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I thought I was giving my kids the best childhood ever until my 4-year-old asked why we didn't own a 'bigger golf cart'
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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$150 a month for her dog's health insurance...
And she's calling herself "middle class" like she lives in the burbs....
The wealthy always think of themselves as "middle class" because they know people wealthier.
Just because billionaires exist doesn't mean millionaires who take annual child free vacations are suddenly "middle class".
They just don't want to actually admit they're wealthy and wasting a shit ton of money that should be going to taxes.
I worry that she actually is "middle class" and the wealth disparity has moved to the point that those of us who cannot spend $150 on pet insurance or drop $750,000+ on a house or $100,000 on a truck are effectively "poor", at least as far as the market is concerned.
There's people with "Fuck you" money and people without "Fuck you" money.
I mean, it should be median income/wealth, then a standard deviation either way.
But capitalism doesn't care about people, it cares about money. That's the only way the "middle class" can be defined differently.
Don't let capitalism define words.
And neither communism nor socialism care about people either, they are just ideas with the inability to care about anything.
Where does she claim to be middle class? It seems she recognizes she was middle class as a kid, but now is not, considering she said "were" instead of "are."
I have a very different take away from this and that she knows she is wealthy, and trying to impart the understanding of their luck onto her kids...I don't see her at all denying her wealth.
She did say that she grew up middle class and sometimes her family couldn't afford pizza. If you can't afford one of the most cost effective ways to feed a family without making the food yourself, you're not middle class. Now she's rich and lying about lemonade stands. It's embarrassing that someone with no idea what middle class means is writing an article about teaching kids about money.
That's a whole lot of judgement made from pure ignorance about anything from her life, and putting words in her mouth.
Yeah, but she's rich so she definitely deserves it! /s
"Sometimes couldn't afford pizza" shouldn't exclude her from middle class... we rarely ate out because we were trying to save that money for a trip or something - we would have said that we couldn't afford pizza, too. Even if it was well within reach, it wasn't within budget.
Erm, not arguing that this lady is middle class, but dog insurance cost is not remotely relevant to that lol. I pay that for my dog and make less than 6 figures. My dog is just really important to me, and our last dog cost us thousands and thousands of dollars on vet bills. I'm not going to be blindsided dropping $5k in a day on vet bills again. Our dog has insurance because it seems like the financially responsible thing to do, especially when your dog is extremely active and engaging in sports that it may be injured doing.
So-called upper middle class: "I'm middle class because there are people richer than me"
So-called lower middle class: "I'm middle class because there are people poorer than me"
IMO the middle class is an illusion
Middle class is paycheck to paycheck, has been for a while.
I'm lucky enough I can stack retirement and I got a house when it was (comparatively cheap).
If we're splitting the classes by median income (assets could be done, but people in the middle class by median are lucky to even have a mortgage on a home) then it's about 40k for an individual and 75k for a household. And I'm solidly "upper class" even though I'll never amass more than a million in assets unless real estate inflation jumps past Ludacris and into plaid.
The fact that anyone with a million in assets, let alone cash/stocks would consider themselves "middle class" just tells you stupid people can luck out and become millionaires.
It's a level of delusion that is actual impressive.
So the "middle class" that's a single income, house in the burbs, two cars, vacations every year...
That shits gone. But that doesn't mean there isn't still a statistical middle class.
If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you aren't middle class.
You might not be poor but definitely not middle.
Anyone who thinks that's middle class has just been fooled by the wealthy to make them think they're doing better than they are
You have an idea in your head of a standard that is "middle class".
That is not what I'm talking about.
Statistically speaking "middle class" is the median and a statistical deviation either way.
But that paints an incredibly depressing and realistic picture of what America's "economy" is really like. So the wealthy have pushed the narrative you're following that only a minority of people can obtain "middle class".
Historically when shit gets organized like that, it doesn't end well for the ones that hoarded all the wealth.
The harsh truth is that "middle class" is pretty fucking broke. It's just what happens when you concentrate the wealth at one end of the distribution. And literally the only way to fix that, is by moving the wealth to people lower in the distribution.
So rather than that be the discussion, it benefits the wealthy if people do what you're doing, and act like it just disappeared and can magically be made to reappear from thin air without taking wealth back from the people who have it now.
Simply taking a statistical look ignores what it was for centuries before. Middle class is more than just income, it's what that income means for your lifestyle and ability and it has been eroded as you say and will need to be taken back, but people fooling themselves into thinking they are just because of their income are in a bracket.
Oh you earn the middle income? Too bad it's 90% of your rent but don't worry you're still middle class! Nothing to be worried about here!
You're right. Middle class to me means owning a home or at least paying well on a mortgage. One car per person. Vacation money. Fun money. Paycheck to paycheck will never be middle class to me just because it's the statistical median. This is what people mean when they say the middle class is disappearing. The majority of Americans are working class, poor, or destitute. There's a fraction that are middle class and up.
In this stupid article the author says she was middle class but her parents often couldn't afford pizza. That is not middle class. Am I fucking crazy here?
I'm not saying that's fine, I've literally said multiple times it's not, and that looking at like you are downplays the problem.
