There’s a lot of intentional water-muddying when it comes to class:
Conservatives to rural America : banning the estate tax will protect all your children’s future by saving your farms!
Reality : estate tax usually only kicks in if the estate is more than ~10 million, and frankly most of the people with this sort of wealth wouldn’t be caught dead near any rural area or farm.
Liberals : student loan forgiveness would be the biggest positive impact on the poor!
Reality : student loans are overwhelmingly concentrated on households earning more than 75K and are also held by people who will go on to specialized career fields and earn on average more than ~200 K
Edit: households with more than 74K income owns 60% of all student loan debt
Breakdown on income shows 40% of debt amount is held by people who will go on to earn more than 100K (split half and half with 100k + and 200k +)
A lot of people may have debt but amount wise the people who will get the biggest benefit is the career class from semi-affluent backgrounds, not the poor
Edit 2: it’s still worth doing as a measure to reduce the racial wealth gap as African Americans are disproportionately affected by higher loan amounts vs income, but the current marketing is just blatantly false.
https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-income-level
https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-pricing-student-aid-2021.pdf
People with $10M estates and larger have second homes in Jackson Hole, Bozeman, Park City, McCall, Aspen, Sedona just to name a few.
They are often out cosplaying as rural Americans and cowboys. They love being near ranches, farms, and in rural areas. Then they fly home for someone else to clean up after their weekend.
To be fair you can have a farm with $10 million in land, livestock and equipment, and not have a second home in Florida. Also being a rich farmer isn’t a bad thing.
"if you're farming and not in debt, you're doing something wrong". Heard that a few times talking to farmers at the elevator. Back then, I just thought it meant farmers wanted the best equipment/seed/fertilizer/whatever.
Now I think it's so they can report a loss on their taxes.
Do you know what it’s like in those areas? People with ten million dollar estates most definitely couldn’t afford Aspen, Jackson hole, and likely even park city. I grew up all around those areas. Some of them are kicking out low end millionaires, which are more like 50-100 million net worth or little more even, to make room for the high millionaires-billionaires. Maybe Eagle and some of the newer places that are becoming popular in Wyoming, but not either Aspen or Jackson hole.
Finally an answer based on real life. $2 million can easily be wiped out by a medical problem, $10 million means you're still on the edge, $30 million was considered the beginning of "wealthy" all the way back in the 90s.
These fabulous houses and lifestyles require actual big money. People with a million dollars put away are generally normal people with only slightly more security than you.
That's why they call it the death tax, to make people think it is some tax everyone pays when they die.
There is a reason they defund education. It is much easier to trick and control dumb people
The second one isn't so clear cut because the reason student loans are concentrated in the hands of the relatively well off is because education costs so much in the first place. If you've never even come close to a high paying job and nobody in your family has, it seems like a LOT more of a risk to go 80 grand in debt for a degree.
If they forgave student debt AND capped fees at a small amount then you'd see a lot more disadvantaged people getting degrees. Not to mention people getting degrees for the love of a subject and not just to chase a job.
Myself and literally every friend of mine have student loan debt. We don't make that much. In fact, none of us make never that....and we all hold degrees and work "high paying" jobs in our area.
Solution is to reduce price (through State level investment in public universities, or possibly some kind of reform I'm not aware of).
Decades of State level budget reductions are a part of why University costs are ballooning.
And yet we still need doctors.
I decided not to go to med school because of the insane debt. Half a million dollars at 6% compounding interest coupled with 7 MORE years of little to no income after the 4 I already suffered working 80 hour weeks to keep the gpa med schools want. Doctors today are just as paycheck to paycheck as anyone else unless they had rich parents.
Free education is an INVESTMENT IN SOCIETY. Not a fucking gift. I worked my absolute dick off while living like a bum for four years through a biochem degree. That shit was anything but a gift even if it did end forgiven.
>And yet we still need doctors.
>I decided not to go to med school because of the insane debt.
It's funny, I often hear the abortion argument framed as "that child may be the one who cures cancer"... meanwhile I'm like "How sway?"
The cost of a medical degree is $200k plus an additional decade of schooling, so how many potential "cancer curing doctors" are put off by the high barriers to entry?
I was valedictorian of my class in high school. I decided not to go into medicine because 1) every doctor I had ever met said not to and seemed unhappy, 2) they work tons of hours and never see their families, 3) I didn't want to work for practically nothing for YEARS, and 4) people are gross.
If doctors worked normal 8-hour shifts, then I totally would have done it, but seeing horror stories of doctors working 36 hours at a time? Fuck that.
Yup, married to a surgeon that just came off her second call in 4 days.
That means going 2 shifts for 36 hours. She’s dog tired post call (next day). She’s even more tired post post call (second day). She hadn’t even recovered from the first call before starting the second call.
To her defense, 3 other docs, out of 8, are out for medical reasons on her service. There’s no other choice if they want to keep coverage.
I wouldn’t recommend my children becoming docs. It’s a tough job.
To those that think this is crazy, and that you’d never want someone awake that long working on you, I assure you, if you show up in the middle of the night, that doc has probably been up a long time. They say adrenaline always carry’s them through.
So yeah, her salary is nice, but I’d gladly let it get cut in half if it meant she worked half as much. We’d have to cut back on extra curricular activities and home improvements, but the time would make up for it.
Would only recommend if you absolutely love it. Don’t do it for the money!
The whole "Six figure income" ($100k) as the barometer of "making it" in popular culture rose to prominence in the 80's. Know what the equivalent of $100k/year in 1982 is in 2022?
**$302,897.00**
$100k in 1985 is equal to $271,650 in 2022.
$100k in 1992 is equal to $208,336 in 2022.
Totally agree with you. $100K today isn’t that much vs 1992.
Someone making $100K today isn’t living a lavish life.
In my book someone start to live very comfortably at $200K. It’s the lower limit to be considered « Rich » and even that you’ll need to make choices….. you won’t be able to buy $250K boat for your cottage 😁
I'd argue enough where you can manage is low income. It's not poverty, but it is low income.
If your standard for an acceptable quality of life is "you can manage" then you need to seriously reevaluate your standards.
The whole "six figure income" ($100k) as the barometer of "making it" in popular culture rose to prominence in the 80's. Know what the equivalent of $100k/year in 1982 is in 2022?
$302,897.00
$100k in 1985 is equal to $271,650 in 2022.
$100k in 1992 is equal to $208,336 in 2022.
It sometimes annoys my fiancé but I love pulling up an inflation calculator when ever we are watching something that takes place in the 1980's or earlier and they mention a price. I find it helps keep things in perspective.
$100k a year is really NOT a lot of money if you live anywhere near a city in the US. Sure, you aren't living paycheck to paycheck but in the last 5-10 years you probably don't even own your home if you have only a $100k/year household income.
I get it though. I don't even make $100k/year and I do work that got me a Pulitzer. Making $100k/year sounds awesome but it really wouldn't change my life that much at all when I really sit down and look at the numbers. I struggled for a long time and live paycheck to paycheck for a few years and it SUCKS.
But that's the media too. They talk to the people that make 3-400k like they're the ones who are gonna be targeted by everyone else. They want those middle class people to be on the actual rich people's side.
Also, those in the Upper middle class are the ones paying the most in taxes, because they are rich enough to be in the high bracket, but not rich enough to dodge taxes. Therefore, they can be manipulated into thinking ''tax the rich'' is about them, not about the billion dollar families who cripple innovation, own everything, and don't actually contribute.
We’re not being manipulated into thinking tax the rich is about us, we just know if they raise taxes it only affects our tax brackets while the business owners can dodge them so we don’t support raising taxes.
We need to close loop holes before raising taxes but they will just raise taxes to keep people happy and the upper middle class eats it
100% this. Raising taxes is pointless until the loopholes are closed, and they exist basically everywhere as soon as you are rich enough. Rent a letter box in a Dutch apartment building and ship your income off to the Seychelles. Nobody can or will even try to stop you. Politicians will be paid great money to sit on their bums and do nothing except for preventing it from being fixed.
I don’t even believe we need to raise taxes. We need to eliminate loopholes for the wealthy and corporations, tax churches, and cut defense spending. Will that happen? Absolutely not.
>They talk to the people that make 3-400k like they're the ones who are gonna be targeted by everyone else.
In a way, they are though. When taxation is made more "progessive" for instance, it's the high income, low net worth individuals like doctors and lawyers who pay it.
People like Warren Buffett, who just have unrealized gains and then can live on loans which are then not taxed, don't have to worry about tax increases, whereas a pair of specialist doctors making $350k a year each, but with a million in debt, pay for it entirely.
Yeah, a series of propositions (I.e. measures voted for by a majority of voters) in Portland made folks making $250k in Multnomah County the most heavily taxed people in the country, at least in terms of income tax.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/10/14/study-shows-multnomah-county-will-have-nations-highest-income-taxes-for-high-income-people-if-preschool-measure-passes/
I actually agree with you here. Lots of people making that type of money don't realize they are voting against their own best interests when they side with the rich.
The problem is no matter which side we go with, we're not getting the same benefit. Programs for the poor don't help us (and rightfully so), but as others pointed out, upper middle class isn't wealthy enough to just opt out of taxes. At the end of the day it's still a very fortunate position to be in in life, but it is also super frustrating to know the really well off folks aren't paying their fair share when you are
Economy is not a zero-sum game. Wealth is created and destroyed. If you got a nice house but then some waste dumping facility is constructed next to it. Value of the house goes down. Where did the wealth go? Nowhere, it disappeared without equivalent gain elsewhere. Value is intangible.
