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Basically, it’s like Debs said: If there is a class of people making 150k a year, I am in it.
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And the difference between those and not needing to work ever because you have so much money is an order of magnitude different still.
You know the difference between doing fine and just getting by. This is an essentially working class distinction. The actually rich don’t belong in either category.
I was going to say “we are the 99%” is probably a better political slogan than “we are the 89%,” and it seems worth considering that aspect.
But we were having this conversation Chez Lovemuffin the other night (over champagne), and while Mrs. Lovemuffin was arguing that the professional class has more in common with the proletariat than the capitalist class (“they sell their labor instead of owning the means of production!”), I think they (we) are also clearly analytically distinct: culturally, economically, in terms of how well the system works for them, and thus how likely they are to favor incrementalism, etc. So I don’t entirely agree that there’s no meaningful difference between $40k and $100k (my experience is basically like microbet’s). I wouldn’t collapse the distinction analytically. But I think from a strategy perspective you’re right nonetheless.
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It’s also worth pointing out that there isn’t a very big gap between my net worth and annual income, at least not yet. My annual gross revenue has only been anywhere approaching six figures for a year or so, but I’ve also kept my living expenses pretty low relative to my income. It’s still pretty hard to build up considerable wealth from the point I’m at. So there’s also a huge difference between someone making $100-$150K a year who has been doing so for just a few years and someone who has been doing so for 20 years.
All that said, in times before coronavirus put a ton of uncertainty into my future, I was at the point the last several months where I had stopped having a lot of general worries/stresses I used to have about money.
I mean, I’m glad people have wised up enough to not buy stock in private prisons or Hallibuton or Puppy Kickers Inc, but, you’re all complicit. Your dozen shares of APPL might only be a tiny fraction of a modest suicide net, but it’s something.
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Buying an iPhone isn’t blameless either as far as suicide netting goes. We all suck. Eating the rich is not what I’m talking about and I’m not just arguing about where the line is drawn, but there’s a point at which people are comfortable enough that they want to protect the system and the $70/hr people are still pretty much a conservative class even if they want the trust funders to give more money to the minimum wagers.
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I don’t own a smartphone.
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I think it depends on how you’re earning that 150k. Are you a manager exploiting those “below” you? Do you get commission or bonuses for the work others are doing? These things are problematic.
Cuse is a poker player right? The ethics of that have been discussed many times before so I don’t think we need to go into that again.
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Every time this discussion happens I’m utterly amazed. I earn £24,800 a year before tax and I feel pretty well off compared to most. My partner is halfway through a 3 year doctorate (with a £15k bursary) and when she finishes her starting salary will be around £40,000 and then we’ll be fucking mega ballers. I can’t comprehend a universe where someone earning 100k feels anything but rich. The major problem in america is that the republicans are the party of the wealth owners and the democrats are the party of the wealth makers and there is no party for everyone else. It’s possible to earn that much and be an ally but that means you organise for (or at the very least donate to) bernie sanders and the movement he is trying to build. Voting blue no matter who ain’t it. The vast majority of party dems are anti-worker.
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Uh…that doesn’t compute. For one, I’m pretty old and have had time for many things to happen. But making a lot of money isn’t limited to set for life after a few years money. It’s still a lot of money.
That still wasn’t my point, but I think people are so defensive about being called well off because they have enough money to live comfortably with a family in expensive parts of the country that it’s literally impossible for them to get past being offended, so whatever.
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Kind of like white people who get offended at being called racist?
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As always, no one adjusts for location. It’s really ridiculous to make these blanket income statements across the country.
150k in NYC/SF/etc. is absolutely middle class and you are by no means safe to spend whatever you want and do anything. Many people with an income in that range in those locations cannot even save money.
This is why people making lower wages in those areas are even more at risk and need more drastic wage increases and free healthcare.
I live in the suburbs of a decent sized city fwiw.
My going broke was a combo of like 5 years of taking most of my time off when my kids were little and 15 years of pretty much no risk aversion as far as work goes. But sure, a few medical bills could have done it in a month.
That doesn’t mean that there’s not a large class of well off people, though not set for life, who protect the status quo. It’s really not surprising that while there are lots of well off people who are super liberal, the biggest new challenger coming up in the Dems was actually more like median (bartender prolly about $25/hr).
I would think you of all the people here would see how the $70/hr liberal might be your biggest obstacle.
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Too much adjusting. I’ve lived in Berkeley, Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach for the last 30 years. I’m not talking about Tulsa.
You can set the poverty line at anything below the top 10-20% in one of the richest countries in the world if you want I guess.
I think the poverty line should be set at Audi vs. Porsche ownership.
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I agree with this sentiment. I remember when Mrs Catface and I were both in grad school living off of loans/stipends and my LSAT tutoring income, all told maybe 30k/year total, and we’d sit and say “ok, if one of us gets a job for 50k/year, we’d be comfortable for a long time”.
Largely I think it’s true, at least without kids. Neither of us makes 70/hr (and I’m not particularly close), but we make six figures as a household and to say that we live anything other than a very comfortable well off life would be really insulting to the people living on 1/4 of what we do in our neighborhood.
I don’t think people shouldn’t make 70/hr. And I don’t think people making six figures are the enemy. But if we’re talking about “who pays for healthcare” or whatever - yeah of course those people pay more. The lived experience of juggling bills, having weeks where you scrape by on the chef boyardee in the back of the pantry, figuring out if you can skip the car payment this month if your cat needs to go to the vet, frantically checking your bank statement before you get in line at the grocery store - that kind of shit is very common for most of the country, and completely foreign to someone making 150k/year.
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