Why Everyone Should Be Upper Class

Instead of criticizing the OP, I am going to go out on a branch here and congratulate him for having the boldness and audacity to tackle a huge social issue: who gets to live the "sweet life," how come, and if we can change that.

Okay, okay... there are endless points on which to critique the OP and his article -- just read any of the other comments; most of them are valid. But that's missing the forrest for the trees.

Any true entrepreneur or hacker should appreciate the scale of the problem the OP is grappling with, and have respect for him. It's one thing to have an opinion on nodeJS or NOSQL -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- but here's someone who is tackling a truly meaningful and big life question. And for that, I respect him.

If you're with me, upvote this.

Rationalist is right. Offensive garbage like this is proof enough that a person can't just think on a problem and eventually solve it. This is why we moved to this thing called empiricism a few hundred years ago and haven't looked back. Try using evidence to motivate your obnoxious opinions next time.

I agree with the basic premise - which seems to be not that everyone should be upper class but rather that everyone should become more entrepreneurial and take greater ownership in their careers and business.

I disagree with one of the points the author makes. Here's a quote: "And yet, here we are, in a country with no peasants. (We also don’t depend on peasants in other countries – the US is a big food exporter, not importer.)"

In one sense, that's true. The number of farmers has gone down dramatically with the advent of technology but there's still around 3-4 million migrant / seasonal workers in the US [1] that act as modern day peasants. If you expand the definition of peasant beyond farm hands, it could include things such as low-paid workers in China or the working poor in the US. This particular point doesn't ring true with me.

[1] - www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Migrant%20Demographics.pdf

Wow. This article gets a lot of things wrong IMO.

Their points on saving is stupid, when most people live paycheck to paycheck, and the idea that social class isn't about being in X% but the values you have? What a load of crap, here's someone who's in the upper class, who has GREAT values, link: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman.... Being in a certain economic class does not give you a certain set of ideal that others lack, nor does it negate you any insight. Everyone is different.

Also, the idea that we don't have peasants and lord anymore, really makes me confused, considering I have and know many landlords, and that most people who live in rural areas contribute to the same function as Peasants did (see Farmers). Just because things become more complex doesn't mean you can ignore the fact that their are still owners (lords) and workers (peasants), or that the same idea still isn't absurd (everyone can be rich!!!)...

This article contains sweeping generalizations and a gross amount of naivety.

I will say that the premise is really interesting, "Everyone Should be Upper Class". That idea alone is probably why it made it to the front page of HN. But ultimately this is not well written. There were no citations or strong evidence besides a figure in the last paragraph. The writing meanders and doesn't support the argument well. And the argument isn't really made clearer until half way through - upper class means business owning and it is in our best interest to own or start businesses.

I'm going to make a anecdotal generalization of my own and say that I see these problems in a number of blog posts that make it onto HN. My two cents: If you're going take on a tough or controversial premise then take the time to argue it well, don't gloss over details, please revise, revise, then revise some more, and finally have other people read it before it gets released to a wide audience like HN.

Ctrl+F "status", no results.

Ctrl+F "positional", no results.

The post is not based on a full understanding of the problem.

There are enough flaws here that I feel most people are going to focus in on one or two they found particularly egregious so I will do the same: The pitching of class as upper vs. middle while entirely ignoring lower is horrifically offensive in addition to being a major flaw in the argument. First because we would need to address the poor and how the massive wealth gap is harmful to all of society before we could even begin to act on any of the suggestions within. Second because the poor are, in many ways, the peasants described within or even worse off than the peasants were. Additionally, the piece portrays anyone who is not in the "upper class" as being so by their own fault, a viewpoint I got tired enough of in college after a few too many run-ins with people who could not even imagine what it would be like to be less than upper-middle class (by current socioeconomic definitions).

> A big problem with many parts of Africa is that everyone is lower class.

And the problem with many parts of North America is that everyone is a fat ass.

Please be a little more thoughtful in your sweeping generalizations. Better yet, don't make any.

This is hilarious, and has been lampooned authoritatively by Steinbeck: ""I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist."

Congrats, you've sort of discovered bizarro-marxism but phrased it in ridiculous terms based on a poor grasp of economic realities.

1)Peasants absolutely exist. There's an enormous invisible labor force in the US that is paid a fraction of minimum wage, let alone a living wage, and that's not even counting the literal prison slave labor employed in multiple states. Further, while the US may export a great deal of food, there are plenty of food types and a majority of manufactured products that are imported from places where they are made through the exploitation of third world laborers.

2) Your claim that business-ownership used to be a widespread individual experience is historically nonsense.

3) The article is full of tautologies like "If you have the human and social capital to start a business, it means you don’t have to worry so much about money." Yeah, if you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you tomorrow, you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you. Brilliant insight, and also not the lived experience of 99% of the world's population. Your suggestion that people simply "choose" to be this way is ridiculous.

4) The assertion that middle-class people spending a majority of their income as it comes in is "cultural" rather than a reality of saving being a LUXURY afforded to the few wealthy enough to afford it is both wrong and incredibly insulting. You're hardly the first person to perpetuate the "poor people just don't have good money sense" myth but it doesn't make it any less noxious.

And that's just for starters! Wealth is a zero-sum game and capitalism is built at its very foundation on the upward mobility of wealth through exploitation of labor. You can't change that with fairy-tale ideas about everyone magically being able to afford the risks and costs of business ownership if they just want it bad enough.