I find it hilarious that the answer to this isn't obvious.
This is 2016. Tech workers are the American elites.
Did you think elites were still guys with a monacle sitting in a drawing room that overlooks a coal mine or something?
This is 2016. Tech workers are the American elites.
Did you think elites were still guys with a monacle sitting in a drawing room that overlooks a coal mine or something?
No, they aren't. The American elites aren't workers, they are capitalists. Tech workers are among the class of elite workers that have enough income that they can afford to make significant investments and tend to be in the petit bourgeoisie -- that is, in traditional terms of analysis of capitalist economic strata, the narrow middle class -- but "elite workers" are only elite among workers.
The actual American elites (as is true of all capitalist and most modern mixed economies) are the haut bourgeoisie, the capitalist class; those who derive the overwhelming majority of their support from capital which generates returns largely passively for the capitalist (usually, through the application of other people's rented labor.)
> Did you think elites were still guys with a monacle sitting in a drawing room that overlooks a coal mine or something?
No, but the elites are still the guys that have the same relationship to tech (and other) workers that those guys with monocles had to coal miners (and other workers.)
There's a very serious discontinuity somewhere around the $1m/year mark where you get to the point that you don't have to work for the rest of your life while you're still young. There's another huge difference between that and the guys worth $100m+ who can have whatever they want, including financing insane research and construction projects, not just the normal comfortable middle-class lifestyle, and never run out of money.
Putting those people in the same group as your average software engineer for socioeconomic purposes is ridiculous. Sure, I might have more in common with Zuckerberg than with a coal miner, but only just, and that's not saying much.
This thread has taught me that people in the valley or the HN echo chamber really sort of have no idea how most people live in this country, let alone around the world.
I live in New York City. I could probably grok the basic concept.
You've got people on HN claiming that making 5x that makes them solidly middle class because they can't afford a home in one of the most expensive places in the world.
At the end of 40 years, that puts you at $6.2M - a further 20% of which is tied up in housing equity - before any other expenses. That's a decent retirement, yes, but it's not rich in the way that the elites are rich. Not even close.
Relative to them, tech workers -- who are quite often in what is, in traditional terms, the middle class (the petit bourgeoisie) -- may seem like a narrow elite. This is an understandable perception, and there is a sense in which it is correct -- tech workers are elite workers.
But they aren't the elite within the country, and the gap between tech workers and the elite is much greater than the gap between the average worker and the average tech worker. The elite (the haut bourgeoisie) are not "workers" at all.
The levels of income we're talking about for tech employees, especially in the SF area but also in most places in the US, will still force you to continue working for a salary for your entire adult life (until retirement age) or else eventually starve. You never get to the point where you can just quit. That's the distinction between us and Zuckerberg that comparing us to somebody making $50k doesn't expose: like them, we have to work and will probably never be anything more than comfortable with some luxuries. We're all proletariat - maybe bordering on petit bourgeoisie at the upper end, but still working for our money rather than having our money work for us.
I don't have any congressmen on speeddial to get whatever I want passed through the next pork barrel bill in Congress, what am I doing wrong?
I'm a tech worker and I don't honestly see a near-term future where I would throw $2,000 at a senator to talk to them about, say, net neutrality. I've got all kinds of things I'm saving for! My boat isn't going to drain me of my earnings by itself!
If you want real political influence of the sort that will actually let you move the needle on something like net neutrality then you need to be writing much bigger checks. $1k will buy you half an hour on the phone will a congressman who will pretend to listen to you. But to actually influence policy you need budgets in the 6-7 digits because you have to repeat the process across many dozens of congressmen and senators.
Except for the first, all of those numbers are (or state a range that includes) amounts that exceed the limit for a single donors campaign donations for a single election cycle to a single candidate.
Having to return your donation because accepting it will exceed the legal limit may get a candidate to notice you, but perhaps more as someone who they need to be careful around to avoid scandal than anything else.
This would likely be enough to get one congresscritter to look your way, at least.
This is not a great system, but many tech workers can get into that circle if it's something that matters to them.
Our pay is high, all things considered, but not nearly as high as law or medicine, and certainly not management. I'd say we are rising from the upper tier of clerical workers to the lower tier of educated professionals. That is "elite" compared to the average person, certainly, but not compared to the economy as a whole.
The term generally given to this strata is "upper middle class." Some resent calling it middle class at all, but nonetheless - there is a critical distinction between "owners of the means of production," "managers of the means of production," and "highly skilled operators of the means of production."
I'm a tech worker, and I can assure you I'm not an "American elite". I don't get white glove treatment at the bank, have a butler, chauffeur, or financial advisor. I schlep it 2 hours to work each morning and 2 hours back, and if I lose my job, I'm N paychecks away from ruin like everyone else. My "N" may be 5 where others may be 2, but most of us are in the same boat. Does that really sound elite to you?
Apparently I did not get the memo. </sarcasm>