Most People Think They Are Middle Class (Most Are Not)
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2023
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Most people think they are middle class, but most are not, and that’s costing them a lot of money.
This society wide problem is made worse because nobody knows what middle class even means anymore… You probably think middle class is what MOST people think is middle class. Not rich, but not poor.
A middle-class family can afford a regular home with a thirty-year mortgage, two cars, and a holiday once a year. A middle-class family has two people that work in middle management or run a small business. If they are lucky, you might imagine that one of the pair could stay home to look after children.
The middle class describes the largest share of people on the wealth spectrum slotted between the extremely wealthy, and the working class. But you would find it impossible to give a net worth figure that is the cut-off for entry into any of these classes. There are three reasons why you are not middle class and FOUR reasons why this irrelevant definition is hurting your real financial situation.
The first reason you are not middle class is because that term really doesn’t mean anything anymore. The middle class was first used in early modern Europe to describe the “middling people” that were not nobility but not peasants either, they were wealthy merchants or factory owners. If you don’t own a factory or a fleet of trade ships you already fall outside the original definition of the middle class. Today these people would be considered upper class, especially in America where we rejected the idea of nobility. The middle class is a changing classification, and that change is usually decided by the upper class. In early modern Europe the nobles needed a way to class people that were as wealthy as they were, but not considered as important. Today the middle class describes people that aren’t nearly as rich as the new upper class, which is the old middle class, but also aren’t poor.
It’s a definition so broad it’s practically useless, but it has still changed a lot in a short span of time. Homer Simpson was once portrayed as a working-class man. The show has a rigid adherence to episodic continuity, so the family has not changed at all in the thirty-three years the show has been on air. The SHOW may not have changed but the world around it has, and slowly the Simpson family became middle class then upper middle class, and today with their single-family home, three children, two cars and a stay-at-home wife, they could be considered upper class. The definition may be meaningless but it’s not useless. Everybody from companies to politicians target the middle class as the largest block of customers and voters. You probably like to think you are middle class even if you are not. People will place themselves into this group and accept that something that’s good for the middle class is good for them. This is a very useful trait when chasing votes or marketing a product.
A system for classifying people based on their wealth that has remained consistent over time is simply dividing people into two groups the working class and the upper class. The first group are the people that need to work to pay for their living expenses the working class. The second group is those that that don’t need to work because they have enough income from investments or other payments. According to this definition a doctor that still needs to work to pay the mortgage on their seven-bedroom mcmansion is working class, but a retiree living on a pension would be upper class. The definitions are simpler, but the outcome is just as blurry. None of this would even matter, if it wasn’t costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your career, and that’s not hyperbole.
So, it’s time to learn How Money Works, to find out why social classes are stupid and only kept around as a useful tool to sell you stuff.
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Can you help me enter into the world of IB?
@@tbraghavendranprovide him with value first
I'm middle class and I mostly live off my personal wealth.
the reason why i watch your channel isn't to invest, but to try and rid myself of inherent financial biases.
so videos that tell me about why buying a house might not always be good, or why opening a business might not be always good, or staying in the same company.
i get alot of value from those videos
Zbiotics sounds alright but have you ever tried adderall? Knocks hangovers out flat.
I'm guessing meth would work too since they're cousins but I dont use it so Idk. Someone let me know, please.
When I told my wife we are not middle class, she disagreed because she didn't believe we were poor. I think that is a strange paradox. I think most people that think they are middle class do so because they don't want to admit they are poor.
Definitely. Most people don't have $1000 for an emergency. I really put that into perspective
@@GamingSkepticI think it's something like 80% of Americans, correct?
I mean the truth is that even the poor in America are rich to others in foreign countries. At this point, this is just a silly argument over linguistics and not economics anymore
People don't tend to think "impoverished" is a real class that exists. As a result they think working class is also impoverished.
@@TheGreatWasian_ that sounds like what politicians say to get people to stop complaining about the worsening economy. Why don't you compare us to Norway or Denmark
I got lucky in an odd way. I grew up in a working class household but my father pushed me towards the trades as he "never met a poor electrician". I'm now working as one and seeing the benefits of not having student loans or even having a car loan for a vehicle outside my budget
My dad wasn’t a welder but my uncles and cousins were, so I became a welder from a young age and I’m 24 and already have 10 000 hours of experience in welding
My dad was actually a trucker
A person can live quite well working a trade, as long as they enjoy work that involves more physical tasks, in my public accounting role, I've worked with a lot IBEW union locals, so I know they make good money and often have significant pensions and good benefits.
In my path to becoming a CPA, I had to take on student loans, but I consider it more than worthwhile, as I am glad to be able to work remotely from the comfort of my home.
