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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. Journalists have forgotten how to talk about class.

"One-percenter" isn't a real thing. It's just math. There is absolutely nothing tying the 'one-percenter' class together. They're not banding together to make it so their kids have a straight run into the Ivy League. They're not trying to stay politically dominant by passing poll taxes.

One-percenters aren't doing that. The upper class is. And there's plenty of "one-percenters" that aren't part of the upper class, most notably tech workers.

Social classes each have their own institutions of which they dominate. They have industry segments in which they maintain presence. But apparently we can't talk about that anymore. Sadly it's probably less to do with anything more nefarious than the gutting of funding for journalism, so all the stories are getting lazier and lazier.

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> And there's plenty of "one-percenters" that aren't part of the upper class, most notably tech workers.

You’re going to have to back that assertion up.

Working for a living is kinda a give-away. In a Fussellian socialized-class sense most tech folks probably come from upper-prole, middle, and upper-middle backgrounds, and the values of the tech crowd itself—the ones it tends to imprint on new members—are largely upper-middle.

> Working for a living is kinda a give-away.

Actually the giveaway is making over $35,000 a month.

If you can pay someone $35K a month and still make the payments on your 2nd Ranch home, you're probably upper class.

I always thought about it by the distinction between can pay others or not.

> The upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of society, and wield the greatest political power.

(Wikipedia, naturally)

If you just mean high income when you write upper-class, you’re not communicating clearly.

The post we are all commenting on has the words one percent in the title.

> > And there's plenty of "one-percenters" that aren't part of the upper class, most notably tech workers.

> You’re going to have to back that assertion up.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. That's 420,000/y. That's no ordinary tech worker, or even most extraordinary ones. You're a C-suite executive if you're making that kind of money, even in a ridiculous CoL area like SF.

L6 at Google pays $490,000 a year [0] and 90+ percent of first layer managers at GAFAM are L6 or above. While getting into GAFAM and becoming a manager isn't a stroll in the park, it definitely doesn't require you to be extraordinary.

[0]: https://www.levels.fyi/salary/Google/

> it definitely doesn't require you to be extraordinary

Yes, it does.

Being in the top 1% is extraordinary. It’s a tautology, it’s not really arguable.

In the metric of income in relation to the entire US population, sure. In regards to the ordinary tech worker in a ridiculous CoL area like SF, no it definitely does not require you to be extraordinary to join one of the higher paying companies and work your way into management.

You are correct that in a group of extraordinary people it is more common to find extraordinary people.

Which part? Tech workers being in the top 1% of income/wealth? Or the definition of upper class?

My assertion is that a tech worker with a household income of $421,920 or higher is very clearly in the upper class by any reasonable definition.

Class isn't a function of income: if you exchange labor for money, you're working class. If your name is on a badge or a desk, you're working class. If your name is on a building and you make money primarily by investing capital and owning production, you're part of the bourgeoise.

There are only a few hundred billionaires in this country, and they didn't get that money by being paid a salary.

> you make money primarily by investing capital and owning production

So all the retired people living off their 401k are now part of the upper class?

This is just a silly strawman.

Of course there is a class difference between people at retirement age:

- Has enough wealth to pay for daily life with interest/dividends. Nearly all wealth sill be left to family+friends upon death. (Upper class)

- Has enough wealth to retire, drawing upon this wealth to survive. Must work late into life in order to leave a significant inheritance. (Middle class)

- Not enough wealth to survive without working or leave significant inheritance. Must rely on friends, family, or the state when unable to work in old age. (Lower class)

This entire thread is an example of why not to use frequently-misunderstood terms like "upper class". In most contexts "upper class" refers to social class like whether you come from aristocracy or multi-generational privilege, not necessarily economic status or wealth. The set of people who are A: upper class or B: wealthy overlap but are disjoint. There are upper class people who are not wealthy and there are wealthy people who are not upper class.

Is “yes” an unreasonable answer? They’re certainly not part of the stereotype, but neither is an IC tech worker, and I’d expect a retired person living off their investments would be pretty aligned with blue bloods on political and economic issues. Certainly they’d be opposed to any policy that’ll tank the value of their portfolio.

I think you'd want to adjust for age, source of wealth, and income level to have a reasonable definition.

Are they in their 30s with inherited wealth that allows them to spend like someone with a top 1% incone?

the people who started exchanging labor for money and today are billionaires, which "class" do they belong to? What if you work and ALSO invest in another company? What if you work 10 hours a day in your own company? Once you amass capital, there's no need to apply any kind of effort? Capital is indestructible? How many times should we try communism?

"There are only a few hundred billionaires in this country, and they didn't get that money by being paid a salary." A non trivial number of them actually did.

