31–40 of 63 posts
It's amazing how, in a city full of so many supposedly socially conscious people, the government has been able to allow things to get so bad for the middle class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
About $400k, actually.
Yeah, you're right. $250 k would only put you in the top 2.32% in 2011. Let's be absolutely clear here. A six figure household income puts you in the top 20% of the US. You are not middle class. You are in fact upper class.
FWIW, there's a lot of talk in the United States since about 1970 or so of there being a "professional class", which has education and income markedly higher than the traditional middle class but which has lifestyles which resemble middle class more than the traditional upper classes. It was traditionally filled full of doctors, lawyers, and accountants. Engineers are entering the professional class, which discomfits a lot of people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, you're right. $250 k would only put you in the top 2.32% in 2011. Let's be absolutely clear here. A six figure household income puts you in the top 20% of the US. You are not middle class. You are in fact upper class.
There exists a lot of literature about class, which is a very fluid term. I think to the extent that people react really negatively when you suggest $100k is upper class, they're reacting to other associations they have with that term. For example, educational attainment or social advantage are also class markers, and many people at $100k won't particularly have them. For another, material advantages of being wealthy…
But come on, the fact that your career path doesn't tolerate 2 week vacations doesn't move you down the percentile ladder.
As far as your last paragraph, that's my point. If you're making six figures, you're "rich" in America, still, whether you want to accept it or not.
To think you're not is to be very, very out of touch.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was 350K in 2009, in the midst of a crisis (incomes of people like that have a lot to do with performance-based bonuses, stock appreciation and the like, so they dipped a lot in the crisis, much more than oridinary people's). In 2012 it was already $560K. And the definition for upper class as being top 1% is arbitrary, it is in fact invented by Obama during his first presidential campaign, solely for finger-pointi…
"Upper class is people other than us." Go ahead, enter your household income here, find out where you really fall. http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-yo... Hint- if you're a techie in SF, you're reaaaaallll near the top.
I think it's some definition of 'middle class' coming from the 1970s and never inflation-adjusted since then. A person making $35K is anything but a middle class in every place i seen, let alone Silicon Valley. Maybe, a lower middle in totally clapped out East European countries like Ukraine.
The people in Silicon Valley working for others are working class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, you're right. $250 k would only put you in the top 2.32% in 2011. Let's be absolutely clear here. A six figure household income puts you in the top 20% of the US. You are not middle class. You are in fact upper class.
It was 350K in 2009, in the midst of a crisis (incomes of people like that have a lot to do with performance-based bonuses, stock appreciation and the like, so they dipped a lot in the crisis, much more than oridinary people's). In 2012 it was already $560K. And the definition for upper class as being top 1% is arbitrary, it is in fact invented by Obama during his first presidential campaign, solely for finger-pointi…
I think it's some definition of 'middle class' coming from the 1970s and never inflation-adjusted since then. A person making $35K is anything but a middle class in every place i seen, let alone Silicon Valley. Maybe, a lower middle in totally clapped out East European countries like Ukraine.
The American English definition of 'middle class' is bizarre and seems to include anyone who has a job and isn't homeless. The correct English meaning of the word is someone who works for themselves rather than a boss in a profession which has a guild to ensure exclusivity, e.g. doctor or lawyer. Or the owner of a small business which employs other people. It's mostly inherited upon birth and has little to do with in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
About $400k, actually.
Yeah, you're right. $250 k would only put you in the top 2.32% in 2011. Let's be absolutely clear here. A six figure household income puts you in the top 20% of the US. You are not middle class. You are in fact upper class.
The concept of class was invented by Karl Marx, a person belongs to some class based on his/her relation to the means of production. There are 3 factors of production: labor, capital, and land (that final one is of much less importance now than it used to be in Marx's era, but still). So there are classes: middle class are those deriving their income from work (rent on their labor), rich deriving their income from capital, and aristocrates deriving their income from land (these are now extinct). Poor are those who don't have any means of production, so they depend on social transfers like foodstamps. Of course these sources can mix in a single person - like a coder who rents out spare bedroom on airbnb, or a top manager who has some stock of the company he runs in addition to salary and bonuses, and gets some dividends on it - but the largest one 'wins'.
Because the IRS collects sources of income of people (because they are differently taxed), and publishes summary of its results, it is possible to make a very precise picture of American class structure/thresholds of classes. It is just that nobody likes these results.
I think it's some definition of 'middle class' coming from the 1970s and never inflation-adjusted since then. A person making $35K is anything but a middle class in every place i seen, let alone Silicon Valley. Maybe, a lower middle in totally clapped out East European countries like Ukraine.
The American English definition of 'middle class' is bizarre and seems to include anyone who has a job and isn't homeless. The correct English meaning of the word is someone who works for themselves rather than a boss in a profession which has a guild to ensure exclusivity, e.g. doctor or lawyer. Or the owner of a small business which employs other people. It's mostly inherited upon birth and has little to do with in…
While the American definition of "middle class" is best translated as "working class" into English English, it seems far from bizarre given it covers someone making the median income.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, you're right. $250 k would only put you in the top 2.32% in 2011. Let's be absolutely clear here. A six figure household income puts you in the top 20% of the US. You are not middle class. You are in fact upper class.
There exists a lot of literature about class, which is a very fluid term. I think to the extent that people react really negatively when you suggest $100k is upper class, they're reacting to other associations they have with that term. For example, educational attainment or social advantage are also class markers, and many people at $100k won't particularly have them. For another, material advantages of being wealthy…