I'm sorry I couldn't find a better way to explain it.
I can't afford $150 for my own health insurance
Yep, people keep replying like it's a choice to pay it or not...
For most Americans, that shit ain't a choice, they just can't.
What if how she lives is the way middle class should be? Like, we want to create a system where most people live this way (or have the option to).
Depends on your measure of middle, I bet median would be pretty low but average is still probably way higher than most people.
Wealth gap has never been worse
I make less than 100k a year and my dogs insurance costs about that much. I didn't have insurance for him before because he was young and healthy but then he tore his ACL and the surgery set me back 6.5K. That wasn't exactly a drop in the bucket for me, at the time I had less than half of that in savings, and had to max out my credit card. So now yeah it sucks having to pay that much but if he does get a bad injury or illness - obviously I really hope that doesn't happen and I have him for many more years to come - as he grows older, it will cost me way less as a lump sum.
That last sentence is odd. What do you mean should be going to taxes? Sounds like you define wealthy by what taxes they pay. I know the billionaires have lots of loopholes to pay a lower percent, is using those loopholes your deciding factor?
You're talking "should" legally...
I'm talking "should" ethically, but really, they "should" have never made that wealth to begin with.
Well my question was really about what "should" means to you. I have 2 kids, so my effective tax rate is like 25% or something. If I understand things right, the billionaires work things so they have very little taxable income, making thier 35% more like 1% of their actual income. So are you saying if a millionaire still pays thier taxes based on actual income, not using the method that billionaires use to lower their taxable income, then they are paying the taxes that they should pay?
Idk why you guys are so obsessed about millionaires here. We aren’t some evil devils that you can put all the blame for your problems on. It’s just life some are wealthier some are poorer. It was like that since forever and it will be like this forever except in this system you also have a chance for success unlike feudalism where everything was 100% predetermined.
In literally every system that ever existed there was someone wealthier and someone poorer what matters is the dynamics, can the poorer become wealthy, can the wealthy lose money if they stop being productive proportionally to their wealth? This is the problem
Because they keep denying they're the 1% and claim to be "middle class" and need tax breaks because the 0.1% exist.
When they're still causing problems for the rest of the 99%
At this point, it's real hard to think you're not trolling...
Like just statistically, very very few people would ever legitimately try to use that argument these days after sooooooooooo many people have been shooting it down for centuries.
If progress wasn't possible, shit wouldn't have fucking progressed.
Quick edit:
Completely unsurprised by that post history
Millionaires aren't necessarily the 1%. It's not until about $13 million in the US that someone's in the 1% of wealth.
This is truly insane. And yet millionaires will look at this statistic and use it to justify calling themselves middle class.
I like to use quintiles to define the classes.
"Middle of what?" is a good question to ask. If you're in the top 2%, or even 10%, you're not middle class. More money than 90% of everyone else is not the middle class.
Flipping it around, if 0% means 100% of the country is richer than you, and 99% means 99% of the country is poorer than you...
Now, I couldn't find quick figures for wealth. But for income, middle class household income topped out at $94,000 in 2022. So a household making more than $100,000 is probably not middle class.
"But my household makes over $100,000/yr and we don't live a middle class life style!"... that's probably because you've been sold the idea that an upper[-middle] class lifestyle is actually "middle class". It's not. The lifestyle you'd have at about $80,000 household income is a middle class lifestyle.
"Well, I might make over $100,000/yr household income, but I'm definitely not middle class because i make less than that after tax!"...nope, these calculations are usually before tax. You aren't middle class.
"This doesn't apply to me. I have 3 kids and a dependent spouse, so my $100,000+ doesn't go as far as a single person's would!"...sorry, still not middle-class.
This is not my understanding of the class system. It's not divided evenly mathematically. Many years ago, this was most likely the case, but I would argue that unless you're at least in the top third percentage for income, you probably aren't living a "middle class" life. Features of what we used to call middle class, and I argue still should, are things like owning a home, going on vacations, and having a retirement account.
Reducing the idea of middle class to statistics normalizes things like living paycheck to paycheck because that's what median income earners in this country do. That will never be middle class to me. That's working class at best and more like working poor. I would love for everyone to have what I think of as a middle class life, but it's sadly out of reach for most of us.
Middle class is not median income. It is a lifestyle that is enabled by income that fewer and fewer people can attain.
There are different schools of thought.
Some schools of thought say that anyone who has to work for their money (including business owners) are not upper class.
I like going with the statistical middle class because it's less subjective regarding what it's actually the middle.
I can be less subjective. To afford the things I described I would assume a two earner household with income greater than $150k.
That's approaching the top 10% of household incomes in the US. It seems odd to me to refer to that portion of the distribution as "middle"
You've invented your own nonsense system that isn't anything like how anyone uses the word.
Income quintiles are quite commonly researched and discussed
Liberalism or rather liberal social democracy is greatest system ever devised. I cherish it every single day like a treasure of humanity it is.
It’s so good everyone tries to get here from all over the world to partake in it and I welcome them if they are willing to obey basic rules and integrate.
Woe to communists and facists alike
I was about to upvote the funny satire then I read the rest of the comment and... you're serious.
Of course I am serious…