Source? I can't think of a single person with a net asset value in the billions that got there via cash every 2 weeks. It's always increases in equity value that get you there.

They got it as signup bonus + salary + bonuses. Eric Schmidt, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd blankfein, Sheryl Kara Sandberg, Roberto Goizueta,Steve Ballmer, Michael Eisner prob many others I do not remember Sundar Pichai will soon join that list

From Wikipedia:

> Ballmer was offered a salary of $50,000 as well as 5-10% of the company.[17] When Microsoft was incorporated in 1981, Ballmer owned 8% of the company.

> While CEO of Microsoft in 2009, Ballmer earned a total compensation of $1,276,627, which included a base salary of $665,833, a cash bonus of $600,000, no stock or options, and other compensation of $10,794.

His billions came from the ~10% of the company he got when he started, not from his wages. This is closer to a co-founder than a typical employee.

OK scratch Ballmer

Yeah, and that 421K number is across the entire US. 1%-er in California it’s over 500K. You can utilize Glassdoor to see that even looking at salaries at FAANG that is not an average experience. People in the top 10% bracket straight up believe they’re in the 1% when it suits their world view and they’re in the middle class when it suits a different component of their world view. It’s maddening.

You could even say the contradictions are heightening.

No upper class person is working for a tech company. They might own one, but they aren't working for them.

That's the issue. Articles like this talk about the "1%", but they're trying to convince people that everyone in the 1% are Bill Gates or Jeff Besos.

If the top 1% is an household income of $475,116, and you have 2 working people, they each need to make $237,558

That's certainly a lot, but on the coasts, a college grad can get a $120k or more offer straight out of school. I've heard of much higher ones, but lets use this number.

So to be a 1%, you could simply have a couple where both techies that make twice as much as a new grad. That's not exactly far fetched, when you include equity at a public company.

Of course, these people likely spend 3-5k/month on housing, are paying 6 figure in student debt each, might be sending their toddlers to a day care or a private school and saving for said toddlers' college, and putting a bunch in equity to supplement their 401k and emergencies. Clearly way better off than most, but also probably having discussions as if they should eat out less often to save some money and if they really need 2 cars or not, because gas and maintenance is starting to add up.

So in a good (great even) place, but certainly not the same world as what comes to mind when people say "1 percenter". High income doesn't really mean upper class.

> So in a good (great even) place, but certainly not the same world as what comes to mind when people say "1 percenter".

Yes, it is.

> High income doesn't really mean upper class.

Yes it does. Making 10x the annual average family income makes you upper class. That’s what the words mean.

The cognitive dissonance you’re experiencing here is not that the rest of the world is confused about the obvious fact that the top 1% is way above average, it’s that you’re confused about where the average is.

"upper class" means whatever people use it to mean, hopefully something that's useful to the discussion at hand.

NFL players get paid very high salaries, but the average career is only three years. many of them blow through it and have only meager pensions and the aftermath of injuries to look forward to in their old age. are they "upper class" for the brief part of their life when they have the cash flow or just an edge case of the exploited worker?

> are they "upper class" for the brief part of their life when they have the cash

Yes. Highly paid professional athletes are upper class.

They’re usually just rich working or middle class people.

> Yes it does. Making 10x the annual average family income makes you upper class. That’s what the words mean.

No that's not what the words mean.

Social class is what circle you run in. It's what kind of car you can see yourself driving. It's how you think about financial security. It's what rec activities you think about doing. It's how you get involved politically.

Income is only a tiny part of that equation. You can be upper class and dirt poor. And you can be lower class and have millions in the bank.

Don't use class to refer to wealth or income. These three concepts are totally different and can exist independently of each other.

It's not your fault you don't understand this. America failed you.

High income doesn't mean upper class as much as a large amount of wealth does.

There are many people who have modest incomes, but high wealth. Those people are upper class.

On the other hand, there are a small number of people with high income, but who have a lot of drains on their money (support a large family, donate a lot), and who I would not consider upper class because they do not have a large amount of wealth

> Making 10x the annual average family income makes you upper class. That’s what the words mean.

No it doesn’t! You can be a millionaire but still be from the working class.

Being a millionaire does not quality you for the top 1%

I didn’t say it did - you’re imagining that.

I said being in the 1% doesn’t make you upper class.

> If the top 1% is an household income of $475,116

I recommend reading this article https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/wealth.html

The top 1% does not make such a small amount. The top 1% has a net worth of $18 million after accounting for loans and other debts, and an income north of 1.7million... And that's in 2013. It's even worse now.