The other thing to mention here is that it's not like you can't go and do a degree later in life when you've got more of an idea what you want to do. It's crazy that we basically ask 17 year-olds to make a decision about their entire future and gamble maybe $60k that they don't have plus interest on it. Someone who becomes an electrician can do that for a while and then maybe get a degree in electrical engineering after a few years. My cousin was a straight A student and she went to become an apprentice at BAE Systems. After about 6 or 7 years, they were paying for her to do a master degree.
I'm a big believer in education, and the average degree holder does earn quite a bit more than the average non-degree holder, but I'd be interested to know how those figures compare if you remove all of the people who got their degrees at a time when every other person wasn't getting one. I'd also be interested to know how they compare to people who don't have a degree but still have a skilled trade like plumbers, electricians, etc. Because in the US, your fees are absolutely ridiculous and the interest on them is crippling.
Having said that, this 'just get a trade' advice also needs scrutiny, because it's not the guaranteed riches that it's often portrayed as. I remember this being a story in the UK in the 2000s, that plumbers in London were earning more than bankers. Cue loads of people training to be plumbers only to find that the basic rules of supply and demand meant that their salary wasn't quite what they'd been promised. And then the expansion of the EU leading to hundreds of qualified tradesmen coming from Eastern Europe, able to charge far less because the family they were supporting was living in Poland rather than London. And because they're typically contractors, there's none of the benefits you get from a full time job. And that's before we mention the longevity of the job. Sure doing this sort of manual work is fine when you're in your 20s, 30s and 40s. But it's a job that becomes increasingly demanding the older you get, and spending your 60s working on building sites with a collection of injuries you've picked up over the years might not be particularly appealing.
Student loans are quickly getting to the point of being debt-bondage.
I used to think I was raised middle class. Then I learned that the people who would bring us baked goods every week were family friends who worked at grocery stores and orphanages and were giving my family the slightly expired food their jobs legally couldn't use.
No seriously apparently I got orphanage leftovers as a kid during the 08 crisis. I'm nowadays pretty confident that means I was living in poverty. Not even working class, just straight up poverty. But at the time I was convinced, because we at least *had* food
That's so weird, I grew up with mild food insecurity and reaaaally felt poor. Our homes (rentals) were always run down and never had amenities like functioning roofs (as in they leaked after a mild rain) or heating. My parents never sugar coated it, though, or tried to hide it in any way. Now that I live in a nicely furnished apartment, the stark difference is really palpable, even if 20 years have passed. My elementary school friends could have been aliens because of the stuff they did (vacationing every year somewhere cool) and had when we were going to school together, and I'm sure they felt lower middle class or middle class back then.
my entire elementary and middle school class had me convinced i was “rich” because i got fed at night and had a couple pairs of jeans to wear to school. took me a while to readjust my perspective. had to open my eyes to the fact that the majority of kids were really just that bad off.
Same story :/
I applaud your parents for being able to manage in such a way that you never felt how bad off they really were during those days.
Getting baked goods doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe your family's friends just didn't like seeing perfectly edible food go to waste. Lots of people think that wasting food is immoral.
The The Simpsons' static reality VS our society's evolution comparison is so brilliant and eye-opening
Who in Simpsons is most middle class?
My first idea was Smithers. We don't see his home life a lot, but he has a supervisory role over Homer and fills some sort of management role without being an owner.
Comic Book Guy, if he owns his own store. He has a small business and seems to be the only one working there but still isn't in the same league as Burns. That his little store remains is another time-warp weirdness.
This channel has made me even more pessimistic in money terms, and i love it
If you make minimum wage $15/hr, you are the top 1% in the world. Consider yourself lucky!
@@cranberryeater7459And yet the vast majority of people making that much can't afford even basic living standards. Such a wonderful system we live under.
If you love that, you'll love this... Did you know that wage labor is renting yourself via "self ownership". Employment is literally renting another human being as if they're property. The employer-employee relationship is a very insidious dynamic. Employment is a rental contract, like if you rented capital (say, a chainsaw from Home Depot), you pay rent for the "time preference" (basically the cost of time) for a piece of property. Capitalism is based on a principle of self ownership, which sounds empowering, until you realize that most people don't own capital goods other than themselves, and must rent out the authority over themselves as pieces of "human capital". This is a process of dehumanization where human beings are valued for their return on investment as capital goods. This is why, at the very least, capitalism needs unions and safety nets (or abolishment), or else the system won't value people for their human value. Importantly we must also think about our sick, elderly, and disabled people, as they can't provide competitive economic return for the investor class to value. We must figure out a way to change this economic system if we wish to value each other.
