The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class • Hacker News Board

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#91

Post by andygates » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #70

ryandrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's a simpler, binary question: You're either rely on your own labor for a living (in other words, you're N missed paychecks away from zero), or you don't rely on your own labor. Some people think if their number "N" is high enough they can call themselves "middle class" to distinguish themselves from poorer people, but it's a small distinction. At the end of the day, you either have to work for a living or yo…

Physical vs. mental labor (aka blue collar and service vs. white collar) is what distinguishes lower and middle class and creates the third category. Lower class = your income relies on your physical labor Middle class = your income relies on your mental labor Upper class = your income relies on your capital and others' labor

It's not just physicality, it's skill as well. Consider the unskilled call centre operator - low-end service work that is in the same class as low-end physical work, but doesn't tax a muscle.

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#92

Post by rdlecler1 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 2:07 PM UTC

These studies need to take into account cost of living in different cities, which has more variance than it used to. $120k in SF or NY is barely going to get you in the middle class. If high earnering gains have been made in these cities, then the actual distribution would be much worse.

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#93

Post by mikeash » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

jazzyk wrote: post #71

mikeash wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really doubt that we'll be forced to choose between Clinton and Trump. Clinton, yes, but the Republicans aren't that insane. In any case, saying that a broken system forces us to choose the lesser of two evils is quite different from saying that most Americans support one of these two candidates.

I totally understood the difference, I was trying to say that it doesn't really matter. We need to fix the broken system, but I am not aware of any candidates having any workable ideas...

It matters in terms of what conclusions you can draw about the American people (the original comment up there was attempting to use widespread support for these candidates as evidence that Americans don't know what's good for them), and in terms of what's required to fix the problem. I agree that as far as the outcome goes it doesn't matter much.

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#94

Post by tmaly » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 2:47 PM UTC

Middle class is an elusive term. How much would someone living and working in New York City have to make to be considered middle class verse someone living in say Detroit?

Exemptions at the federal level seem to overlook this fact.

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#95

Post by kyllo » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #85

kyllo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical vs. mental labor (aka blue collar and service vs. white collar) is what distinguishes lower and middle class and creates the third category. Lower class = your income relies on your physical labor Middle class = your income relies on your mental labor Upper class = your income relies on your capital and others' labor

i would say there's a 4th class, a working entrepreneur who's basically "all of the above".

We're talking about social classes, not occupational categories though.

Would you say that an immigrant inner-city convenience store owner and a bootstrapped SaaS startup founder are the same social class? They're both working entrepreneurs...

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#96

Post by xlm1717 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

Slightly misleading title, would have been more accurate to say "Majority of Americans No Longer Are Middle Class". The current breakdown is basically 49.9% Middle Class, 50.1% not. That's a long way from "most".

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#97

Post by edem » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

I wouldn't call it a tipping point. If you look at the diagram hard enough you will see that for example since 2011 the lower class has shrunk and the upper class have become larger. This means that part of the middle class turned into upper class!

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#98

Post by zaccus » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 6:48 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #63

ryandrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's a simpler, binary question: You're either rely on your own labor for a living (in other words, you're N missed paychecks away from zero), or you don't rely on your own labor. Some people think if their number "N" is high enough they can call themselves "middle class" to distinguish themselves from poorer people, but it's a small distinction. At the end of the day, you either have to work for a living or yo…

> If you have to work for a living, your life is similar to everyone else who has to work for a living. Sure you may have more toys than others, but the things you think/worry about from day to day are similar. The things I worry about have very little in common with someone who's working a minimum wage job. Someone on minimum wage with a child probably needs food stamps to even feed their child reliably. I spend mor…

You are worried about the same things, just to different degrees. Both of you depend on selling your time and skills for a paycheck.

A hot dog vendor might make less than you do, but their income depends on leveraging their assets and selling a product. The hot dog vendor is middle class, you are working class. Income isn't really part of the equation.

Of course, that's the strict traditional definition of middle class. Maybe that has changed.

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#99

Post by dpark » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

zaccus wrote: post #98

dpark wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have to work for a living, your life is similar to everyone else who has to work for a living. Sure you may have more toys than others, but the things you think/worry about from day to day are similar. The things I worry about have very little in common with someone who's working a minimum wage job. Someone on minimum wage with a child probably needs food stamps to even feed their child reliably. I spend mor…

You are worried about the same things, just to different degrees. Both of you depend on selling your time and skills for a paycheck. A hot dog vendor might make less than you do, but their income depends on leveraging their assets and selling a product. The hot dog vendor is middle class, you are working class. Income isn't really part of the equation. Of course, that's the strict traditional definition of middle cla…

A person who can live off their assets is worried about the same things as well, just to a lesser degree. It's possible to have sufficient assets to live off only to see a market, or an industry, etc. collapse, leaving you with insufficient assets. If you're a billionaire, that's pretty unlikely, but if you're just on the other side of "upper class" it's entirely possible.

Upper class people are also by and large selling their time and skills. Some of them are sitting idly, but most of them are engaged in some sort of job, whether that's a high-ranking executive position, or managing their own companies, etc.

"Middle class" cannot simply mean "works for wages", because that includes the entire working class. "Middle class" is meaningless if it's not more specific.

Re: The Tipping Point: Most Americans No Longer Are Middle Class

#100

Post by dikdik » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 11:04 PM UTC

tmuir wrote: post #23

Where do the 42k and 126k numbers come from? Why do they define the middle class. Maybe it varies from page view to page view, but my very first recommended link at the bottom of the story had a breakdown of middle class bounds in 30 different cities, and as one would expect, middle class incomes vary widely across those cities. This article is a perfect example of the meaninglessness of averages in many cases.

For a single person it is 24k to be considered middle class. What?