We should be talking about net worth, not about income, or else people who pay themselves a salary of $1 but are billionaires are classed as "lower class", which is obviously nonsense.

Most people would consider a salary of 1$ Not as “working for money” but as “living of other means”.

> High income doesn't really mean upper clasS.

That was the point I was making. 1% is not the same as upper class.

When the term is used as contrast with the term middle class it does.

Zuck?

That's tautological for you since you've decided that income is your determiner of class status, and I think this is more controversial than you accept.

My wife and I are income 1%ers, but we're also first-generation college graduates. We live in a city with a tremendously high cost-of-living, because it's where our jobs are. If we are lucky, we will inherit some small amount of equity in our parents homes. We have no political connections or clout. Our income is virtually 100% in the form of pay from our employers.

From your point of view, we're better candidates to be "upper class" than say, Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York (salary: ~$180K) despite the fact that Cuomo's father was also Governor of New York, he was married to a Kennedy, and he presided at Billy Joel's wedding to his fourth wife?

It’s not actually complicated or a contradiction. Both of you are members of the upper class.

I do think there's an interesting question about whether income or wealth is the defining characteristic of upper class. Top 1% wealth is around $10m, which your typical 30 year old high-income tech worker won't have.

it's sort of a tautological question. "upper class" is just terminology; it means whatever is convenient shorthand for the discussion. you and I get to decide what the defining characteristic of "upper class" is for the rest of this thread.

that was a bit snarky so I'll expand a little. I think people typically use "upper class" to signify the highest echelon in the power structure of society. but there are a lot of ways to have power over others, and it doesn't map perfectly onto money. an influential media personality may have more influence than someone far richer but unknown to the public. someone with a high worth on paper might have liquidity issues that force them to be careful with their spending. you might be wealthy and politically connected, but excluded from certain social circles anyway.

Where should that threshold be? Does it move every year due to inflation?

I think a more reliable distinction would be whether a person's income predominantly comes from their labour, or whether it proedominantly comes from what they own.

> Where should that threshold be? Does it move every year due to inflation?

The threshhold for being in the top 1% of income is that 99% or more of people make less than you.

> The threshhold for being in the top 1% of income is that 99% or more of people make less than you.

Clearly I mean the threshold for being upper class a term mentioned in your actual comment... unlike "top 1%" which was not.

Not all members of the upper class are in the top 1%.

But all members of the top 1% are in the upper class.

So we're agreed that "top 1%" and "upper class" are not interchangable terms.

No they aren’t. Making 400k puts you in the same class as someone making 80k. Both have to work for a living, and neither experiences real deprivation. Those are the two most salient factors.

If you have to work for a living you are not upper class, period.

Well, according to income charts, thats me.

Im most certainly not upper class, as I can't even afford to buy department store clothes or go out to eat more than once a week.

My expenses, due to my location, education, medical status and job, eat up a lot of my income. I'm VERY thrifty and am about 75% over the poverty line after job/education expenses. Throw in medical, transportation and the ridiculous housing costs and I can't even afford mcdonalds for breakfast.

So... you’ve made a bunch of choices about what to do and for how much many and then how to spend the huge amount of money that you subsequently get to decide how to spend, and mathematically speaking you cannot spend all of that money on all of those things and simultaneously buy a $100 pair of pants.

That can easily be true, but it’s so ludicrously far from what normal people mean when they say that they “can’t afford McDonald’s for breakfast” that I think it drives the point home pretty well.

You aren’t poor because you already spent your allowance.

The fact that people in the upper echelons of the global upper echelons of financial resources don’t “feel rich” because we have to make “financial decisions” only when we’ve already spent all of the rest of our money is exactly the problem.

This isn’t, like, an upper-class character flaw. There’s some kind of normal human scale insensitivity that makes it really hard to understand how much a dollar is worth to someone else.

But it seems like if you do the math, you should acknowledge that you genuinely are one of the people getting paid off by the pyramid scheme. If you still feel constrained in your options, it’s because everyone at every level feels that way, because the whole system is lubricated from top to bottom by a pervasive sense of personal insufficiency. And actual poverty is still a lot worse.

I wasnt trying to make some generalized comment about society. I was relaying my own personal situation as it's an example how how some (very few, likely) people can have a large disparity between gross and net income with little ethical choice in the matter.

> I can't even afford mcdonalds for breakfast.

If that's true and you're making over $400k per year, you're doing something wrong.

Nope. I'm doing just fine.

As I said in my comment, non-negotiable expenses are high.

> non-negotiable expenses are high.

You're going to have to go into a lot more detail if you want anybody to believe expenses that high are possible.

Sure, I'll go through what Im comfortable with.