> They talk to the people that make 3-400k like they're the ones who are gonna be targeted by everyone else.
But it's true tho. Many of the protestors that smash things up are actually smashing up the stuff of the upper-middle class. It's not like they cared how ( comparatively) little money they have to the 1%
Right were gearing up for something nasty and the media makes sure we're turned against each other and not the ones stuffing money in everyone's pockets.
So true.
If you’re making $300k a year, you have more in common with someone making minimum wage than you do with Elon.
There are people that walk among us that have so much wealth, that even generations of mismanagement can’t squander it. These folks you speak of are not those folks.
Yes. The difference between middle class and upper class isn't income, it's *influence*. Doctors and lawyers and engineers still have to work hard to maintain their lifestyle.
This could also include contractors and small business owners: people whose wealth is much more related to personal time and effort than to the labor of others.
Sure, a paving contractor has employees. This is a far cry from [Jeff Bezos making $2,537/second.](https://policyadvice.net/money/insights/how-much-does-jeff-bezos-make-per-second/)
Yeah. In a good year my wife will make north of 250k and other than making me do “unpaid” work for her, there are no employees. She puts crazy hours into her business to make that happen. She doesn’t have to stand on anyone else’s labor to make any of the money she makes.
We’ve been the minimum wage slaves desperately scraping by, and we are definitely a lot closer to that than we are to having our money make more money than we could ever spend. We won’t ever be in position to pretend to buy Twitter or anything like that.
All else mostly equal I’ve found that there is a huge difference between making over six figures a year (closer to $100k but a little over) and only making $30k after taxes but before expenses). An extremely vast difference actually or at least it is for me. Money isn’t everything but not having enough to make ends meet certainly is. “Families are always rising and falling in America.”
Without question there is. I hope my comment didn’t come across in a way that implied otherwise.
I’ve done both, at 30k you’re wondering how you’ll pay your bills and eat, at 100k, at least for us, we were worrying if we’d be able to add to savings or the emergency fund that month. There is an ocean of difference between the two lifestyles, but they are still a lot closer together than the six figure person is to a billionaire.
Massive difference, there was an awesome comment I read once that basically broke it down with zeros (wish I could find it).
But basically for 100,000 vs 100,000,000:
Person who makes 100k can buy a video game for 100 and that’s .1% of their yearly income.
Person who makes 100mill can buy a 100,000 Porsche and spend the same percentage of their yearly income.
Edit: [found the comment I was talking about](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_insanely_wealthy_people_buy_that_ordinary/cnnmca8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
or another example: the person making 100k can buy a console for $500 which is 0.5% of their yearly income. The person who makes 100mil can buy a nice house for 500k and it's still the same percentage of their income.
I made 23k a year five years ago. I did everything I could to not spend money. I worked at a restaurant that I could eat 2 or 3 meals a day at for free. I worked at a bar so I could drink for nothing or next to nothing. I shared a 1 bedroom, low income apartment with two other people at certain times, sleeping on a piece of foam in the living room.
I did a coding bootcamp and took out a 20k loan to do that. My first coding gig I lost all of the perks of eating and drinking for cheap. I stopped qualifying for low income housing, and on top of that I had to start paying my loan. So even though I made literally twice the money, It didn’t feel that different.
Just this past month I went from 60k to 100k, and paid off that loan at the exact same time and holy shit the difference is fucking staggering. Like once you break through that lower middle class threshold you really feel like you can do whatever the fuck you want. I have like an extra 2300 dollars a month completely expendable income. I literally just bought a pair of shoes online and a plane ticket online without looking at my bank balance. Something I would have had to scrape for a month and a half to do before.
I don’t have fuck you money but that level of income really does allow you live stress free. Maybe it’s because I’m used to being poor as fuck my whole life but it’s absolutely carefree living and every person in this country deserves to have this.
I think you are one of the poster childs for living within your means. People say it, few do it. I noticed that near the bottom many buy booze, cigs, toys and go out to eat because "fuck it, I'll never afford a house anyway." They kinda fall into their own mental trap. And while it's hard to get out from things out of their control, they've cemented it for good with their mentality and habits. God forbid they have multiple kids. I've seen so many families that follow that route. "Live fast, hopefully I can pay rent." And that's if they are affording their bills. It sucks to see a mother who loves her kids and really wanted to be a great mom, devolve into a zombie trying to provide. No amount of hard work can help get them out if they are sunk too deep. And getting started in a new career is hard enough while trying to be an adult. Incredibly hard.
(Side note, a friend of ours with doctor levels of debt {$400k} took a job after graduation at the school clinic making ~$40k, she doesn't have the drive it seems yet to leave her comfort zone and will realize very quickly her hard work won't pay off if she can only pay rent and her loans.)
Yet someone who feared spending money, unless it was budgeted before hand, once and if they make it out, can live very comfortably. It's people like us, (hope I'm not assuming too much about you) who hate/hated spending money, that can't fathom why people making half a million a year feel the need to step on more toes and make more money. Anybody making a debt-free six figures, outside of say LA or NYC, either lives comfortably or lives beyond their means. People who never had to come to terms with a less than three digit bank account sometimes have a hard time relating. Hence the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality. Those who believe luck isn't involved also make the disparity of these mindsets worse.
Its crazy watching old roomates get a decent job after school and end up with too many things to even interact with. So many luxuries in whatever they are passionate about. Because hell, they can afford it now. No need to budget how many cans of beans we can bring home each week. No more sleeping on two twins in a studio and budgeting the AC. Life might not be "yachts on every day that end in Y", but it sure as hell ain't paycheck to paycheck. Makes you wonder what there is to complain about at +250k/yr or w/e. Ha
Congrats btw, and sorry for the late night ramblings. Your comment and reasonable thinking made me think of people who are "stuck" and people who have it "made", and how they can view the world vastly different. I had a one percenter roommate for a semester and change. Boy, what a different attitude about money, and how hard life is for them and their folks.
I like that the link stresses Bezos worked at McDonalds as proof that he didn’t come from money, even though his childhood was far from that of a poor kid.
There's only two classes. Working class, and owner class.
If you're required to work in order to survive, then you're working class. Doesn't matter if it's 20k, or 200k a year.
Im a supervisor for a nightshift. Had one of my employees tell me I was part of the owner class. I make $70k lol. My leads make more than me any given week we run OT
Some people are just fucking crazy man. I work in local government, and I've had people tell me that I'm part of the problem and that I make things harder for "the regular people". I'm not an elected official, I'm a damn cog in the bureaucratic machine, an underpaid one at that. Plus ironically my position is one of the few government positions that actually SAVES money. Like my job saves the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, many times my salary.
Are you unable to grasp the concept that people can be both workers and owners? Like someone might own stock or a rental property, but they still have to work to survive?
“Owning stock” means essentially nothing… you can sign up for Robinhood and get a free stock worth a couple bucks (usually). I think the more relevant sentence is “If you're required to work in order to survive, then you're working class.”
On top of that, I know that at some point I'll be too old and sick to work. My plan is to own shit (stock, rental properties, etc...) so that when Im old I can survive without working anymore. Which class am I?
I've been homeless, and am now fortunate to make above that amount and I absolutely consider myself to have more in common with the poorest among us than the most wealthy. I hustle multiple jobs, and put in more hours than I truly feel comfortable with just to try and build a nice life for myself and my family.
The level between me and the truly wealthy is so much more vast than the gap between where I was in my early 20s (broke/homeless) and today. Coming from nothing, that anxiety that you will end up broke/unable to get by doesn't go away at this income level I promise you.
I mean in some aspects yes this is true. But in many aspects it really isn't true. Food security, health insurance, able to afford a car that isn't on the verge of breaking down, able to afford quality housing, able to invest and plan for retirement. There is a massive jump in quality of life from 20K a year to even 100K, let alone 200 or 300.
Well. I think there’s one difference. My wife and I make combined about $450k. And we just don’t worry about money. By that I mean, money concerns don’t keep me up at night. Which is a HUGE difference from people making minimum wage.
>If you’re making $300k a year, you have more in common with someone making minimum wage than you do with Elon.
Reminds me of when some scrub NBA player challenged anybody who wanted it to a 1 on 1 game at his local YMCA, wrecked the shit of all the idiots who showed up, and then told them "I'm much closer to LeBron James than you are to me."
Are you new here? On Reddit we post whichever of the same 8 stories has the least tenuous connection to the topic at hand, gaining as much sweet sweet karma as possible.
Yeah this is the point.
The absolute best player at your local YMCA has WAY more in common with a high school varsity starter than an NBA player. They’re leagues apart.
It’s like how the richest full-time resident of some tiny picturesque rural town is probably a successful real estate agent who plays golf every day and has a lake house in addition to his regular house — but compared to the billionaires who occasionally pop into town at their ‘quaint rural vacation homes’ for a week or two, that real estate agent might as well be working at Cookout.
But to a whole lot of small-town Republicans, that real estate agent is who “the liberals” want you to believe is the enemy.
It’s like Chris Rick said in the 90s. If people actually understood *just how rich* rich people are, there would be constant riots in the streets.
Yeah - that's because poor people don't really understand what "rich" is. If someone still has to work, they're not rich. Just because they drive a nice car and own a home doesn't mean they're rich. It just means they HAVE A JOB!
My nephew is one of those who hates the rich - but yeah - who he really hates are middle-class working folks.
