The Biggest Economic Divides Aren’t Regional, They’re Local

>what type of alternate reality could exist where foreigners would be polite enough to not, like, turn a wrench or run an assembly line for cheaper than Americans did in the 50s. We as a country don't have the option of 'choosing' an alternate economic reality where developing country wages aren't cheaper than ours

the illusion of non-choice on this issue began when bill buckley reformed the right wing into free-traders. we could vote to not let foreigners in to our country and to establish high tariffs on foreign goods. we choose not to. not saying whether that's right or wrong. just saying it is a choice.

Big claim.

No, they're not. The top 1% are people who work "normal" high-paying jobs [1]. You're probably thinking a smaller slice like 0.1%. Also if you're going to claim that someone's work is debunked, at least point to some references to back that up.

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/packages/html/ne...

First, 1% in income puts you around $450K/yr... and that's usually household, so if two software engineers get married and move to the bay area, they have a reasonable shot of making that cut mid to late career. (from what I've seen, if they get a job at a big company and then talk that company into transferring them, they have a good shot at keeping that ridiculous income and living somewhere where it means something. They have less of a shot at getting the really sweet raises and bonuses at those other places, though.)

I know a bunch of people in that box. For that matter, most of them would argue they aren't rich at all. I remember the other day, one of my co-workers, who I am fairly certain meets the above standard, was claiming that in the bay area, this salary is not rich, "just normal" - I explained to him that the median household income in santa clara county was like $70K/yr, and he was aghast. "How would you even live on that?" and he has a point... I mean, I lived on less than that when I was running a company and living here, but yeah, rent is nuts to the point where I know several people who would be 1%ers if they married someone of their own income who live with roommates.

(I still have to laugh at people who are literal millionaires who claim they are "just normal." - but I kind of see their point; I don't make quite that much, but it's really pretty reasonable to think that if I worked a little harder that I could.)

>wealthiest in US society are entrepreneurs who again created their own business- not rentiers living off of inherited wealth.

See... it's very often not entirely one or the other. Would Bill Gates be super rich if his mom wasn't on the United Way board with the chairman of IBM? I mean, I'm not saying that Bill didn't do any of the work or that it was all inherited... I'm just saying that his parents handed him... certain advantages, and while I'm sure his intelligence and hard work would take him far no matter how poor he was born, if he started where most people start? while I'm sure he wouldn't stay poor, it's pretty unlikely that he would have gotten so rich that you or I would know his name today.

Nearly all those 1%ers I work with? they came from families that were at least dentist rich, and were sent to really good schools. Nearly all the folks on H1B visas I know are really sharp, very educated and have parents who are very politically connected, and rich for their country of origin (even if not always rich by US standards)

Hell, compared to most of my co-workers, I grew up poor, but even I had parents who worked in the computer industry. I got several jobs at critical points in my career through neighborhood and family connections. I know people who are just as good as me who didn't have those family connections early in their career, and several of them fell out of the industry entirely in 2001; me? I got a job a company started by someone who had interned for my father, many years ago, and I worked through the dot-com crash. I mean, clearly my connections were not good enough to get me a job I couldn't reasonably do, but it certainly got me the interview, at a time when such things were hard to come by, and probably gave me a leg up over the other applicants who could hurdle the minimum bar. (Incidentally, a few years later, I started my own company, and hired a few of those less connected but just as good as I am people... It didn't work out; Business is a lot harder than it looks, and I don't have those sorts of connections, but it was really interesting how I became technically bourgeois (and not in the poor taste in lawn furniture sense... I mean that I owned means of production and employed other people, combining my labor and capital to produce a product) but at the same time, my income dropped precipitously. Like i made rent, sure, but the total revenue was about a L6 bay area SWE total comp number, there were were other employees to pay, datacenter bills, and servers to buy. So when I sold out and got a regular job, it was like a 4x raise for me.)

I sense you're implying a meaningful comparison there. Why is being an entrepreneur better (or indeed, distinct at all) from being a landlord?

(I agree, it seems unthinkable today.)

While I agree that superior education etc. absolutely helps the children of the upper middle class, the 'social connections' part is pure fantasy. The vast majority of regular people secure employment based on actual credentials and not 'connections', especially in tech