Ask YC: Are the terms Lower, Middle, Upper-middle and Upper class too subjective to mean anything? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Are the terms Lower, Middle, Upper-middle and Upper class too subjective to mean anything?

Apparently, everyone thinks they are middle class. I suppose this could be true for n-2 people. But, that isn't terribly meaningful.

What income levels do you think these terms should reflect? To what degree is it meaningful to adjust for cost of living?

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The way I think of them are:

Lower class - you scrimp on needs like food, safe housing, medical care, education, insurance. In other words, you have to "sell" your personal security to make ends meet

Middle class - you scrimp on wants like travel, bigger/newer housing, smaller TV, keep your cell phone for a couple years, buy a 2 year old car instead of brand new, etc.

Upper class - harder to pin down because wants are effectively unlimited. I'd say if you won't settle for the "default" choices, you're probably upper class. If you have to live in Atherton instead of Sunnyvale, you're probably upper class. If you drive a Lexus instead of a Toyota, you're probably upper class. If you shop at Whole Foods because the grocery store isn't good enough, you're probably upper class. If you wouldn't consider a top state school like UVigrinia, the UCs, or UMichigan, because you need to go to an Ivy, you're probably upper class.

I was going to say something about Mac vs PC, which outside of hackers might be an indication of upper classism, but remembered that for hackers, the best computer for you is a business expense and a productivity investment.

I would hardly consider someone who drives a Lexus as upper class.

Porsche, BMW, Mercedes.

I used Lexus vs Toyota b/c they're basically the same car plus some extra plush and a slanted L. It was an example of paying a higher price just to signal wealth. Certainly not as ostentatious as a Maybach or a McLaren.

Interesting. I would say Lexus is a signal of higher middle class wealth though, more than upper class.

Clearly, this is an opinion.

I think that choice of vehicle is extremely dependent upon location as well. It's definitely a cultural as well as financial choice. I've lived around the country and each area has its own distribution of cars, independent of the financial status of the residents.

The problem with the lower, middle, upper hierarchy is that it doesn't correspond to anything meaningful about one's lifestyle, or at least hasn't since it still meant serf, merchant, and nobility. How about a more meaningful set of labels?

Welfare class: Those unwilling or unable to sustain themselves without government or family (other than spouse) support.

Working class: Those dependent on employment to maintain their chosen standard of living.

Independent class: Those able to earn their income directly in order to achieve their chosen standard of living. Freelance consultants, entrepreneurs, etc.

Investment class: Those who can achieve their chosen standard of living entirely from investment income.

This works, except both working class and independent class each cover the full income spectrum of the traditional lower, middle, and upper class.

For the most part that's by design. After further consideration, though, I have to add the caveat that this system only makes sense in first-world economies. It doesn't make much sense to put a subsistence farmer in the second-highest of four classes.

Could be okay, although 'working' might be a term you should reserve for the super-rich, many of whom get that way working insane hours. Bill Gates lost a girlfriend because of his "7-hour-turnaround" rule: he had to be back in the office within seven hours of leaving, every day. I'm not sure many people in your version of the working class have that issue.

Perhaps the "working but not saving class" would be more appropriate.

I think there are two separate hierarchies, one based on wealth (desperate, nervous, coasting) and one on education (reads nothing, reads Time, reads The Economist). Hundreds of years ago the two hierarchies were tied together because only the rich could afford education. In the 20th century they drifted apart. The interesting question is whether they will converge again, pushed from the opposite direction-- i.e. not because wealth causes education, but because education causes wealth.

No, they won't converge. It will get easier to live comfortably. With less effort required to live, fewer people will seek out education.

Do more people forgo education today than did in the past?

More people go to college now than ever. It's getting easier to live comfortably if you're educated. If you're not, it's getting harder and harder.

Educated != went to college, I'm afraid. Economics professors would probably be mortified by the number of economics grads that don't bother reading the economist.

Getting harder and harder if you didn't go to college?

Have you ever been to a best buy? It's getting easier and easier for someone of meager standing to have an entertainment center that only the rich could afford two decades ago.

College today is a lot about entertain and fun. Huge student centers, little emphasis on the "boring hard parts". It is inevitable that standards decrease as more people go to college to meet the ridiculous college-education requirement of button-pushing jobs.

