No one who runs a business that hires multiple employees can reasonably call themselves lower middle class.
Showing my work:
> My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1]
>His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers.
Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage.
Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).
This comment was edited without saying so, which explains why some of the replies don't make sense.
If you're going to make an edit that changes the meaning of what other people have already replied to, please say that you're doing that. The best way is to make the edit append-only.
How feasible would it be to actually enforce that in the code? Would be great if edits were append-only after some period of time. So you could correct a typo immediately after posting still, but after a few minutes you'd just be able to append. (Replying to your own comment doesn't serve the same function, since it could be lost under other replies.)
There is a 2 hour edit window, after which you can't edit the comment. Editing a comment to change the meaning is usually noticed so I think social convention takes care of this (relatively uncommon) problem as it is.
I like that suggestion even more than mine. Could be a link beside the timestamp, like "4 hours ago (edited)" and clicking the edited stamp would give you a history. I edit my comments all the time and wouldn't want to lose the ability to improve my wording or fix typos or whatever, but I don't see any harm in that transparency. The ability to completely delete a comment (along with any history) should probably be preserved though.
That might work if you could link individual comments to a version of their parent, otherwise confusing over comments not making sense in the current context would still occur, since most people aren't going to read an edit history first.
The very least they could do is add some visual cue that a comment has been edited, like showing the header in italics or adding an asterisk.
I think a visual indication that a comment was edited, then diffs of all their edits, would be very nice to have. I have run into (and caught) people that make provocative comments and then edit them to make the people responding to them look foolish.
The names of the classes are not economic; they're political†. They have to do with one's ability to influence politics.
The "middle class", i.e., the borgeoisie, are the class of business owners (and/or people who have the ability to start a business, i.e. who have a professional skill that could be sold freelance or with a one-person company "wrapped" around it.) What do you call a lowest-income-bracket-for-business-owners business owner, other than "lower middle class"?
Meanwhile, a laborer—even a rich laborer (e.g. a waiter who makes a lot in tips; or a unionized dock-worker; or a soldier)—is, definitionally, in the lower class. If your professional skills are only in demand in the context of a capitalist organizing and value-adding on top of them, then you're in the lower class. (For example: dentist? Middle class. Dental hygienist? Lower class. The dentist can start their own dental clinic, whereas the hygienist cannot. Even if they both took home the same salary from said clinic, one has access to corporate profits—capital—while the other does not.)
People don't say "upper lower class", but the French equivalent "prolétariat riche" does make sense. (There are whole sectors of the economy that cater mostly to the prolétariat riche. Anything referred to as "bling" is marketed mainly to the prolétariat riche. Nightclubs cater mostly to the prolétariat riche.)
† In English, the terms are mapped to positions on a city's height map (lower/middle/upper), because cities used to be basins of smoke and filth, and the people who could, would move to the outlying hills to be away from it. But this is still a political distinction, not an economic one. No matter how wealthy you are, you can't get away from city life entirely until you no longer need to work for a living at all. Once you don't need to work at all, you unlock the time+energy+liquid assets required to influence politics. It's all part-and-parcel.
well said. well said. boss, you seem like the only one who understands the dynamics of capitalism in this thread. political power is determined by money. & political power also determines money. seems a lot of people miss the historical context with these issues etc.
$50k/year where? And where did you get that number? I know someone who made $23k last year, less than any of their several employees. If not for his partner's job, he'd be flat-out poor.
> Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).
That's terrible math that proves nothing, besides that the owners as a couple is making more (including by a tiny margin) than a couple of workers
Literally drive down the street and look at those little no-name shops and stores: each of them have owners who employ other people.
The lady who owns the salon and has 10 other ladies + receptionist working there is not wealthy, and is probably taking on a lot of risk.
'Small business owner' is one of the most precarious positions to be in - it's like all the low pay and crap of 'working class' life - but with all the risk and stress of capital class.
I don't know why people do it.
I wonder maybe if this class just 'gave up on it' it'd be interesting to see how we would all cope.
As you point out, the risk is what people often forget.
My parent's have run a small business for over 20 years. Between 10 and 20 employees depending on the season and the economic situation.
When everything goes great, they can sometimes clear a few hundred thousand in the year. They are doing well and appear wealth.
But then a bad job comes around, and they can lose their shirts. 3-4 times over the last 20 years, a big job has gone south and they have actually personally lost money for the year. One year in particular, they had to remortgage their house to meet payroll because conditions out of their control lost them a big contract. All the employees still get paid, but my parents have to go into debt and deal with the repercussions.
