In addition, there's also a cultural idea of a "middle class lifestyle", the American Dream, and what all that entails.

Charles Hugh Smith identified 6 key traits of the Middle Class Lifestyle: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-many-households-qualify-as-middle.html

To summarize it: 1. Health insurance 2. Home ownership 3. Ability to save 6% of income 4. Expected ability to retire 5. Ability to service debts if suddenly unemployed and 6. A working vehicle for each wage earner in the household.

He estimates that, today, this lifestyle requires: $111k/year. So then nobody earning the "middle class income" of $40k-75k is living a "Middle class lifestyle" (if they ever did). Now of course these days a lot of households are dual-income and so maybe some people have two $75k/year incomes in their house.

but... let's look at REALITY

The *actual* distribution of wages across american workers and who is REALLY in the middle.

According to the Social Security Administration's statistics on net taxable income, in 2017, 54% of employed americans earned $35k or less
https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2017

The actual, middle income is $32k; now this is of course Net Taxable Income; which means the posted salary for the position might be a few thousand higher; Perhaps you earn $35k/year and then your health insurance premiums are deducted from your paycheck before taxes. But even taking that into account, the middle income is *not* $40k-75k; Also this is net *taxable* income, so taxes are then taken out in addition to this. much smaller paycheck

So $30k/year is the REAL middle class; and the amount you have to spend is well, you 'aint gonna be retiring, raising a family, or buying a house on $23k/year after taxes. I'm earning $30k/year, I'll be frank, I'm in the actual middle class. i share an apartment with 3 people

So what class are you? In reality? The Wall Street Journal has a calculator based on national data from 2014: http://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

and PEW has a calculator that compares you relative to your metro area: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/are-you-in-the-american-middle-class/

They both break down by demographic

At $30k/year, the national middle class of all people, I'm in the top 32% of earners among Millennials. At $30k/year, not enough to retire or raise a family, I'm in the top third of all earners in my generation. Working my lowly hourly wage data entry job.

Are you one of the many trans women working in tech? The average tech income is $135k/year, if you're earning that much you're in the top 4% of earners nationally; and among Millennials you're a 1%er, among women you're a 2%er.

But you might be thinking; "How can I be in the top 4% of all people? $135k is enough to live that Middle Class lifestyle but my job sucks and is grueling i work 60 hour weeks and half my income goes to rent!"

Why yes! You're right! Because wealth disparity is *so bad* that even in the upper echelons of society, among the HIGHEST paid workers in the country, you are mere workers who serve the true rich.

Let's now discard these 5 quintiles of cultural class and let's talk MARXISM

Through the Marxist lens, there are only really two classes of people. The Working Class (proletariat) and the Owning Class (bourgeoisie). The working class must work for a living selling their labor to owners. The owning class owns the factories, the farms, the businesses.

The Owning Class doesn't do *nothing* to obtain their income; but their "work" is to move money around. To invest and earn dividends. To network and make business partnerships and some degree of business decisions though often they delegate that to a 2-4%er lackey. The Owning Class will always earn drastically more than the Working Class because in order to turn a profit they must pay you less than the value you create with your work.

you will always be earning too little to purchase that which you create. Maybe a portion of it. Maybe you can buy A Chair from the Chair Factory but like, you built 30 chairs in a week, your week's wages therefore cannot purchase those 30 chairs. (I don't know why u would but that's besides the point)

the Working Class is paid less than all the value produced by the Working Class; who then must purchase back that which we produced *at a loss*

Ultimately, we are all the Working Class and paying us different wages (although most of of us earn basically the same) splits us into those 5 quintiles and pits us against each other. It makes those 4%ers side with the Owners over Workers But even when you're in the top 4% you still have even more to gain if you and your co-workers owned your own place of work; which can only be achieved if you side with your fellow workers earning like 10% what u earn

I want you all to recognize that siding with people like me earning the real middle income ($30k) is the right thing to do even if you earn far more than the middle income. Side with people earning *less* than the middle too.

This is also a moment for people like me to recognize that we're the middle class that even earning the middle income, that means half of *everyone* earns less than me!! I'm actually super privileged! I can whine about being a low-income trans woman with health issues and no real safety net besides e-begging; but i still earn more than half of everyone

If you're one of many trans women working in tech; you are likely earning more than the VAST majority of people in the country. I want your solidarity, and I also want your humility as someone earning more than 90-96% of people. It's uncomfortable to recognize when we have more than this hidden majority of broke people, but it's important to be aware of. 96% of people is 96% of cis people too. The 50% earning <35k also struggle w/ anixety & trauma

heck, try raising a family on less than 30k! Poverty itself IS TRAUMATIZING and causes constant stress which actually can cause like, heart problems. I see a lot of queer people with anxiety who work in tech get REAL PISSED at people on Mastodon for talking about our struggles in ways that make you anxious and while, like, yeah, CWs let's use'em, have some humility when you self-victimize in conversations with people who earn 10% of what you have

you think i'm not anxious because if my car breaks down it's a whole paycheck to fix it and that could throw off my precarious balance? Or that the mechanic fixing the car, who earns even less than I do, isn't anxious about getting his kids school supplies and medicine? Tech workers are workers and we must band together, but it will be easier to do that if you recognize that you are the upper echelons of workers who have to less to lose than we do

@shel Super interesting thread, but I'd like to explore what that actually *means*. I'm definitely in that exact group you mention. I'm a well paid tech worker, living in the city on the eastern sea board. What happens to me if I side with you? I have medical conditions that require fairly expensive health care. Will the glorious Marxist future pay for their treatment, or would the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few and require that I die?

@feoh @shel That'd absolutely get paid for — even communist countries which are currently struggling under extreme trade restrictions still manage to provide more than adequate care for rare, expensive to treat diseases.