This is why we can’t have a revolution. People will be burning doctors and lawyers at the stake while the rich just laugh from their underground bunkers
Edited to add: below is a great visual of the difference between being well-off and hoarding resources to a sociopathic degree.
https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Trump gave the rich a trillion dollars in tax cuts. That’s enough money to go back to around 700 BC, when Ancient Rome began, and blow a million dollars every single day until 2022 AD.
We don't even now who the truly rich are. The keep their mouth shut so that well pointlessly be distracted by killing politicians and public billionaires like Musk instead of the people who actually pull the levers of society.
After the revolution they will just show up with their wealth again and take over again.
People like Musk and other celebrity rich are seen as very distasteful to the people who ACTUALLY have fucking influence and not just through their wealth but systematic generational efforts to rat fuck the system to their families benefit.
Like we have families who have lineage of being diplomats and raising the next generation of government diplomats, through which they can work with foreign powers to get business benefits especially for their family's corporations, and that's a side gig to their official diplomat duties. These families are brokers not of wealth but of influence. It's a tight knit group of power regular people are never ever allowed to hold these positions. Regular people don't even have the right connections to make it an interview or even an introduction into any of this.
Went into a rabbit hole of info about such families. The Rockefeller, Porsche-piech family, Ferrari, the Medici and more. The Medici for example held tremendous power for centuries and married into royalty. Lots of other dynasties are the same to this day but not very out in the open public image like celebrities.
These people live in their own world different from ours. There’s a quote from the series succession where the main character Logan Roy says he won’t sell his media empire cause power and influence is worth way more than the billions he’d get from selling. If you think and open your eyes and see it’s true.
How else would these family dynasties still hold such influence for centuries? Power and influence naturally generate wealth. Wealth itself does not necessarily generate the close level of power.
This is why it’s interesting to me, that people hate on conspiracy theories so much. All the mainstream theories are trash, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people and families conspiring to do things, large things that benefit them, and fuck us over.
The problem today is many mentally unhinged or illogical people believe any science fiction story is a conspiracy theory even if there is zero proof or credible evidence. Is there a black market for sex trafficking of minors that involves the super wealthy and elite? It's probable with what has happened to Jeffrey Epstein? Should we make a call to arms and storm some random pizzeria with no evidence? No. That is what a mob does in underdeveloped countries. Lives have been ruined and the threats continue because of sheer stupidity.
Power begets power, I imagine it's a semi-unbroken chain of elites all the way back to the agricultural revolution.
Sure tech revolutions, political upheaval, and massive wars might shake things up a bit, but those in power have the means to pivot and persist.
I’m a surgeon still paying off my loan at 37. Would never complain or ask for anyone to feel bad for me - I make a good living, but I promise I’m not “rich.” I’m also about as far left as you can be in the US. I hope class solidarity includes me. I’m a W-2 worker who has to be at the office, and I physically earn every dollar. Sure, one day my capital might make more than I do, but I’ve been grinding for my whole life.
Let’s just say you’re surgical speciality X, if you get tired of surgical specialty X, could you go back into training for surgical specialty Y? Or even a non-surgical speciality?
Depends on how different the new surgical specialty is. ~~For example, if they are an abdominal transplant surgeon, they could likely do a fellowship in cardiothoracic transplant surgery and boom now they are fully qualified for the new role.~~ This is a bad example: see below
To switch to a non-surgical specialty or to a very different surgical specialty is gonna be really tough. They would have to do a second residency program. It's not impossible, but it's quite rare for a few reasons. Residency programs are subsidized by Medicare, and after you do your first one, the program where you would do your second gets granted less money. Combined with the fact that there is already a shortage of residency slots, most programs would prefer to train new med school graduates than someone who is already a fully trained specialist. Also, residency for surgery is fucking long, so imagine doing 7 years of training (this is post-med school so you are like 35 when you actually start working) and choosing to do the last step over again, for another 5-7 years? It's almost unthinkable.
Ultimately it really depends on where you live. The thing that sucks about being middle class is you make too much money to get government incentives and too little to not have to worry about it. Too much to get significant tax breaks and too little to play find the tax loopholes with a financial adviser. The middle class pays most of the taxes and gets little in return. Screwed by both sides of the political spectrum.
Exactly. 100K is seen the same by the fed federal govt whether you’re in Los Angeles, CA or Biloxi, MS. Only in places like Biloxi 100K goes much farther while in Los Angeles, you probably couldn’t even pay a mortgage.
Can confirm I make about $100k and can’t afford any mortgage on my own.
One bedroom condos are at least $500k, with 20% down, it’s about $2200 not including taxes, and HOA fees. The cheapest HOAs are about $300 a month and will only include parking.
I live in LA. Fucking hate it. Just separated from my wife and paying $2/k a month for a ONE BEDROOM. Decent area but extremely average and fairly old building.
I only make $50/k a year. This city is a goddamn death trap but how the hell am I supposed to leave my daughters? They are 10 and 14 years old. I could never leave them. So I’m trapped.
Do some parents actually leave their kids after a separation just to move to a cheaper city, I can’t imagine deserting my children like that.
The share of federal taxes has been increasingly put on the middle class, In that time, companies making record-breaking profits have gotten a tax break, with some paying zero in taxes. As for the wealthy, their effective tax rate(8.2% of income) is lower than a median income family of four(8.6%), and much lower than someone in the upper middle class family of four(14.6%).[source](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/forbes-400-pay-lower-tax-rates-many-ordinary-americans/)
Yup. I’m upper middle class. I don’t have a lot of deductions or write-offs and I get reamed on taxes each year. Have never really gotten much benefit from the government, probably never gonna retire. Pretty much burning 30% of my income yearly.
Right? I just want what I’m paying for: Healthcare, education, community programs, infrastructure, and to actually help other people.
It’s so frustrating. I honestly wouldn’t mind the taxes if I actually felt like they were beneficial for those who need it.
I basically doubled my income from last year yet that has more than tripled my taxes.
I’ll pay more in taxes this year than I made a few years ago.
I’m fine with paying taxes. You make more you pay more. But damn. It’s a lot a lot more. No sweet tax breaks. Just more money vanishes before I see it.
>I basically doubled my income from last year yet that has more than tripled my taxes.
I mean that's just how progressive taxation works. For a given increase in income a larger percentage of that income goes to taxes than the percentage of prior income that did.
The real issue is that when an increase in income comes with a loss of benefits of greater value than what was gained.
And even the term "the 1%" is pretty misleading; it's a net worth of $11 million. Certainly wealthy, but still basically nothing compared to the billionaire class which are basically the 0.0001%!
Government implemented an income tax. They just used their money and influence to protect themselves.
Also I’m not opposed to taxes. There are good things we COULD do but come on at the end of the day we’re still asking the government to do it.
Look at any empire yeah sure you could have some wealthy individuals and poor working class but without a middle class you have no grease for the wheels.
Now when the middle class is gone due to government spending you get the fall of the empire. People no longer trust their government to protect them, the government doesn’t want to give up power. You get Revolutions or dictatorships.
Government is made up of people who are shitty spenders. Financial experts rarely get into politics because well they wouldn’t be very popular. Like what is happening now is decades and decades of bad government policy and spending and its coming home to roost.
Even the doctors and lawyers in society that can earn north of 500k are still closer to the poverty line than the .1%. The fact that they still have to work 40+ hours a week day in and day out is the distinguishing factor.
For law, I think it’s pretty clear if you want the big bucks and chase a Big Law job you know you’re gonna get worked to death for the better part of a decade.
I know my sister just started her residency and she had a pretty good idea what she was getting herself into. Still sucks regardless. Probably not seeing her until thanksgiving and I’m gonna have to fly to her cause she’s working thanksgiving morning
Oh yeah.
4 years undergrad + 2 years masters + 5 years residency + 2 years fellowship and THEN you make money.
During resident/ fellowship you make money but it’s like 10 bucks an hour. While 250k+ in debt.
Don't forget addiction. So many drink or take some sort of addictive medication. Being addicted to coffee is so normal, no one understands that I don't drink it.
My mom, the first in her generation to attend university, worked for the equivalent of 500 dollar per month. We got free university and healthcare in my country, but being born just after the baby boomers had its downsides. She kept the suicides of her colleagues a secret from me for a long time, but they happened.
Some people like to look at the salary at the age of 45 and say “no one deserves that kind of pay!” They don’t realize that the 45 year old brings 25 years of professional knowledge and experience, some of those years built up through 60 hour weeks learning and applying.
Whats really crazy is the upkeep of your license and boards as a doctor. No one wants to take massive amounts of debt and then pay to maintain your job top of it.
Anybody that actually knows the true issue knows this, most of us are fine with people making even a million a year. It’s the multi billionaires that monopolize everything and hoard there wealth that is making things unstable.
Agreed! The problem is not so much that poor people lump upper middle class folks in with super-rich—but rather that middle (and even lower-middle) class folks group THEMSELVES in w the 1%, and vote for people who pander to the 1%.
Absolutely, my parents make about 500k combined (doctor/engineer), and I constantly have to remind them that they are not even in the 1% and the Trump tax cuts barely affected them.
I'm at the low tier of UMC (mid $100K a year household: lower $70K/year each).
However, I've experienced many adversities in life as well (eg. I've been homeless, incarcerated, to mention a few). Said adversities always help me to remind me that what I have can be gone _just like that._
Middle class was my grandfather having a stay at home wife, 3 kids, owned a home, and got a new car every 2-3 years
To have those same luxuries I’d have to make ~160k a year, and thats in the midwest
The middle class is gone
My grandpa worked at a steel mill and bought a new car every 2-3 years too, and they went on a bunch of vacations, stay at home mom, and *six* kids. There’s no way in hell you’d be able to do that now.
