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Comment by redwall_hp | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

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.

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)

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?

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.

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

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