Work hard in school, don't going into massive debt on an worthless vanity degree, and don't live above your means and learn to do the basic math required to manage your money. So many people think they are too good or too special to adhere to these simple principles end up broke and then blame everyone else.
@@mothman8300 Because prices are regional, basic goods usually cost 1:1, maybe with little variation. At the end of the day you roughly need to work the same amount of time to rent a place, but of course the standard of buildings are also different.
I don't "look down" on the trades or construction at all - but at the same time I know it's often back-breaking work. And people are far more likely to get injured on the job than if you're working in an office. My immigrant grandparents wanted their kids to work office jobs not just because of the money, but because they saw first hand what it was like doing back-breaking work
Exactly you can't compare blue collar jobs with white collar jobs solely on income. The danger, long hours, lack of healthier food, strain to your body is vastly different than sitting in a cozy office. Aka why they get paid well. I'm 28, earn $115k, work 30hrs/week, and work from home. I'd much prefer to take this over making the same in the trades. But the key here is that, college isn't for everyone and the trades are a great option!
According to the bls plumbing which is what i do has s median salary of about 60k which was the median salary before this round of inflation. I wouldn't do my job for less than 100k because of what posted above. It is hazardous and dirty.
The classification for office workers here placed many of them in working class roles. A lot more people worked with data entry and processing where they weren't managers or supervisors.
@@djm2189 They were slightly different but very adjacent classifications here. Working as a data entry peon or an archive bloke did not make them middle class. They could be classified in different rungs, depending on how close to a middle management or supervisory or decision-making role they were. But it was assumed that the blokes in the mail room were not middle class, even if they did not exactly work an industrial job.
A lot of people at an office would be middle class, because that's where you find the in-betweens and coordinators and other folks who are not owners or hold senior positions but have so much influence that they're not exactly peons.
A lot of these jobs like data entry, archival work, computation and service clerk have disappeared. They don't need a large mail room when much more mail is electronic and you only need an IT bloke now and then.
I wish I learned to be a plumber
The survivorship bias for layoffs hit me hard… I had been at the same company for 5 years, and lasted multiple rounds of layoffs over that time; so I took out some loans to do some big remodeling on the house and replace the roof. Less than a year later I was laid off, and have had a hard time finding another job partly because I haven’t applied for/interviewed for any jobs in years and never for the kind of role I had been doing (since I worked my way up and was promoted several times without interviews) so now I’m stuck applying for roles like what I was doing 6 years ago and which pay less now than they did then (even before accounting for inflation!)
Guess I better jump ship to better pastures 2 years after I start earning 5 figures! 😏🤙
@@handlemoniumbetter to do that because you stay sharp. These days, employers don't look down on folks we're moving jobs every two to three years. However, they do look down on someone who's been at the same job for 15 years and is trying to find a new one. It's kind of assumed that if you left a job after 15 years it wasn't by choice
Not sure how that makes sense. What roles you “interviewed for” does not matter. Never had a company ask what roles I interviewed for, ever. Your experience and skills are what matters.
@@mcjon77It’s kind of messed up that staying loyal isn’t considered a good trait anymore. It’s like companies looking to buy a piece of equipment and say “no we can’t have this equipment because it lasts for 15 years. Let’s buy the equipment that breaks after 3 years”. I’ve always assumed that if you are loyal the company will be loyal to you. That’s what my mom
Thought me. But she worked for the government and started working in the 70s when my country was a lot more socialist than it is now. I’m going to start adopting a more American mindset since that’s what employers are doing. If they treat us like an expendable resource than I will do the same.
Find a way to practice interviews and update your resume with your new skill sets. Good luck
I always wondered why people thought Homer was an average employee. He does a dangerous job that very few people can do, and is constantly involved with the company's owner. These things don't point to him being an average employee or earning an average salary.
Here he would be classified as "skilled labour". He has a working class job with some sort of technical qualifications. He is not in a management or supervisory role, he has little influence on company policy.
The post-war ideal was that workers would start to get paid better and enjoy more time off. Not because they suddenly shifted class but because a greater overall wealth would also raise their standards. These people would not suddenly leave the working class, the overall standard for the working class would just improve. And a house, an unemployed homemaker, a car happened to be middlle class status things workers could now also hope to afford.
Burns was a very distant figure in early seasons. One of the gags was that Burns can never remember Homer's name, but somehow Homer is the one who gets picked any time Burns points at a random security camera.
I'm trying to think of who counts as middle class in Springfield. Smithers, the man with actual delegated authority at Homer's job. Comic Book Guy, if he owns his own shop.
@@SusCalvin Maybe Dr Hibbert, he owns his own practice, has an au pair (and offered to her a house), his younger kids go to STEM school instead of Springfield elementary.