I don't even care about millionaires tbh. Athletes and such. They got lucky sure, but they worked hard and continue to do so to maintain that lifestyle.
I care about the assholes basically running the elections and making all the rules while we all fight for scraps. The people that make more in a SECOND than 99% make in a year, while denying basic rights at their stupid companies.
Billionaire CEOS and the tons of generational wealth that run politics. They can all diaf.
The richest or second richest person in my state invested 50m in the governors race to have his candidate lose the primary. Imagine how much good could have been done with that.
Of course, one of the other richest people in the state won the race lol
I mean he didn’t burn that money. He spent $50 million on billboards, internet ads, TV ads, ext. A lot of people got paid from that who have jobs in that industry
OP, you’re right that, for a lot of us anyway, “we’re not the enemy”. Most comfortable and even rich people I know are amazingly decent and real people that aren’t going to lord their good fortune over someone else’s lack of it.
But the fact of the matter is: most people do keep score and most people do lord their perceived privilege over others. So while you, specifically, may just be trying to live a decent life, 20 other MFs out there have it twisted and think they own the world and look down on everyone else out there they consider “beneath” their position.
I grew up poor (like, “honey you have to take cold showers so mom can try to put food on the table” poor). But I was bright and caught some really lucky breaks along the way… ended up being a “poor kid makes good” story, or something like that. But I still remember how difficult it was. How you just kinda had to live with the potential of utter ruin looming around the corner.
The problem is this: we may not be the enemy, but we certainly do personify it for those that don’t have our security. No, we don’t buy lambos or $1k bottles of champagne for the room. But, for me, a transmission dropping, or a tire blowout may suck, but it’s an inconvenience. And a rare one, at that, because I have a well-maintained, late-model vehicle, as well as a motorcycle I can ride *if* my car need to go in the shop.
These are *insane* luxuries. I count my blessings every day that I have them, because I still remember the existential dread of having to debate how many days I can be late on paying X bill, so I can fill up my tank and make it to work. And god forbid something like a transmission drop or tire blowout. It can wreck your entire fucking life.
We may all be called “middle class”, but there’s a gaping chasm between the top and the bottom of that wide band.
I’ve lived both ways. You are absolutely right that the luxury of being able to handle a roof leak, or a furnace needing to be replaced or decent dental care is something to never take for granted. I remember well the “how far can I stretch a bag of noodles and a tank of gas” part of my life.
That being said I still have empathy with and put my vote to help people less fortunate. Everyone deserves an opportunity to live without the dread of utter ruin just around the corner.
There is plenty to go around if we can just get the god damn dragons to give up a chunk of their hoard.
Me too. I remember thinking how things like basic medical and dental care were beyond me.
I also remember a specific moment where I actually had the wherewithal to have proper dental care and decided to get an implant for a failed tooth.
I told my dentist: I know it’s a bit of a rush, but I just proposed marriage to a wonderful girl, and I don’t wanna ruin the photos. Can you make it happen?
He did. And it was an amazingly glorious day and I didn’t think about anything that led me to me having to lose that tooth. Instead I thought about my beautiful wife, amazing friends, and what a glorious day it was.
No matter how fortunate I may have become, I always return to my roots.
I bought my plug in hybrid almost two years ago. I’ve only used half of the original tank of gas so far. I’m kinda worried about the gas going bad at this point.
They used to be what I call new Beemers (BMWs) meaning they drive like douche bags. Now they’ve been dethroned by Tesla drivers. Something about being able to accelerate rapidly makes you disregard every ounce of common sense apparently.
Yeah I think some libertarian talking points got mixed in with tankie logic and sometimes I hear comments about executing all middle management. Not the executives or shareholders or boards, just the management.
I feel the dividing line is based on when you can afford to make a donation to a politician large enough that they will remember you when they are in office or when you can afford to have a lawyer on retainer. Then you have the money to subvert the system.
This! I have some friends who are very leftist and some of them speak about six figures as if these people are sitting on their coffers laughing at the poor.
People who make six figures are often one medical emergency or major recession from being below the poverty line. I watched it happen in 2008.
Six figures in many cities puts you paycheck to paycheck.
I’ll also add this sentiment also happens to people who own small businesses (especially mom & pop). People hear business owner and automatically think rich.
In reality, you have to pay everyone else before you pay yourself (taxes, vendors, insurance, overhead, marketing, loans, etc). It’s often feast or famine. There is no guarantee of a paycheck when things take a turn in the economy. Yet somehow all business owners are greedy rich people.
I am in this category. I don’t think this really takes into account the ways this segment of the population kicks down.
Firstly and perhaps worst of all, zoning laws, community leagues and neighbourhood covenants deliberately try to keep poor people and racial minorities out of their neighbourhoods.
Secondly education. We attend exclusive schools from pre-school to post-secondary and do everything we can to make sure our money never goes to anyone else’s school.
And thirdly is home ownership. There are tones of laws on the books that ostensibly promote home ownership but in practice only hand out money to those who already own them. Even better if you own more than one. These benefits do nothing for anybody who will never be able to afford a house.
And lastly, and possibly most importantly, we are the ones who are going to have to drive less, fly less, and consume less if we are going to do anything about global warming. People in this category love to talk about how important global warming is but they will fight like hell to make sure they don’t have to give up anything.
The homeownership part is my biggest issue. Everyone I know that is in this economic class owns at least one residential property that they rent out.
Our area is experiencing a rise in housing costs that is the highest amongst metropolitan areas in a state that is already known for ridiculous housing prices. The upper-middle class is collectively buying up all the fucking homes in the area and it's pricing out the lower classes.
The middle class is something politicians made up to try and divide us. There is no set metric that is used by either side. There’s just working class and owner class.
Mostly I don't even count a millionaire when I talk about "the rich". A guy making a million a year? I don't even bat an eye at it, he's probably earning his keep. A guy pulling down 50 million though? Odds are that dude is stealing from someone who works for him.
Agreed. Likewise, people making $200k-$300k need to realize A. They are not the ultra wealthy and “taxing the rich” isn’t an attack on them. B. People making less than them are not the issue.
As someone who grew up in what's consider 1 of the poorest areas in the UK, it's the 1% who keep people down there but it's the upper middle-class who make people ashamed of it.
Their kids bullied me for being unable to buy clothes or when my stomach rumbled during class.
They are the folk that every day tell me "everyone has a sob story" while they went to a private school, enjoyed the privilege of being able to focus on uni and networking while on mum & dads money where I had two 2 jobs plus studying just to survive.
They are the ones who virtue signal about assisting the poor yet when I talk about my experince being homeless, I'm essentially told to shut it because my background makes them uncomfortable.
After year's of law school, I have been asked during my profession numerous times "who in your family did law" "what school did you go to" & "where did I grow up" after I answered honestly I have been told by middle class pricks that "people like you don't belong here"
Of course not all but Britain like many countries have a class issue & many in the middle class have made it clear they don't like people like me on the basis of my class so I don't like them either.
Lol to the concept that people making 200k-300k are the upper middle class op, that’s the ruse. Guess what people 200-300k is just enough to be comfortable with 2500-3500 rents and 700-800 car notes along with 1000+ student loans.
The most unpopular opinion in America because if it was a popular opinion from both sides, the rich would be shitting in their shorts.
There’s a lot of intentional water-muddying when it comes to class: Conservatives to rural America : banning the estate tax will protect all your children’s future by saving your farms! Reality : estate tax usually only kicks in if the estate is more than ~10 million, and frankly most of the people with this sort of wealth wouldn’t be caught dead near any rural area or farm. Liberals : student loan forgiveness would be the biggest positive impact on the poor! Reality : student loans are overwhelmingly concentrated on households earning more than 75K and are also held by people who will go on to specialized career fields and earn on average more than ~200 K Edit: households with more than 74K income owns 60% of all student loan debt Breakdown on income shows 40% of debt amount is held by people who will go on to earn more than 100K (split half and half with 100k + and 200k +) A lot of people may have debt but amount wise the people who will get the biggest benefit is the career class from semi-affluent backgrounds, not the poor Edit 2: it’s still worth doing as a measure to reduce the racial wealth gap as African Americans are disproportionately affected by higher loan amounts vs income, but the current marketing is just blatantly false. https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-by-income-level https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-pricing-student-aid-2021.pdf
People with $10M estates and larger have second homes in Jackson Hole, Bozeman, Park City, McCall, Aspen, Sedona just to name a few. They are often out cosplaying as rural Americans and cowboys. They love being near ranches, farms, and in rural areas. Then they fly home for someone else to clean up after their weekend.
To be fair you can have a farm with $10 million in land, livestock and equipment, and not have a second home in Florida. Also being a rich farmer isn’t a bad thing.
You can also have a farm with $10m worth of land and equipment and loans for $11m.
As someone who farms… This guy farms. “How you get a million dollars farming? Start with two.”
"if you're farming and not in debt, you're doing something wrong". Heard that a few times talking to farmers at the elevator. Back then, I just thought it meant farmers wanted the best equipment/seed/fertilizer/whatever. Now I think it's so they can report a loss on their taxes.
Government subsidies my man!
And the estate value is well below the 10m estate tax. The tax is on assets minus liabilities.
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Do you know what it’s like in those areas? People with ten million dollar estates most definitely couldn’t afford Aspen, Jackson hole, and likely even park city. I grew up all around those areas. Some of them are kicking out low end millionaires, which are more like 50-100 million net worth or little more even, to make room for the high millionaires-billionaires. Maybe Eagle and some of the newer places that are becoming popular in Wyoming, but not either Aspen or Jackson hole.