I'm currently an educator in a high income area, teaching students of significant wealth. I make about 450k a year.

We are required to live within a specific radius of the campus, which significantly limits my housing choices to high income, low space options. I'm around the middle of housing costs among my peers, and I'm paying 5k a month for 600 sq/ft.

We are expected to provide all resources for our courses, as is fairly normal in the primary/secondary teaching profession. Resource costs are around 200k a year, and this is fairly common among the staff. We are expected to bear it based on the idea that we're "over compensated" for our position, and that this "gives us flexibility to provide tailored education experiences". Nonsense, but I do love the job.

Taxes and health insurance take a bit over 100k a year.

That puts me around 90k gross for a family of 4 (which I have). "Very low income" level for a family of for in my area us 58k. That puts me at 55% above the VLI line. My original estimate was 75%.

I have a significant medical issue that puts a financial burden on us in monthly prescription copays, plus 4 three month specialist checkups, plus the cost of 2 children.

I am NOT saying this is normal by any means. My single healthy peers live fairly well.

I also expect most people to think, "Just get a new job!", which is understandable. However if I were to move back to my previous southern US appointment, doing the exact same job, Id have less net income and not be working in such a cool place.

Thanks for the details, this is very interesting.

> Resource costs are around 200k a year, and this is fairly common among the staff.

That certainly explains everything. I'm curious where that money goes? If you're teaching a class of 30 students, you could buy each one a laptop and go on a two-week field trip with individual hotel rooms and still have 100k left from that budget.

I cant go into detail much because itd make it easy to google my place of employment.

We pay for trips, electronics, "lab kits", license fees, PPE, raw materials, rental fees for heavy equipment and due to the nature of the content we pay probably more than we should due to inflated costs related to the specialized nature of the topic and school contracts.

AND we pay sales tax on all of it, which isnt insignificant on already ridiculous costs.

What is the 200k paying? Is there any way you could chop it down to 100k?

Yes. I could certainly bring the costs down, but at the expense of the experience of the students.

I don't believe that is an ethical choice, even if the students are already extremely privileged.

I do struggle with this every few months though, it is a difficult concept to grapple with, but I always side with trying to provide the best educational experience that I can.

And FWIW, among the other instructors, my costs aren't even particularly high.

Anything medical could easily get that high. Cancer, trauma injury.

If you're paying out of pocket, sure. But you can get a very good family insurance plan for $2k per month that should cover everything.

I have quite decent medical insurance, and copays still exist.

I dont want to discuss my medical costs directly, but the uninsured cash cost for my monthly medications is about 5.5k month. Insurance does help significantly, but the final cost is still greater than 10% of cash price.

If you switch your housing over to a nice hotel, you will at least get a free breakfast every morning.

Classes by definition are about wealth

If you're unable to manage your money it's your fault, but you're not working class

Income is not wealth.

https://youtu.be/bZWeFtgEAEk?t=41

Here's the difference between rich and wealthy. Shaq, is rich, the white guy that signs his check is wealthy.

Rich is something you can lose over the summer in Vegas with a drug habit.

Shaquille O’Neill, with an estimated net worth of approximately 400 million dollars, is wealthy.

It's an old video, def is now wealthy.

I manage my money quite well, thank you.

Im not sure why it's difficult to grasp that the difference between gross and net income can be large for some job in some areas, but that is the case for a small number of individuals.

It is foreign to the vast majority of people that you would be making $400k per year of income but unable to afford a $5 breakfast as you say. I'm having some trouble with it too. When if you're paying $150k in taxes, have a $10k a month mortgage payment (about a $1.5M mortgage), and are making $5k a month in student loan payments, you have $70k left over. I suppose I could see your medical bills being so high that this is then a difficult pie to share with everyday expenses. But it's a lot of assumptions to get there.

Even if those number were reality, OP's claim that "I manage my money quite well" would be nonsense.

If your after-tax income is $250k and you're spending $130k on loans and medical expenses, it would be foolish to sign up for a mortgage that costs $120k per year.

Please see my other comment. You're making assumptions that are not correct regarding my choice in housing and expenses.

> Classes by definition are about wealth

No they aren't! You can be working class but a millionaire, and you can be upper class but destitute.

Which is kind of the problem with measuring income as a proxy for wealth. It’s, as you note, rather transient.

What should be the focus is on the total wealth. Who controls the resources eating up all that income? And how much of that controls is concentrated into a few individuals?

Your post is borderline incoherent, but I think your point is you want to remind everyone that not all rich people should be treated the same?

Ok I'll add that to my priorities list somewhere below figuring out how to pay for healthcare.

I think people just don't know what a curve looks like.

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