Standards rise too, though. When I was poor I was way better off materially than most rich people were 200 years ago. But I still felt poor, and felt like I had to get a lot more money to have a comfortable life.

We're still a long way from solving the logistical and sociological problem of getting food to everyone that is starving. Here's hoping that we converge towards that.

I would argue that wealth causes wealth, and that's how its truly been for thousands of years.

Although education can cause wealth in some cases (and only in the "developed" world at that) in most cases wealth is passed down generation to generation.

Go to several "lesser developed" countries around the world, where people are educated to the tooth and are still not wealthy.

Or go to our nation's universities and see the wealth (monetary not information and knowledge) there versus the corporate world (say Enron) where it is not education but greed that causes wealth.

If wealth causes wealth, why don't dynastic fortunes even keep up with inflation? The Kennedys are poorer than they were fifty years ago, the Rockefellers are poorer than they were 70 years ago, the Du Ponts have long since peaked, the Mellons are pretty marginal, etc., etc., etc.

"Although education can cause wealth in some cases (and only in the "developed" world at that) in most cases wealth is passed down generation to generation."

Empirically false. The US real GDP has more than doubled in the last thirty years, so half of our total wealth didn't even exist a generation ago.

I agree.

Wealth begets wealth, but unearned wealth begets expensive taste :)

Looking at the uberwealthy is deceptive, because they're a product not only of their own skill and ambition but the circumstances where they made the fortune. 5 years earlier or later and Bill Gates wouldn't be a billionaire (ditto most computer billionaires - they were the right person in the right window of time). They are outliers, black swans, etc. Hard to make theories based on them.

If you look at (to draw an arbitrary line) people making more than $100,000/yr, I'll bet they are either a) business owners or b) highly educated (college and above).

For example, 44% of all STEM degrees (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are going to foreign nationals, who comprise only 10% of all students studying domestically, yet that number is not reflected in the world-wide distribution of wealth.

As the average person becomes more educated, there are and will be other barriers to wealth (isn't it not what you know, but WHO you know?)

In fact, I would say Y Combinator recognizes and institutes those very principles: offering potential participants a network of expertise, mentoring, and access to venture capitalists the recipe for success doesn't seem to be based on education, or knowledge, but on wealth, and the proximity to that wealth.

If you look at all these recent tech-made millionaires, one thing is strikingly similar: they knew someone wealthy who chipped in large amounts of cash.

Do you think a Ph.D, or even a guy with a bachelor's half-way across the world will have access to this wealth (monetary or otherwise)?

I don't think so.

The Economist has gotten a lot dumber in the past 5-10 years.

They still tell it like it is more than any other print publication I know of. Do you have something else you would recommend?

I would recommend Harvard Business Review - The economist is still a good read in my opinion though; Similar to the argument that Economist is not as strong as prior years, people have been trashing Scientific American as well, saying that the content has diluted, but I'll keep reading it ;)

I think that The Economist is a much more than adequate source of news and (centrist libertarian) opinion.

But, from time to time, I stop by my school's library to read some scholarly journals of political science and international affairs to try to understand a little more about how the world works.

I think it is also valuable to read the work of non-mainstream thinkers. Noam Chomsky, in particular, says some important things (alongside some bizarre things to be sure). To be honest, I am much less familiar with and sympathetic to polar ultraright opinion.

I recommend all of these things.

>Noam Chomsky, in particular, says some important things (alongside some bizarre things to be sure).

I wish there was a publication of the anti-CFR set that wasn't fringe and crazy...

"Like it is"? Have you read their "Case for War"?

Thanks to the English magazine's clever rhetorical strategy, calibrating an effective mixture of aristocratic contempt, two-notches-smarter-than-Newsweek diction, and occasional anti-elitist populism to pander to its majority-American readership, readers trust The Economist. They - particularly American readers - trust it because they think it knows more than they do; this is its entire appeal. They even get a sick thrill being talked down to by a dirty old aristocratic prig. For Americans in particular, accustomed to the lifeless, dumbed-down, least-common-denominator prose in their own media, reading The Economist is its own reward, giving them the sense not only that they're smarter than the average Time subscriber, but that it even makes them vaguely decadent, in a literary-aristocratic sort of way. They become smarter by osmosis simply by being in the imagined drawing room of The Economist's wit-slinging editorial offices.