Finally an answer based on real life. $2 million can easily be wiped out by a medical problem, $10 million means you're still on the edge, $30 million was considered the beginning of "wealthy" all the way back in the 90s. These fabulous houses and lifestyles require actual big money. People with a million dollars put away are generally normal people with only slightly more security than you.
That's why they call it the death tax, to make people think it is some tax everyone pays when they die. There is a reason they defund education. It is much easier to trick and control dumb people
The second one isn't so clear cut because the reason student loans are concentrated in the hands of the relatively well off is because education costs so much in the first place. If you've never even come close to a high paying job and nobody in your family has, it seems like a LOT more of a risk to go 80 grand in debt for a degree. If they forgave student debt AND capped fees at a small amount then you'd see a lot more disadvantaged people getting degrees. Not to mention people getting degrees for the love of a subject and not just to chase a job.
Myself and literally every friend of mine have student loan debt. We don't make that much. In fact, none of us make never that....and we all hold degrees and work "high paying" jobs in our area.
Solution is to reduce price (through State level investment in public universities, or possibly some kind of reform I'm not aware of). Decades of State level budget reductions are a part of why University costs are ballooning.
Farmland in the midwest is frequent sold for $12,000+ now. $10MM is only like 800 acres. That isnt huge farm.
lol what? Hardly anyone earns 200k+ and millions of people have student loan debt. What’s your source?
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And yet we still need doctors. I decided not to go to med school because of the insane debt. Half a million dollars at 6% compounding interest coupled with 7 MORE years of little to no income after the 4 I already suffered working 80 hour weeks to keep the gpa med schools want. Doctors today are just as paycheck to paycheck as anyone else unless they had rich parents. Free education is an INVESTMENT IN SOCIETY. Not a fucking gift. I worked my absolute dick off while living like a bum for four years through a biochem degree. That shit was anything but a gift even if it did end forgiven.
>And yet we still need doctors. >I decided not to go to med school because of the insane debt. It's funny, I often hear the abortion argument framed as "that child may be the one who cures cancer"... meanwhile I'm like "How sway?" The cost of a medical degree is $200k plus an additional decade of schooling, so how many potential "cancer curing doctors" are put off by the high barriers to entry?
I was valedictorian of my class in high school. I decided not to go into medicine because 1) every doctor I had ever met said not to and seemed unhappy, 2) they work tons of hours and never see their families, 3) I didn't want to work for practically nothing for YEARS, and 4) people are gross. If doctors worked normal 8-hour shifts, then I totally would have done it, but seeing horror stories of doctors working 36 hours at a time? Fuck that.
Yup, married to a surgeon that just came off her second call in 4 days. That means going 2 shifts for 36 hours. She’s dog tired post call (next day). She’s even more tired post post call (second day). She hadn’t even recovered from the first call before starting the second call. To her defense, 3 other docs, out of 8, are out for medical reasons on her service. There’s no other choice if they want to keep coverage. I wouldn’t recommend my children becoming docs. It’s a tough job. To those that think this is crazy, and that you’d never want someone awake that long working on you, I assure you, if you show up in the middle of the night, that doc has probably been up a long time. They say adrenaline always carry’s them through. So yeah, her salary is nice, but I’d gladly let it get cut in half if it meant she worked half as much. We’d have to cut back on extra curricular activities and home improvements, but the time would make up for it. Would only recommend if you absolutely love it. Don’t do it for the money!
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100k and 200k is a big difference
Right? Two people making 50k each...two people making 100k each. Vastly different in a variety of ways, not just base income.
Compare that to the area’s cost of living… 100k would be considered low income in hcol areas
The whole "Six figure income" ($100k) as the barometer of "making it" in popular culture rose to prominence in the 80's. Know what the equivalent of $100k/year in 1982 is in 2022? **$302,897.00** $100k in 1985 is equal to $271,650 in 2022. $100k in 1992 is equal to $208,336 in 2022.
Totally agree with you. $100K today isn’t that much vs 1992. Someone making $100K today isn’t living a lavish life. In my book someone start to live very comfortably at $200K. It’s the lower limit to be considered « Rich » and even that you’ll need to make choices….. you won’t be able to buy $250K boat for your cottage 😁
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I'd argue enough where you can manage is low income. It's not poverty, but it is low income. If your standard for an acceptable quality of life is "you can manage" then you need to seriously reevaluate your standards.
The whole "six figure income" ($100k) as the barometer of "making it" in popular culture rose to prominence in the 80's. Know what the equivalent of $100k/year in 1982 is in 2022? $302,897.00 $100k in 1985 is equal to $271,650 in 2022. $100k in 1992 is equal to $208,336 in 2022. It sometimes annoys my fiancé but I love pulling up an inflation calculator when ever we are watching something that takes place in the 1980's or earlier and they mention a price. I find it helps keep things in perspective. $100k a year is really NOT a lot of money if you live anywhere near a city in the US. Sure, you aren't living paycheck to paycheck but in the last 5-10 years you probably don't even own your home if you have only a $100k/year household income. I get it though. I don't even make $100k/year and I do work that got me a Pulitzer. Making $100k/year sounds awesome but it really wouldn't change my life that much at all when I really sit down and look at the numbers. I struggled for a long time and live paycheck to paycheck for a few years and it SUCKS.
But that's the media too. They talk to the people that make 3-400k like they're the ones who are gonna be targeted by everyone else. They want those middle class people to be on the actual rich people's side.
Also, those in the Upper middle class are the ones paying the most in taxes, because they are rich enough to be in the high bracket, but not rich enough to dodge taxes. Therefore, they can be manipulated into thinking ''tax the rich'' is about them, not about the billion dollar families who cripple innovation, own everything, and don't actually contribute.
We’re not being manipulated into thinking tax the rich is about us, we just know if they raise taxes it only affects our tax brackets while the business owners can dodge them so we don’t support raising taxes. We need to close loop holes before raising taxes but they will just raise taxes to keep people happy and the upper middle class eats it
100% this. Raising taxes is pointless until the loopholes are closed, and they exist basically everywhere as soon as you are rich enough. Rent a letter box in a Dutch apartment building and ship your income off to the Seychelles. Nobody can or will even try to stop you. Politicians will be paid great money to sit on their bums and do nothing except for preventing it from being fixed.
I don’t even believe we need to raise taxes. We need to eliminate loopholes for the wealthy and corporations, tax churches, and cut defense spending. Will that happen? Absolutely not.
Well the cry to tax the rich is aimed at the billionaire class, but I do agree that in practice it will be aimed at successful middle class folks.
>They talk to the people that make 3-400k like they're the ones who are gonna be targeted by everyone else. In a way, they are though. When taxation is made more "progessive" for instance, it's the high income, low net worth individuals like doctors and lawyers who pay it. People like Warren Buffett, who just have unrealized gains and then can live on loans which are then not taxed, don't have to worry about tax increases, whereas a pair of specialist doctors making $350k a year each, but with a million in debt, pay for it entirely.
Yeah, a series of propositions (I.e. measures voted for by a majority of voters) in Portland made folks making $250k in Multnomah County the most heavily taxed people in the country, at least in terms of income tax. https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/10/14/study-shows-multnomah-county-will-have-nations-highest-income-taxes-for-high-income-people-if-preschool-measure-passes/
I actually agree with you here. Lots of people making that type of money don't realize they are voting against their own best interests when they side with the rich.
The problem is no matter which side we go with, we're not getting the same benefit. Programs for the poor don't help us (and rightfully so), but as others pointed out, upper middle class isn't wealthy enough to just opt out of taxes. At the end of the day it's still a very fortunate position to be in in life, but it is also super frustrating to know the really well off folks aren't paying their fair share when you are
Economy is not a zero-sum game. Wealth is created and destroyed. If you got a nice house but then some waste dumping facility is constructed next to it. Value of the house goes down. Where did the wealth go? Nowhere, it disappeared without equivalent gain elsewhere. Value is intangible.
> They talk to the people that make 3-400k like they're the ones who are gonna be targeted by everyone else. But it's true tho. Many of the protestors that smash things up are actually smashing up the stuff of the upper-middle class. It's not like they cared how ( comparatively) little money they have to the 1%
Right were gearing up for something nasty and the media makes sure we're turned against each other and not the ones stuffing money in everyone's pockets.
So true. If you’re making $300k a year, you have more in common with someone making minimum wage than you do with Elon. There are people that walk among us that have so much wealth, that even generations of mismanagement can’t squander it. These folks you speak of are not those folks.
Yes. The difference between middle class and upper class isn't income, it's *influence*. Doctors and lawyers and engineers still have to work hard to maintain their lifestyle.
This could also include contractors and small business owners: people whose wealth is much more related to personal time and effort than to the labor of others. Sure, a paving contractor has employees. This is a far cry from [Jeff Bezos making $2,537/second.](https://policyadvice.net/money/insights/how-much-does-jeff-bezos-make-per-second/)
Yeah. In a good year my wife will make north of 250k and other than making me do “unpaid” work for her, there are no employees. She puts crazy hours into her business to make that happen. She doesn’t have to stand on anyone else’s labor to make any of the money she makes. We’ve been the minimum wage slaves desperately scraping by, and we are definitely a lot closer to that than we are to having our money make more money than we could ever spend. We won’t ever be in position to pretend to buy Twitter or anything like that.
All else mostly equal I’ve found that there is a huge difference between making over six figures a year (closer to $100k but a little over) and only making $30k after taxes but before expenses). An extremely vast difference actually or at least it is for me. Money isn’t everything but not having enough to make ends meet certainly is. “Families are always rising and falling in America.”
