much to survive and be content enough. They don't know what they don't know and theref…
The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.
her husband: high up in McKinsey & Co
1%ers or 0.1%ers? maybe even 0.01%ers?
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... I barely know how to respond to this. If you think the most poor people are content being poor it's hard for me to craft a rebuttal given how out of touch you are with reality. I grew up poor myself. Like lived on the streets for 2 years, spent time in the state grouphome system, had shoes held together by safety-pins level of poor and I now make six figures. On my way from there to here I spent a lot of time wit…
It's good to hear about your experiences, but please don't make personal attacks on HN. Usually, commenters here are quasi-anonymous; even when they're wrong, it's bad to make assumptions about who they are as people, since in most cases you just don't know.
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... I barely know how to respond to this. If you think the most poor people are content being poor it's hard for me to craft a rebuttal given how out of touch you are with reality. I grew up poor myself. Like lived on the streets for 2 years, spent time in the state grouphome system, had shoes held together by safety-pins level of poor and I now make six figures. On my way from there to here I spent a lot of time wit…
It's good to hear about your experiences, but please don't make personal attacks on HN. Usually, commenters here are quasi-anonymous; even when they're wrong, it's bad to make assumptions about who they are as people, since in most cases you just don't know.
Quite frankly it's disgusting and repulsive. Community rules be damned.
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Upper class is when you no longer have a salary, just investments. Upper middle is when you have a high salary and some investments, but your main source of income is still leveraging time and skill for money.
So a CEO with a seven figure salary is still upper middle class? I think not.
Grey areas abound of course. Whichever definitionwe write down, someone can find an example that doesn't feel right.
Like, what if your 7 figure CEO is 8 figures in debt and all their assets are leveraged to the brim and if they lose their job it's all getting foreclosed by the bank and they're homeless in a month?
What if a 5-figure small business director/owner lives a comfy life well within their means and has 10 years of fuck you money?
Life's weird.
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Upper class is when you no longer have a salary, just investments. Upper middle is when you have a high salary and some investments, but your main source of income is still leveraging time and skill for money.
So a CEO with a seven figure salary is still upper middle class? I think not.