Economics

1720 readers

1 users here now

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

612

Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates. Behind Every Self-Made Billionaire is a Father with Money (mohaboelez.medium.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

96 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Upper middle class middle class with families and connections who had spare money to invest and just far enough along that they had the kids were raised with the drive to gather even more wealth. If they had been more wealthy they wouldn't have the drive, if they were less well off then they wouldn't have the advantages to make that drive happen.

"With money" doesn't mean all the money. It means plenty of money. Gates loves to tell the story about how he started his company in his father's garage. That was a three car garage because they could afford a large house with a lot of extra space Bill could use for free while starting his business.

The parents could afford to send them to prestigious schools where they made connections.

The parents had money. Recognizing this is not jealousy, it is a reason to acknowledge that massive wealth does not come from effort alone.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

you guys have skewed views of middle class. What do you consider upper class?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Since there is a ton of variation on cost of living and other factors by region, I just go by rough percentages because anything more is too complex to generalize. So the following is my view, which can be applied nationally or within a state/region as the outcome is basically the same. Keep in mind that after basic expenses are paid and someone can afford to invest their long term investments and other wealth are generally not included in their income despite their actual wealth continuing to increase allowing them access to loans and other monetary options that the middle class just doesn't have.

So how I see it by income:
Upper class as top 10%
Upper middle class would be 75%-90%
Middle class 25%-75%

Sure, people in California won't have the same monthly costs at 100k+ income to someone in the midwest, but the person in California who owns a home is building up a lot more wealth and options for loans/mortgages in higher amounts than someone in the midwest with a cheaper home. Renting is a different thing, but upper middle class and above have the option to buy and increase their wealth and puts them even further above middle class and below that aren't able to do the same or aren't able to save on top of the house payments.

What do you consider upper class?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

ah. se I would go with what you have but upper middle class would be 65%-75% or something and 75%-85% would be like lower upper class or such (I would use the quintiles really) and to get away from money I would consider upper class to be anyone who owns a large home with no mortage (or they are keeping their mortgage optionally), same with cars, has their retirment fully funded, paid for their kids to go to any college they wanted to and has additional money to invest in kida ideas or has money for leasure vehicles/property or vacations every year. even in the 80's

[–] Tremble 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Ok so looking at real numbers I don’t think your sentiment is correct. I’ll take other numbers too but I am seeing the median income is around 70k annual.

But then I am seeing it costs around 61k just to rent a one bedroom apartment.

Are you seriously suggesting that about half of the “middle class” could not even afford to rent a one bedroom apartment?

(I got my numbers just from quick google searches fyi I tried to post pics but it did the endless scrolling bug)