The stress they deal with is immense. I've worked some high-stress corporate jobs, and it still has no compare to what I watched my parents deal with.
I can't answer this myself, but I've gotten some hints at it over my lifetime of hearing my dad's stories (repeated over and over...)
One is that it's part of the American dream. As immigrants, being able to say that you made it and are self-made can mean a lot.
Second and probably more importantly, successfully running a business, along with all the financial risks included like loans, can give you a leg up in one crucial area that is very hard to acquire as a poor immigrant - high credit score. This let's you get far better loans, mortgages, etc. Having that history where you can prove that "yeah, I make good on my debts" goes a very long way. Especially if you're as savvy as my dad.
Because it's the most common and consistent gateway to actual wealth, which is also non-coincidentally the gateway to independence (at least from a singular boss, there's always some dependence on the system in some way).
This is slightly upended by startups and getting shares for signing on early, but that's really not all that different of a situation (partial ownership for partial risk), it just happens that at this particular point in history it's also applying towards people with a lot of prospects and/or resources so there's less on the line for them if it fails.
I guess it depends on where you live. I'm going by the definition based on the income ranges in the city/state where we grew up where "middle class" is significantly higher than the rest of the US. If you prefer to average across the entire US, then sure, I'll be happy to edit that to say "middle class". However, I don't see how this is anything but a nitpick without addressing any of the content I wrote in my comment.
Also, others have pointed out many examples where it's possible to hire many workers but still not be in a high income bracket.
Interestingly, esoterica replied and then deleted before I could respond, but since this is actually bothering me (I know it's the internet, it shouldn't), I'm going to post this reply with the quote anyway.
>> My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1],
>>His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers.
> Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage.
> Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).
Like I said, I'd be happy to edit it (can't because of the time limit). However, you're nitpicking on a single part of the comment that honestly means very little. You're also doing that without even using any numbers or locations.
My question to you is, do you have anything constructive to say in response to the spirit and content of my comment with regards to the discussion thread?
Edit: Also, remember that the "fair wage" is based on what the union negotiated (including raises). We paid on the higher end compared to others in our industry. "Fair wage" does not automatically mean that the workers are middle or even lower middle class. So your calculation is already making a huge mistake there.
Bad math. Two people making a "fair wage" in a single household does not make it suddenly unfair... unless your point is that people shouldn't be allowed to live together.
I've owned a cafe and was able to pay myself and the head cook roughly $1000/week (each) when things were great. If that's not middle class, I'm not sure what is.
First, they said "when things were great". Considering they stated that ownership as past tense, I would assume things didn't stay great, and just because you make $1000 a week sometimes doesn't mean you make anywhere near that consistently.
Secondly, it's much more important to look at local median income and local cost of living. $1000 a week in many areas won't get you far if most of it is taken up by taxes and housing. And before someone pulls out the "well, move to somewhere cheaper", there's no guarantee that a cheaper to live location would necessarily still support $1000/week to the owner, or if there was a commute, that it wouldn't eat significantly into that income (fuel + toll + car payment which may not be required if you live locally could be well over a $1000/month).
I think your hunch is right, but economists' definitions do tend to be tied to numbers. Pew Research and others -- although I doubt this is a universal definition—usually treat "middle class" as being two-thirds to double the median income in an area. That seems like an unusually high range -- I would have assumed two-thirds to four-thirds would make more sense, but I suspect it's to account for how sharply incomes rise at the high end of the scale (e.g., the median salary in the top quintile compared to that of the middle quintile is many times greater than the median salary in the middle quintile is compared to the lowest).
Even with that there's an awful lot of caveats, though; as folks have noted, regional differences can be huge. The median income in Silicon Valley as of last year is just under $100K (despite the picture that Hacker News can sometimes paint!), but in Tampa Bay, Florida, it was just under $60K.
Depends on the area. The national median doesn't really give you insight into whether someone is middle class or not.
I'd also point out it's 15% higher than the median. How small do you feel the middle class is? You mentioned "lower middle class"; I only see them mention "middle class".
But even for the lower middle class, it rather depends on how you choose to count it, no? I've seen some economists define middle class as the middle 60%. Given that range (~$46k - $140k), they're in the lower end, if you want to hold them to that statement (that they never made).
Showing my work:
> My parents treated the workers well, paid them fairly[1]
>His salary was lower than my mom’s. Not lower than the workers.
Let X be a fair wage, Y be your dad's wage and Z be your mom's wage.
Then Z>Y>X, so Z+Y>2X. Any household that makes more than twice a "fair wage" is not lower middle class (many lower middle class people don't even make 1x a fair wage).