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=10127&...

The Exile, a tabloid though it may be, had predicted exactly what would happen in Iraq.

chances are reading the economist for 5-10 years has made you smarter...

If you read Derrida, but work in a coffee shop, you are still upper class.

Generally when you want to discuss income breakdowns in scientific terms you use income Quartiles (or quintiles, etc). By defining locality and timeframe (top quintile of americans? californians? residents of 90210? in 1990? 2008?) you can easily scale in a way that people still understand.

People have strongly differing concepts of class, whereas (most) everyone knows what the lowest 25% of earners look like in thier community.

The concepts are still valid, it's just a matter of narrowing the terms.

Edit: If you're discussing income in many countries (esp the US) it may be wise to split off the top 1% or 0.5%, as they tend to make so much that it strongly influences the averages.

As far as I am concerned, there is no middle class anymore. It left when America stopped manufacturing. There are three official classes now, with as many subdivisions as you want.

Working class -- People who don't have an education and have to work shitty jobs.

Professional class -- People with college degrees, especially professional degrees demanded by the market.

Ruling class -- the elite, media owning class.

I prefer to call these classes lower, upper, and uber-capitalist, respectively.

What about a guy with no diploma that shoots his company to the stars and makes billions?

Steve Jobs doesn't have a diploma, IIRC. And he's not as much an exception as you'd think (on that particular aspect).

Steve Jobs is an uber-capitalist, of course. He is the largest shareholder in the world's third largest media company. Even without the media ownership, a billion dollars pegs you as a solid uber-capitalist.

I think that would land him in the elite class described above. By definition only few can be so well rewarded.

It was a theoretical question to say I don't think the above categories are appropriate...

Class isn't just about income. It's also a cultural thing, reflected in your grammar, clothes, mannerisms, etc. A plumber whose vocabulary includes "ain't" and makes $40,000 is not of the same social class as an assistant professor with the same salary.

Having lived most of my life in the US with its large gulf between the rich and the poor and in Sweden, which really is much more egalitarian, I have to say I prefer a society with more equality.

I was making a lot of money before I left the States in 2000, but I always found it to be an "embarrassment of riches" in front of friends and acquaintances who were not doing as well, but who were arguably contributing more to society (I am thinking of a Nurse friend and a elementary teacher friend of mine).

Large salary differences are a drag. At one level I feel a bit sorry for the grossly overpaid executive. If they have a moral sense they must tie their minds up in knots to justify their pay to themselves. The good thing is that most of them, once the 'win' and prove what they set out to prove, do become philanthropic to one degree or another. The problem is that sometimes that philanthropy does not extend beyond their immediate families. :-)

In the original sense of the term, nearly all of us are in the middle class: town-dwelling people who can choose where they work. The alternatives were the ruling class and the peasant class they held in thrall.

I denote classes (in South Florida) by household income as follows:

Lower <80k

Middle > 80k but < 225k

Upper > 225k

<80k household income as lower class? That's insane. Maybe in the upscale districts of the biggest cities, but everywhere else 60k/year is solidly middle class. In the rural areas of Florida, 60k/year might even be considered Upper Class.

I am also thinking of household as having at least 4 people, if not 5 to support and 3 family members income. So mommy makes 25-35k daddy makes 25-35k and bobby/sally(the kid) makes 5-8k.

That's just my personal definition of lower income seeing as how places even in bad parts of downtown are about 800-1000 per month for 2 bedroom. Add 300 more for 1 more bedroom.

Lower Class = bottom 20% of incomes

Middle Class = 20%ile-80%ile of incomes

Upper Class = top 20% of incomes

Rich = top 5% of incomes

All the terms are inherently relative to each other. Of course the actual (rather meaningless) values of those incomes varies with location and time. Lower class Americans transported to India or even back to 1930s America start to look very much like Upper class.

Just to follow up, from this document: http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr151.pdf in Table 1 on Page 3

Lower Class = Under $23,700/yr

Middle Class = $23,700 to $99,502/yr

Upper Class = Above $99,502/yr

This is a national average in America. Obviously places like the bay area and the Mississippi delta are going to vary a lot.

For another look at it, check out this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...

(Note that my guess at rich being the top 5% means $157,176/yr and up according to that wiki article.)

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