Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

Only wealthy people have a hard time figuring out what the correct measurement is for rich. It’s a total lack of perspective.

It’s always laughable to me what rich people consider “middle”. It’s like the word has a different meaning. Middle, to a wealthy person, extends from the middle all the way up to the top 10% by any measure. Maybe even to the top 5% of they want to talk about how expensive it is where they live, which is totally a choice they are wealthy enough to make. Poor people are treated as non existent.

This kind of tone deafness is why Trump won and why he will continue to win. The actual middle class is tired of hearing about how people making $100k+, with $750k in assets who say, “a million isn’t what it used to be” are somehow in the same socioeconomic class as the actual middle class.

I’m not sure that wealthy Americans understand just how many of their fellow countrymen are in their 30s, 40s and beyond making $20 an hour and living paycheck to paycheck. Average household income is two people working just a few dollars above minimum wage to support their kids.

I think you are the one lacking perspective here. The same way you are trying to make a point, I can make a counter point. The person making $20 is considered comparatively rich by someone making less than a dollar a day in some underdeveloped country. Everything is relative. If you make $100k and you live paycheck to paycheck because of housing costs, education costs, grocery cost etc., how can you claim their should shut up because they are rich?

Yes, but the point is that the gap between rich and middle-class in a single nation, under a single political system, perhaps shouldn't be as wide as the gap between developed and developing nations.

Everything isn’t relative. The middle is still the middle.

When you are in the top 10% by income claiming to be in the middle you are failing to realize that their are some 250 million people in your own country that are below you. The people who make your coffee, butcher your meat, package your products. You are failing to realize that there are 100-200 million people living either an actual middle class life or are in poverty by any standard you would understand.

Living in a place with high costs is a choice. It’s s choice that wealthy people get to make. Living in San Francisco in a small studio on a $100k+ salary and jokingly “feeling poor” is a choice that wealthy and privileged people get to make. It’s a choice I’ve made. It’s probably a choice you’ve made. But I’m not going to pretend for a moment, if I’m being honest, that my life even approaches an actual middle class life. I get to live in one of the best places on the planet with the best food, weather, museums, drinks, bars, technology, etc.. I have access to the best of everything… how the hell is that being in the middle? Go spend a summer in middle America where everything is cheap and see how most people actually live. Hell, take the BART to the end of the line and drive one town further and try living and working there for a bit.

Until we've gotten rid of nation states, don't even bring up undeveloped countries. There's no surer way to break the "unbending arc of justice" than to tell the unfortunate/unlucky in your own country, "Yes, but have you seen what life is like in Indonesia?" It cuts both ways. We should tax the wealthy here punitively, since after taxes, they still would be rich in developing countries after all.

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