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Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

My intuition about this as someone who grew up in America and has traveled internationally quite a bit is that nowhere else on earth are the middle classes so convinced that one day they will be "millionaires" than here. This causes them to act against their own best interests.

(This was observed by Engels long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness )

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They aren't completely wrong.

76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%, 56% in the top 10%.

https://www.aei.org/publication/evidence-shows-significant-i...

The top 10% for individuals is 114k[0] and for a household is 178k[1]. They may eventually get to millionaire status, but there's still a long way to go. Basically, getting to 100+k at the end of a long career and plenty of saving & investing (which Americans are not great at [2]) may get you there, but I don't think those stats you provided really bear out the case.

[0] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

[1] https://dqydj.com/united-states-household-income-brackets-pe...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/14/heres-how-many-americans-are...

Millionaire status has been retconned to mean $1M/yr in income, to keep it out of the realm of something you can just work for and achieve with a middle class lifetime.

I find it strange you're pulling out stats to refute the person you're responding to and prove an oddly specific quote that I believe misses the point entirely.

Why? A bit of context to clear up a misconception or a misleading stats isn't a bad thing.

That study, and the corresponding NYTimes article, present serious issues with their presentation - no effort was made to identify or refute potential non-standard sources of that income. This came up just recently on HN and it was mentioned that inheritance could offer this momentary bump - I am much more suspicious this "golden year" is the one where retirees realize the accumulated value of their real-estate in a working city - turning it into cash and a much more affordable property in a retirement area (florida, arizona etc...)

So I disagree, they're pretty completely wrong.

> 76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%,

That's not that surprising; median income for 45-54 age range is about 70th percentile overall, so do a little better than median in this age range and it's easy to hit top 20%; of courses this is still an income that is (especially on a non-sustained basis) not a sign of significant difference in economic relationships from the median—its working or lower middle class, in traditional terms, and not—contrary to AEIs spin, evidence for class mobility.

>> My intuition about this as someone who grew up in America and has traveled internationally quite a bit is that nowhere else on earth are the middle classes so convinced that one day they will be "millionaires" than here.

>They aren't completely wrong. 76% of Americans spend a year of their life in the top 20%, 56% in the top 10%.

Top 20% is > $79,000

Top 10% is > $114,000

That's not even in the ballpark. They are completely wrong.

Your claim is misleadingly stated. When you say "top 20%" in this context, people would naturally think you mean top 20% by wealth, because that had been the context previously. Somebody would have to follow your link to see it's actually about income. That's a very different thing. I've seen this particular sleight of hand entirely too much lately on HN, to the extent that I'm seriously beginning to wonder if it's merely coincidence.

Conversely, it's also what has attracted so many immigrants to America and created so much historic social mobility[0]. Note - I believe this has largely been reversed (and thus stagnated) due to a generation of "I got mine" attitudes, aka the Baby Boomers.

[0]Example - in the UK there is very much a "these are the cards I've been dealt" attitude towards social mobility.

Well certainly working up from nothing in America is still better than certain places an immigrant can come from but i do increasingly feel bad for people who do this when they're not from a war zone :/

Not that social mobility was ever as high as many people think, but you are right that it seems to have reduced significantly since the 1970s, and is now lower than some European countries. I suspect it isn't as a simple as "blame the boomers".

>This causes them to act against their own best interests.

That doesn't follow. You can act completely selfishly by not voting for unsustainable policies that appear to benefit you in the near term but would harm you in the long term.

Would you rather be richer and have more buying power in absolute terms, or just make sure the fellow next door doesn’t have more than you?

This graph is misleading. It talks about middle class as a percent of national median income, which means large numbers of people counted as lower-class in the US would be counted as middle-class if they lived in Europe and made the same income.

I'd most like to have an existence where I don't worry about being bankrupted by a medical emergency or surviving on cat food once I retire[0].

[0] The cheap cat food, I mean, not the $10/meal cat food that rich Americans buy their pets.

Presumably since you're posting on this site you have a marketable skillset in a high demand field, which means you can enjoy a lucrative career and through making good decisions have significant retirement savings so you can afford to eat normally.

Maybe you meant that you want that existence for others, in which case, you might have a point, but I think a lot of the people who have your worries in the tech industry only have them because they live in stupidly high cost-of-living areas like SV.

Maybe not the retirement so much, but a medical issue can easily lead to bankruptcy, even when you have seven figures in assets.

If you have insurance—which someone with “seven figures in assets” should—then that is not a risk. Of course, insurance will only pay for so much. At some point of diminishing returns, they will cut you off. Just like any healthcare system in the world will. You can always spend more money for a tiny chance of living longer.

You have way too optimistic a point of view on insurance. Yes, you can even be bankrupted while being insured and a paper millionaire.

Neither: I care that the fellow next door has access to first world quality food, shelter, education, and medicine without means testing. I also see no evidence that this desire is at odds at all with my lifestyle as a quasi-middle class person living comfortably.

That has nothing at all to do with the information in this chart though.

This causes them to act against their own best interests.

This is why enlightenment values have ultimately tilted toward capitalism. No collective can accurately define the best interests of every individual and design a policy to match. Better to let them sort it out themselves.

Better on what evidence overall, regarding the entire economy and all classes?

> This causes them to act against their own best interests.

Ah yes--when rich liberals vote against their own interests, it's noble. When lower-income conservatives vote against their interests, it's ignorant.

I sense an implication that it’s not possible to evaluate the ends either group is voting for in this example. The nobility of the action depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Also, don’t mistake me for someone who’s interested in the desires of rich liberals :)

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