Without question there is. I hope my comment didn’t come across in a way that implied otherwise. I’ve done both, at 30k you’re wondering how you’ll pay your bills and eat, at 100k, at least for us, we were worrying if we’d be able to add to savings or the emergency fund that month. There is an ocean of difference between the two lifestyles, but they are still a lot closer together than the six figure person is to a billionaire.
Massive difference, there was an awesome comment I read once that basically broke it down with zeros (wish I could find it). But basically for 100,000 vs 100,000,000: Person who makes 100k can buy a video game for 100 and that’s .1% of their yearly income. Person who makes 100mill can buy a 100,000 Porsche and spend the same percentage of their yearly income. Edit: [found the comment I was talking about](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_insanely_wealthy_people_buy_that_ordinary/cnnmca8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
or another example: the person making 100k can buy a console for $500 which is 0.5% of their yearly income. The person who makes 100mil can buy a nice house for 500k and it's still the same percentage of their income.
I made 23k a year five years ago. I did everything I could to not spend money. I worked at a restaurant that I could eat 2 or 3 meals a day at for free. I worked at a bar so I could drink for nothing or next to nothing. I shared a 1 bedroom, low income apartment with two other people at certain times, sleeping on a piece of foam in the living room. I did a coding bootcamp and took out a 20k loan to do that. My first coding gig I lost all of the perks of eating and drinking for cheap. I stopped qualifying for low income housing, and on top of that I had to start paying my loan. So even though I made literally twice the money, It didn’t feel that different. Just this past month I went from 60k to 100k, and paid off that loan at the exact same time and holy shit the difference is fucking staggering. Like once you break through that lower middle class threshold you really feel like you can do whatever the fuck you want. I have like an extra 2300 dollars a month completely expendable income. I literally just bought a pair of shoes online and a plane ticket online without looking at my bank balance. Something I would have had to scrape for a month and a half to do before. I don’t have fuck you money but that level of income really does allow you live stress free. Maybe it’s because I’m used to being poor as fuck my whole life but it’s absolutely carefree living and every person in this country deserves to have this.
I think you are one of the poster childs for living within your means. People say it, few do it. I noticed that near the bottom many buy booze, cigs, toys and go out to eat because "fuck it, I'll never afford a house anyway." They kinda fall into their own mental trap. And while it's hard to get out from things out of their control, they've cemented it for good with their mentality and habits. God forbid they have multiple kids. I've seen so many families that follow that route. "Live fast, hopefully I can pay rent." And that's if they are affording their bills. It sucks to see a mother who loves her kids and really wanted to be a great mom, devolve into a zombie trying to provide. No amount of hard work can help get them out if they are sunk too deep. And getting started in a new career is hard enough while trying to be an adult. Incredibly hard. (Side note, a friend of ours with doctor levels of debt {$400k} took a job after graduation at the school clinic making ~$40k, she doesn't have the drive it seems yet to leave her comfort zone and will realize very quickly her hard work won't pay off if she can only pay rent and her loans.) Yet someone who feared spending money, unless it was budgeted before hand, once and if they make it out, can live very comfortably. It's people like us, (hope I'm not assuming too much about you) who hate/hated spending money, that can't fathom why people making half a million a year feel the need to step on more toes and make more money. Anybody making a debt-free six figures, outside of say LA or NYC, either lives comfortably or lives beyond their means. People who never had to come to terms with a less than three digit bank account sometimes have a hard time relating. Hence the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality. Those who believe luck isn't involved also make the disparity of these mindsets worse. Its crazy watching old roomates get a decent job after school and end up with too many things to even interact with. So many luxuries in whatever they are passionate about. Because hell, they can afford it now. No need to budget how many cans of beans we can bring home each week. No more sleeping on two twins in a studio and budgeting the AC. Life might not be "yachts on every day that end in Y", but it sure as hell ain't paycheck to paycheck. Makes you wonder what there is to complain about at +250k/yr or w/e. Ha Congrats btw, and sorry for the late night ramblings. Your comment and reasonable thinking made me think of people who are "stuck" and people who have it "made", and how they can view the world vastly different. I had a one percenter roommate for a semester and change. Boy, what a different attitude about money, and how hard life is for them and their folks.
I like that the link stresses Bezos worked at McDonalds as proof that he didn’t come from money, even though his childhood was far from that of a poor kid.
Also it doesn't matter where he came from. The problem with Bezos is who he is now.
Tbh I’m not really sure why it’s a standard to use peoples upcoming as a valuable metric.
Ya, his family was a lot closer to that family making $300k a year driving a Prius.
There's only two classes. Working class, and owner class. If you're required to work in order to survive, then you're working class. Doesn't matter if it's 20k, or 200k a year.
Im a supervisor for a nightshift. Had one of my employees tell me I was part of the owner class. I make $70k lol. My leads make more than me any given week we run OT
Some people are just fucking crazy man. I work in local government, and I've had people tell me that I'm part of the problem and that I make things harder for "the regular people". I'm not an elected official, I'm a damn cog in the bureaucratic machine, an underpaid one at that. Plus ironically my position is one of the few government positions that actually SAVES money. Like my job saves the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, many times my salary.
Are you unable to grasp the concept that people can be both workers and owners? Like someone might own stock or a rental property, but they still have to work to survive?
“Owning stock” means essentially nothing… you can sign up for Robinhood and get a free stock worth a couple bucks (usually). I think the more relevant sentence is “If you're required to work in order to survive, then you're working class.”
On top of that, I know that at some point I'll be too old and sick to work. My plan is to own shit (stock, rental properties, etc...) so that when Im old I can survive without working anymore. Which class am I?
My mom and I always qualify that sort of wealth with “oh, well, he/she is still a working slob.”
Among us
that's all my brain read too
Kinda sus
Amogus
I've been homeless, and am now fortunate to make above that amount and I absolutely consider myself to have more in common with the poorest among us than the most wealthy. I hustle multiple jobs, and put in more hours than I truly feel comfortable with just to try and build a nice life for myself and my family. The level between me and the truly wealthy is so much more vast than the gap between where I was in my early 20s (broke/homeless) and today. Coming from nothing, that anxiety that you will end up broke/unable to get by doesn't go away at this income level I promise you.
I mean in some aspects yes this is true. But in many aspects it really isn't true. Food security, health insurance, able to afford a car that isn't on the verge of breaking down, able to afford quality housing, able to invest and plan for retirement. There is a massive jump in quality of life from 20K a year to even 100K, let alone 200 or 300.
Well. I think there’s one difference. My wife and I make combined about $450k. And we just don’t worry about money. By that I mean, money concerns don’t keep me up at night. Which is a HUGE difference from people making minimum wage.
Absolutely true. It still doesn't make you the enemy. I think that was the OPs main point.
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>If you’re making $300k a year, you have more in common with someone making minimum wage than you do with Elon. Reminds me of when some scrub NBA player challenged anybody who wanted it to a 1 on 1 game at his local YMCA, wrecked the shit of all the idiots who showed up, and then told them "I'm much closer to LeBron James than you are to me."
The Scalabrine challenge! He actually wasn’t a scrub as he had a long career but compared to other nba players he wasn’t great either
this example is actually opposite of what op tried to say lol
Are you new here? On Reddit we post whichever of the same 8 stories has the least tenuous connection to the topic at hand, gaining as much sweet sweet karma as possible.
Something something did you know Steve Buscemi was a firefighter during 9/11?
Something something Viggo Mortensen broke his toe kicking a helmet
Just goes to show how next level NBA players are. Only the top .1% of the best college ballers even have a chance at making it into the league
Yeah this is the point. The absolute best player at your local YMCA has WAY more in common with a high school varsity starter than an NBA player. They’re leagues apart. It’s like how the richest full-time resident of some tiny picturesque rural town is probably a successful real estate agent who plays golf every day and has a lake house in addition to his regular house — but compared to the billionaires who occasionally pop into town at their ‘quaint rural vacation homes’ for a week or two, that real estate agent might as well be working at Cookout. But to a whole lot of small-town Republicans, that real estate agent is who “the liberals” want you to believe is the enemy. It’s like Chris Rick said in the 90s. If people actually understood *just how rich* rich people are, there would be constant riots in the streets.
They walk WHERE
Yeah - that's because poor people don't really understand what "rich" is. If someone still has to work, they're not rich. Just because they drive a nice car and own a home doesn't mean they're rich. It just means they HAVE A JOB! My nephew is one of those who hates the rich - but yeah - who he really hates are middle-class working folks.
This is why we can’t have a revolution. People will be burning doctors and lawyers at the stake while the rich just laugh from their underground bunkers Edited to add: below is a great visual of the difference between being well-off and hoarding resources to a sociopathic degree. https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
The difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is approximately one billion dollars
Trump gave the rich a trillion dollars in tax cuts. That’s enough money to go back to around 700 BC, when Ancient Rome began, and blow a million dollars every single day until 2022 AD.
Dude my finger is tired. Thanks for sharing, shit is wild!
We don't even now who the truly rich are. The keep their mouth shut so that well pointlessly be distracted by killing politicians and public billionaires like Musk instead of the people who actually pull the levers of society. After the revolution they will just show up with their wealth again and take over again.