What'll be gotten rid of is private jets, gold leaf in food, energy-wasting mansions, car-centric urban planning, and the likes of that. Not medical care.

@feoh the glorious marxist future would "pay" for it yes in that socialized medicine is free for everyone

see: Cuba

@feoh also your medical bills are only expensive because of the capitalist healthcare industry. under socialism we would produce for need rather than for profit and this would drastically drive costs down to produce non-profitable but necessary medicines

@feoh @shel For another example of this: I live in the UK and we have decent state health care. It's a long way from perfect (not least because the National Health Service has to buy drugs and pay staff in a competitive capitalist environment) but:
Almost nobody I know here has any idea of the actual cost of their medication.
Seeing my GP is free. Seeing specialists is free. Going to Accident and Emergency is free.

@feoh @shel I have a bunch of chronic healthcrap, some of which is difficult to manage, and that does make life difficult at times.

But it doesn't suddenly get harder if I'm unemployed, and I don't have to worry about whether I can afford medicine or procedures that I need.

And this isn't even socialism, let alone Marxist-style communism.

@artsyhonker @shel I'm a huge fan of socialized health care. However there's a big difference between that and the full on abolition of capitalism. I'm in favor of *that* too - I just don't see a way clear to getting there without mass suffering.

@shel wait the average is 135k? do you have a link to that? im guessing san fran and nyc skew that number a bit from central pa

@makestuff https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-workers-tend-to-earn-135000-depending-on-their-race-2018-2

National average of course would be skewed by higher incomes yes; but that's like, you know, the average.

If you know you earn less than $135k then, you know, you're not all that stuff hehe

@shel yeah i guess when you put it that way it makes sense. i didnt think that the cost of living out there was nearly double here. having a well paying job in tech is one of those things that make me feel incredibly guilty. but as you said still working class since id be on the street real fast if i lost my job

@makestuff well, you can pack it all into savings and be on the street... slowly.... after losing your job; but yeah still not after too long.

Convert that guilt into motivation for labor organizing in solidarity with those who earn less!

even if you don't read the rest of the thread, this toot and the one before it are stark, absolute food for thought

even "top earners" are struggling

because *the people running the circus* are only throwing you bread crusts for your work

having a wall of geeks between you and an enemy is the new lorded feudal castle; this is the new feudalism and it mostly benefits the several dozen people literally at 1% of 1%

the world's economy is hollowed out and thinning at best

@shel the situation feels similar in the UK - £30k pa puts you in the top 25% of earners across all age groups, and well above average national household income (£27k), yet in many places in the country isn't enough to fall into the government's own definition of housing being "affordable" (45% or less of income), etc

@shel I've had a long think about the whole family thing and I honestly think there's no way someone here can "afford" (comfortably) to have children unless the primary earner makes north of £50-60k

fulltime childcare for one child will cost basiclly an entire decent salary, so effectively one parent's income just... disappears, whether they go back to work after parental leave or not

@shel I'm perfectly certain that it's possible to make it work on less than that, but not "comfortably" (i.e. without other nontrivial lifestyle adjustments for the family)

@theoutrider yeah in his full article he does admit that he's working off of like, the assumption that you're 65 years old and have a lot of medical bills like he does...

@shel going by the "middle-class lifestyle traits" the UK is kind of interesting because health insurance is free but care is Very Spotty depending on conditions and even location (mental healthcare is horrendously undersupplied even in Cambridge, one of the richest areas in the country) ➡️

@shel and even without private healthcare costs on my top-25% income we can't afford any of the other five

@shel I lucked into an old hand-me-down car but once that breaks down we'll have A Problem

@shel we do part-own a home thanks to a generous gift from my parents and (again luckily) us qualifying for social homeownership programmes, and this is actually marginally cheaper than private renting, but there's no way outright ownership in Cambridge is affordable on any less than 70-80k pa household income with no dependents

@theoutrider I imagine most of this is different with the UK like we don't have social homeownership here etc...

@shel yeah - and again healthcare costs here are negligible for a significant majority of situations

and yet, even though the "middle-class lifestyle" is otherwise much the same as in the US, it's basically out of reach of the vast majority of people

the observation of the core issue of absurd wealth disparity, I think, transfers fairly well to most Western free-market capitalist countries, as do the Marxist observations on class

@shel (also, thanks for that writeup on that! it feels like a very good high-level summary)

@theoutrider @shel it's absolutely fucking shite in northeast scotland, and our NHS is meant to be better

source: i got referred to a psychiatrist fucking years ago and i've still not received any letters despite living at the same address

@colon_three @shel conversely we've had a long string of referrals with every last one being bounced off after initial assessment if not before then

@theoutrider @shel the only reason i'm in a relatively stable place at the moment is due to local charities that deal with underprivileged folks and managed to wrangle a 3 month work placement out of them

it's more than anyone else has ever offered me locally which is fucking ridic considering my qualifications

@colon_three @shel yeah we've had more success with local charities than the NHS as well

@colon_three the "complex cases" team in Cambridge, last we were referred in ~2015, had *two* psychiatrists serving the entirety of Cambridgeshire

@theoutrider christ

@theoutrider yeah in the U.S. you're supposedly not supposed to be spending more than 30% of your income on rent, in fact often rental applications will deny you if you aren't earn 3x rent

but... most people pay way over 30% to rent in major cities. fortunately living in a rural suburb of a non-major city my rent is "only" 20%

@shel It's really disheartening to find I am making more money than 52% of my community and cannot afford a home.

@Ghost yeah Big Feel

@uranther Nope. I know he earns less than me because when he said the price and i said "oof... that's my whole paycheck..." he said "yeah well that's a good deal more than my paycheck is"