A million dollars was worth the equivalent of $25M today when the term millionaire was first coined so I’m not surprised.
I passed a million dollar net worth last year and I hardly consider myself a true millionaire. Just a working class developer.
I passed a million dollar net worth last year and I hardly consider myself a true millionaire. Just a working class developer.
We are not working class, full stop. Nobody here is being crippled by arthritis at the tender age of 40, nobody risks physical injury at their job, nobody is risking a permanent end to their ability to earn a living by someone pressing a button on a machine at the wrong time. Even ignoring the lack of any real danger, don't try to tell me that sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day is even a tenth as physically demanding as welding, plumbing, carpentry, or general contracting is for 10-12.
To imply the people here getting paid $180k a year plus RSUs to type is an insult to real working class people who struggle to make rent every month.
To my mind, someone in the working class should be someone who works for a living.
> When used non-academically in the United States, however, it often refers to a section of society dependent on physical labor, especially when compensated with an hourly wage.[0]
Your definition is much closer to the Marxist definition which is basically "anyone who trades time for money" which describes the vast majority of the world.
Here in the UK people will cling to being part of their class as though their life depends on it.
Middle class people had rather die than be called 'working class'. The working class hates the middle class with an intense passion, thinking they all eat kale, basically live at Starbucks and try to turn England into a communist utopia.
Class divisions just play into the hands of the one and only class that's different from the people who work for money: Those who do not have to.
If society was nicely split into "those who work for money and those who do not", I believe it would very quickly become clear who is acting in whose interest.
But so long as the veil of "working vs. middle, vs. upper middle" shrouds our collective ability to see who is truly ruining it for everyone, nothing will change.
But clarity is important. I have more in common with the business owner who could stop working but chooses not to than I do with the line cook making $10/hr, even if the financial interests of the business owner are diametrically opposed to my own (I'm not conceding that point, mind you).
I don't understand what is so problematic about understanding there are drastically different economic classes in society. Understanding where those boundaries lie and the differences between them leads to greater clarity in the issues facing all classes.
By that logic only the 0.001% is not working class. That's a little far-fetched.
I'd argue that unless you live in a high COL area by choice, 1-1.5 million is all you need to live without working.
Will your 1 million outpace inflation? 1 million in 2050 ain’t shit.
Here's hoping remote work becomes the norm someday!
Does it not make far more sense to finally realise that there are people who work for money, in exchange for freedom (directly that. time, freedom, agency. that is what you exchange for money) and then there are people who use the work of others to ensure they never lose their own freedom? With blatant disregard for the wellbeing of those workers?
If that is where the dividing line was, things might finally change.
I agree with the overall feeling of your reply, but let's not fall in the opposite trap to paint a proletarian view of the working class either. The amount of iPhones out there in developed countries is a good indication that a good chunk of the working class has no problem shelling hundreds of dollars on expensive hardware on top of paying their rent.
Wealth (at least relative wealth) can be obtained, by anyone. The secret formula has been public for decades: Save a good percentage, invest it carefully, don't spend beyond your means. It works for everyone at every pay scale.
What we all have in common is that we must continue to work to live.
Physical injury is not a pre-requisite to doing "real work" that defines a "working class". Given how prevalent software development rolls are (it's eclipsing truck driving in many US states), a "developer" is certainly not mutually exclusive with "working class".