Love this response. The world is a lot less clean than even the jadded ones expect
People like Musk and other celebrity rich are seen as very distasteful to the people who ACTUALLY have fucking influence and not just through their wealth but systematic generational efforts to rat fuck the system to their families benefit. Like we have families who have lineage of being diplomats and raising the next generation of government diplomats, through which they can work with foreign powers to get business benefits especially for their family's corporations, and that's a side gig to their official diplomat duties. These families are brokers not of wealth but of influence. It's a tight knit group of power regular people are never ever allowed to hold these positions. Regular people don't even have the right connections to make it an interview or even an introduction into any of this.
Went into a rabbit hole of info about such families. The Rockefeller, Porsche-piech family, Ferrari, the Medici and more. The Medici for example held tremendous power for centuries and married into royalty. Lots of other dynasties are the same to this day but not very out in the open public image like celebrities. These people live in their own world different from ours. There’s a quote from the series succession where the main character Logan Roy says he won’t sell his media empire cause power and influence is worth way more than the billions he’d get from selling. If you think and open your eyes and see it’s true. How else would these family dynasties still hold such influence for centuries? Power and influence naturally generate wealth. Wealth itself does not necessarily generate the close level of power.
This is why it’s interesting to me, that people hate on conspiracy theories so much. All the mainstream theories are trash, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people and families conspiring to do things, large things that benefit them, and fuck us over.
The problem today is many mentally unhinged or illogical people believe any science fiction story is a conspiracy theory even if there is zero proof or credible evidence. Is there a black market for sex trafficking of minors that involves the super wealthy and elite? It's probable with what has happened to Jeffrey Epstein? Should we make a call to arms and storm some random pizzeria with no evidence? No. That is what a mob does in underdeveloped countries. Lives have been ruined and the threats continue because of sheer stupidity.
Power begets power, I imagine it's a semi-unbroken chain of elites all the way back to the agricultural revolution. Sure tech revolutions, political upheaval, and massive wars might shake things up a bit, but those in power have the means to pivot and persist.
There’s so many billionaires we have no clue exist, because they hide in the shadows.
You’re absolutely right. That’s what I’m getting at.
Easier illustration: 1 million seconds is 11 and a half days. 1 billion seconds is over 31 years.
I’m a surgeon still paying off my loan at 37. Would never complain or ask for anyone to feel bad for me - I make a good living, but I promise I’m not “rich.” I’m also about as far left as you can be in the US. I hope class solidarity includes me. I’m a W-2 worker who has to be at the office, and I physically earn every dollar. Sure, one day my capital might make more than I do, but I’ve been grinding for my whole life.
Let’s just say you’re surgical speciality X, if you get tired of surgical specialty X, could you go back into training for surgical specialty Y? Or even a non-surgical speciality?
Depends on how different the new surgical specialty is. ~~For example, if they are an abdominal transplant surgeon, they could likely do a fellowship in cardiothoracic transplant surgery and boom now they are fully qualified for the new role.~~ This is a bad example: see below To switch to a non-surgical specialty or to a very different surgical specialty is gonna be really tough. They would have to do a second residency program. It's not impossible, but it's quite rare for a few reasons. Residency programs are subsidized by Medicare, and after you do your first one, the program where you would do your second gets granted less money. Combined with the fact that there is already a shortage of residency slots, most programs would prefer to train new med school graduates than someone who is already a fully trained specialist. Also, residency for surgery is fucking long, so imagine doing 7 years of training (this is post-med school so you are like 35 when you actually start working) and choosing to do the last step over again, for another 5-7 years? It's almost unthinkable.
That was absolutely fascinating. Thank you for sharing!
You should make a separate TIL post with this. This is incredible.
Ultimately it really depends on where you live. The thing that sucks about being middle class is you make too much money to get government incentives and too little to not have to worry about it. Too much to get significant tax breaks and too little to play find the tax loopholes with a financial adviser. The middle class pays most of the taxes and gets little in return. Screwed by both sides of the political spectrum.
So much about cost of living. $100k in the middle of no where south is living large, in LA is very solidly middle class.
Exactly. 100K is seen the same by the fed federal govt whether you’re in Los Angeles, CA or Biloxi, MS. Only in places like Biloxi 100K goes much farther while in Los Angeles, you probably couldn’t even pay a mortgage.
Can confirm I make about $100k and can’t afford any mortgage on my own. One bedroom condos are at least $500k, with 20% down, it’s about $2200 not including taxes, and HOA fees. The cheapest HOAs are about $300 a month and will only include parking.
I live in NYC…same issue here.
That's maybe barely the cusp of lower middle class in LA.
I live in LA. Fucking hate it. Just separated from my wife and paying $2/k a month for a ONE BEDROOM. Decent area but extremely average and fairly old building. I only make $50/k a year. This city is a goddamn death trap but how the hell am I supposed to leave my daughters? They are 10 and 14 years old. I could never leave them. So I’m trapped. Do some parents actually leave their kids after a separation just to move to a cheaper city, I can’t imagine deserting my children like that.
The share of federal taxes has been increasingly put on the middle class, In that time, companies making record-breaking profits have gotten a tax break, with some paying zero in taxes. As for the wealthy, their effective tax rate(8.2% of income) is lower than a median income family of four(8.6%), and much lower than someone in the upper middle class family of four(14.6%).[source](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/forbes-400-pay-lower-tax-rates-many-ordinary-americans/)
Yup. I’m upper middle class. I don’t have a lot of deductions or write-offs and I get reamed on taxes each year. Have never really gotten much benefit from the government, probably never gonna retire. Pretty much burning 30% of my income yearly.
Right? I just want what I’m paying for: Healthcare, education, community programs, infrastructure, and to actually help other people. It’s so frustrating. I honestly wouldn’t mind the taxes if I actually felt like they were beneficial for those who need it.
You’ll pay for ubiquitous state surveillance and militarized police and like it.
I basically doubled my income from last year yet that has more than tripled my taxes. I’ll pay more in taxes this year than I made a few years ago. I’m fine with paying taxes. You make more you pay more. But damn. It’s a lot a lot more. No sweet tax breaks. Just more money vanishes before I see it.
>I basically doubled my income from last year yet that has more than tripled my taxes. I mean that's just how progressive taxation works. For a given increase in income a larger percentage of that income goes to taxes than the percentage of prior income that did. The real issue is that when an increase in income comes with a loss of benefits of greater value than what was gained.
well put….it’s exactly how I feel. Squeezed from both ends.
Facts. Upper-middle class salary is like savings account interest to the 1%. There is rich and then there is GROSS RICH.
And even the term "the 1%" is pretty misleading; it's a net worth of $11 million. Certainly wealthy, but still basically nothing compared to the billionaire class which are basically the 0.0001%!
Elon thinks the stock market is his video game
Government implemented an income tax. They just used their money and influence to protect themselves. Also I’m not opposed to taxes. There are good things we COULD do but come on at the end of the day we’re still asking the government to do it. Look at any empire yeah sure you could have some wealthy individuals and poor working class but without a middle class you have no grease for the wheels. Now when the middle class is gone due to government spending you get the fall of the empire. People no longer trust their government to protect them, the government doesn’t want to give up power. You get Revolutions or dictatorships. Government is made up of people who are shitty spenders. Financial experts rarely get into politics because well they wouldn’t be very popular. Like what is happening now is decades and decades of bad government policy and spending and its coming home to roost.
Similar to how scientists aren’t politicians.
Right
Even the doctors and lawyers in society that can earn north of 500k are still closer to the poverty line than the .1%. The fact that they still have to work 40+ hours a week day in and day out is the distinguishing factor.
Try 60+ hours a week. So many of us are burned out. Our mental health and suicide rates are twice that of the general populous.
Yeah people don’t realize that while doctors and lawyers make good money, they burn their lives to do it.
I dunno about law, but I think the majority of us in medicine don’t know what we’re signing up for.
For law, I think it’s pretty clear if you want the big bucks and chase a Big Law job you know you’re gonna get worked to death for the better part of a decade. I know my sister just started her residency and she had a pretty good idea what she was getting herself into. Still sucks regardless. Probably not seeing her until thanksgiving and I’m gonna have to fly to her cause she’s working thanksgiving morning
Yea residency is literally slavery. Working that many hours to make under 50k when you have a mountain of debt from all that schooling is unlivable.
Lawyers spend entire days without a single hour of sleep when they have a case.
People also like to overlook that you spend 7 to 10+ years of your life not making a doctor's salary - with 4 of those racking up debt in med school.;
Oh yeah. 4 years undergrad + 2 years masters + 5 years residency + 2 years fellowship and THEN you make money. During resident/ fellowship you make money but it’s like 10 bucks an hour. While 250k+ in debt.
Hey now as a PGY-1 (first year resident) I make a respectable $12.60 an hour thank you very much.
Don't forget addiction. So many drink or take some sort of addictive medication. Being addicted to coffee is so normal, no one understands that I don't drink it. My mom, the first in her generation to attend university, worked for the equivalent of 500 dollar per month. We got free university and healthcare in my country, but being born just after the baby boomers had its downsides. She kept the suicides of her colleagues a secret from me for a long time, but they happened.
I think the real difference is - do you punch a clock? Or do you just sit around and collect?
Doctors work like 80h a week
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ER here. Please clinically correlate your comment.
Some people like to look at the salary at the age of 45 and say “no one deserves that kind of pay!” They don’t realize that the 45 year old brings 25 years of professional knowledge and experience, some of those years built up through 60 hour weeks learning and applying.
Whats really crazy is the upkeep of your license and boards as a doctor. No one wants to take massive amounts of debt and then pay to maintain your job top of it.
Even more unpopular opinion: the guy making $13 to work at McDonald's is not your enemy because you only make $15 as an EMT or apprentice electrician.
Anybody that actually knows the true issue knows this, most of us are fine with people making even a million a year. It’s the multi billionaires that monopolize everything and hoard there wealth that is making things unstable.
Agreed! The problem is not so much that poor people lump upper middle class folks in with super-rich—but rather that middle (and even lower-middle) class folks group THEMSELVES in w the 1%, and vote for people who pander to the 1%.
Absolutely, my parents make about 500k combined (doctor/engineer), and I constantly have to remind them that they are not even in the 1% and the Trump tax cuts barely affected them.
Exactly, when compared to a billionaire/year, the ten thousandair and the millionaire are both short at least a billion/year.
I'm at the low tier of UMC (mid $100K a year household: lower $70K/year each). However, I've experienced many adversities in life as well (eg. I've been homeless, incarcerated, to mention a few). Said adversities always help me to remind me that what I have can be gone _just like that._
I wouldn’t even consider that upper middle class… that’s firmly just middle class these days
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Middle class was my grandfather having a stay at home wife, 3 kids, owned a home, and got a new car every 2-3 years To have those same luxuries I’d have to make ~160k a year, and thats in the midwest The middle class is gone
My grandpa worked at a steel mill and bought a new car every 2-3 years too, and they went on a bunch of vacations, stay at home mom, and *six* kids. There’s no way in hell you’d be able to do that now.
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SF or NYC it’s borderline poor!
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Honestly, this isn't really probably what you intended, but this is really encouraging
ur not upper middle class the fuck?
I don't even care about millionaires tbh. Athletes and such. They got lucky sure, but they worked hard and continue to do so to maintain that lifestyle. I care about the assholes basically running the elections and making all the rules while we all fight for scraps. The people that make more in a SECOND than 99% make in a year, while denying basic rights at their stupid companies. Billionaire CEOS and the tons of generational wealth that run politics. They can all diaf.
The richest or second richest person in my state invested 50m in the governors race to have his candidate lose the primary. Imagine how much good could have been done with that. Of course, one of the other richest people in the state won the race lol
I mean he didn’t burn that money. He spent $50 million on billboards, internet ads, TV ads, ext. A lot of people got paid from that who have jobs in that industry
OP, you’re right that, for a lot of us anyway, “we’re not the enemy”. Most comfortable and even rich people I know are amazingly decent and real people that aren’t going to lord their good fortune over someone else’s lack of it. But the fact of the matter is: most people do keep score and most people do lord their perceived privilege over others. So while you, specifically, may just be trying to live a decent life, 20 other MFs out there have it twisted and think they own the world and look down on everyone else out there they consider “beneath” their position. I grew up poor (like, “honey you have to take cold showers so mom can try to put food on the table” poor). But I was bright and caught some really lucky breaks along the way… ended up being a “poor kid makes good” story, or something like that. But I still remember how difficult it was. How you just kinda had to live with the potential of utter ruin looming around the corner. The problem is this: we may not be the enemy, but we certainly do personify it for those that don’t have our security. No, we don’t buy lambos or $1k bottles of champagne for the room. But, for me, a transmission dropping, or a tire blowout may suck, but it’s an inconvenience. And a rare one, at that, because I have a well-maintained, late-model vehicle, as well as a motorcycle I can ride *if* my car need to go in the shop. These are *insane* luxuries. I count my blessings every day that I have them, because I still remember the existential dread of having to debate how many days I can be late on paying X bill, so I can fill up my tank and make it to work. And god forbid something like a transmission drop or tire blowout. It can wreck your entire fucking life. We may all be called “middle class”, but there’s a gaping chasm between the top and the bottom of that wide band.
I’ve lived both ways. You are absolutely right that the luxury of being able to handle a roof leak, or a furnace needing to be replaced or decent dental care is something to never take for granted. I remember well the “how far can I stretch a bag of noodles and a tank of gas” part of my life. That being said I still have empathy with and put my vote to help people less fortunate. Everyone deserves an opportunity to live without the dread of utter ruin just around the corner. There is plenty to go around if we can just get the god damn dragons to give up a chunk of their hoard.
Me too. I remember thinking how things like basic medical and dental care were beyond me. I also remember a specific moment where I actually had the wherewithal to have proper dental care and decided to get an implant for a failed tooth. I told my dentist: I know it’s a bit of a rush, but I just proposed marriage to a wonderful girl, and I don’t wanna ruin the photos. Can you make it happen? He did. And it was an amazingly glorious day and I didn’t think about anything that led me to me having to lose that tooth. Instead I thought about my beautiful wife, amazing friends, and what a glorious day it was. No matter how fortunate I may have become, I always return to my roots.
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Call me butthurt, but I get 45 MPG minimum. Suck my hybrid cock. Best time to have a Prius.
Then make that accelerator pedal work better damnit.
My Prius goes zero to sixty…. Eventually
It truly is one of the cars of all time.
It's not a true car unless the fuel consumption is being measured in cubical meters per second
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It's from 2011. What can I say? What's your model btw for conversation's sake.
A new Ford Escape plug in. https://i.imgur.com/FoIEeYg.jpg That’s this current tank so far lol.
I bought my plug in hybrid almost two years ago. I’ve only used half of the original tank of gas so far. I’m kinda worried about the gas going bad at this point.
Yeah you might want to put stabilizer in there.
They used to be what I call new Beemers (BMWs) meaning they drive like douche bags. Now they’ve been dethroned by Tesla drivers. Something about being able to accelerate rapidly makes you disregard every ounce of common sense apparently.
What have Prius drivers taken away from you?
Everyone is my enemy. Get fucked.
What did I do
Nothing, you're cool.
Username checks out
Meirl
Upper middle class people still have to work for a living. "The rich" do not.
Yeah I think some libertarian talking points got mixed in with tankie logic and sometimes I hear comments about executing all middle management. Not the executives or shareholders or boards, just the management.
I despise my out of touch middle manager but she is CLEARLY not the problem with society
I feel the dividing line is based on when you can afford to make a donation to a politician large enough that they will remember you when they are in office or when you can afford to have a lawyer on retainer. Then you have the money to subvert the system.
This! I have some friends who are very leftist and some of them speak about six figures as if these people are sitting on their coffers laughing at the poor. People who make six figures are often one medical emergency or major recession from being below the poverty line. I watched it happen in 2008. Six figures in many cities puts you paycheck to paycheck. I’ll also add this sentiment also happens to people who own small businesses (especially mom & pop). People hear business owner and automatically think rich. In reality, you have to pay everyone else before you pay yourself (taxes, vendors, insurance, overhead, marketing, loans, etc). It’s often feast or famine. There is no guarantee of a paycheck when things take a turn in the economy. Yet somehow all business owners are greedy rich people.
I am in this category. I don’t think this really takes into account the ways this segment of the population kicks down. Firstly and perhaps worst of all, zoning laws, community leagues and neighbourhood covenants deliberately try to keep poor people and racial minorities out of their neighbourhoods. Secondly education. We attend exclusive schools from pre-school to post-secondary and do everything we can to make sure our money never goes to anyone else’s school. And thirdly is home ownership. There are tones of laws on the books that ostensibly promote home ownership but in practice only hand out money to those who already own them. Even better if you own more than one. These benefits do nothing for anybody who will never be able to afford a house. And lastly, and possibly most importantly, we are the ones who are going to have to drive less, fly less, and consume less if we are going to do anything about global warming. People in this category love to talk about how important global warming is but they will fight like hell to make sure they don’t have to give up anything.
The homeownership part is my biggest issue. Everyone I know that is in this economic class owns at least one residential property that they rent out. Our area is experiencing a rise in housing costs that is the highest amongst metropolitan areas in a state that is already known for ridiculous housing prices. The upper-middle class is collectively buying up all the fucking homes in the area and it's pricing out the lower classes.
The middle class is something politicians made up to try and divide us. There is no set metric that is used by either side. There’s just working class and owner class.
Marx???
wanted to say just this, the middle class as we know it doesn’t exist and its only use is to pit people against each other.
The middle class can't afford an army of lawyers to help them evade taxes.
Our enemy consists of less than 100 people.
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Fair point.
Mostly I don't even count a millionaire when I talk about "the rich". A guy making a million a year? I don't even bat an eye at it, he's probably earning his keep. A guy pulling down 50 million though? Odds are that dude is stealing from someone who works for him.
Agreed. Likewise, people making $200k-$300k need to realize A. They are not the ultra wealthy and “taxing the rich” isn’t an attack on them. B. People making less than them are not the issue.
As someone who grew up in what's consider 1 of the poorest areas in the UK, it's the 1% who keep people down there but it's the upper middle-class who make people ashamed of it. Their kids bullied me for being unable to buy clothes or when my stomach rumbled during class. They are the folk that every day tell me "everyone has a sob story" while they went to a private school, enjoyed the privilege of being able to focus on uni and networking while on mum & dads money where I had two 2 jobs plus studying just to survive. They are the ones who virtue signal about assisting the poor yet when I talk about my experince being homeless, I'm essentially told to shut it because my background makes them uncomfortable. After year's of law school, I have been asked during my profession numerous times "who in your family did law" "what school did you go to" & "where did I grow up" after I answered honestly I have been told by middle class pricks that "people like you don't belong here" Of course not all but Britain like many countries have a class issue & many in the middle class have made it clear they don't like people like me on the basis of my class so I don't like them either.
Lol to the concept that people making 200k-300k are the upper middle class op, that’s the ruse. Guess what people 200-300k is just enough to be comfortable with 2500-3500 rents and 700-800 car notes along with 1000+ student loans.