@@SusCalvin Overall agree, except maybe you're underestimating skilled workers.
Modern skilled workers can easily earn two / three / four times as much as people in managerial positions in less-skilled departments.
You can't call comic book guy potentially middle class for owning his own shop, when he probably lives upstairs in the same shop (and more realistically would be renting it), compared to a skilled worker who owns a big home and has enough spare income to live comfortably, and could afford to buy a couple of shops if he wanted to (not that he'd have any reason to, but on paper he could).
(I went with "he" in comparison to comic book guy who is also male, but in another example the skilled-worker could be a female. Don't want to be accused of sexism lol. Eg there are a lot of female doctors and dentists these days who earn a hell of a lot more than a typical small shop owner.)
At an extreme example, you could even call professional athletes such as football players skilled workers, and some of them earn more than most managers could dream of.
@@alkaholic4848 It's the lens where you look at forms of employment instead of wage, and a bit more financal overlap is allowed. Like a skilled labourer could earn much the same as a lower middle class number cruncher.
Independent farmers, small business bunch towards middle class in that sort of classification. Anyone who isn't employed and isn't an uncertain day labourer.
A lot of people at an office were not middle class. Buerocrats was their own sub-category where some fell closer to working class and some closer to middle class or even upper class depending on their decision-making position.
Technical specalists were also up in the middle class. Engineers, virologists, architects, people who stood above floor workers by their highly specialist skill, so specialist that they were above skilled labour.
It a parody of life not a reflection. Like Al Bundy living in a 4 bedroom house with well maintained back garden in a good neighborhood . Would never really happen. You have to be middle class to get the joke.
Exactly, This term was coined to make people feel over-privileged than they actually are , and convince them to spend even more than they actually do.
Bingo
I don't think you need "terms" to make people feel over-privileged and over-spend. It's kind of ingrained in our nature. Like over-eating and greed.
@@jumboshrimps4498this is the second or third comment I've seen from you on this video and I agree with your takes.
It seems like this video has just given a lot of pessimistic or jealous people another reason to lash out at those more wealthy than themselves
@@spicypickle00people have a really weird idea that everyone is poor/wealthy. So they should coalition with actually poor people to improve their personal conditions, as if that will help the poor people (it won’t, trickle down never works, trickle up does though). And I’m over here like “you’re broke and waiting for your parents to die so you can inherit… that’s gotta be doing something to your moral compass”. If you look at the median American, they do actually have enough in savings to be out of work for 3-6 months. They just don’t want to spend that money.
Anyway middle class people are envious of the upper middle class (who constantly tell them they’re not middle class) and the upper middle class is envious of the rich, in both cases because they’re entitled. Meanwhile I grew up actually poor and just want to be comfortable.
@@biguattipoptropicacareful with that last word, because it means different things to the poor as to the rest.
Poor comfort is not worrying about whether you get heat or food this month. It's being able to replace the blown tire and still fill up the tank. It's having enough.
For the rest, comfort is usually luxury. The expensive vacation, the nicer car, the bigger house or newer phone.
My daddy grew up poor. He said that the day he paid off his rent and still had money from his paycheck, he was rich
if you need to work to survive, you are working class, doesn't matter if you are a doctor or a fast food worker
True but I wonder survive for how long. If I stop work now I could survive about 7 years. Still think I'm poor.
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii That would be around lower middle class, you got me beat by a year or 2 but we are in the same boat...
Lol, those 2 things are not the same... what the fuck? If a doctor is working paycheck to paycheck it's because they're living in a 6,000 square foot home and must own Bentleys.
So dumb.
I had a political science professor freshman year of college. He made us put our heads down and asked us to raise our hands if we think we are middle class. He said all but one raised hands
Interesting. How did he expound on the point?
1:23 Why would you think it would be ok to misquote a Professor? A second after you cut off the context to her statement she explains that she’s quoting someone and she doesn’t agree that the middle class doesn’t exist.
Link to the quote in context here for those who want to see the full quote: ua-cam.com/video/0sj-8pjt9Xk/v-deo.html because we know he's not going to address this at all. Thanks for pointing this out, people need to be called out for cherry picking sources because it happens way too often.
But she should agree otherwise she's a coward.
This dishonest clipping is why I wouldn’t like this video. Thanks for pointing this out.
And he lost a subscriber today. Can’t tolerate maliciously biased influences. There are plenty of other sources for this info
I did not get the impression that she was agreeing with the statement at all. She very deliberately uses the wording "somebody literally said", which at the very least implies that she is not 100% on board with the statement. It's more like she was just surprised that someone would say this.
Either way, he did not clip it in a way that made it seem like she was the one saying this. It's very clear that she's quoting someone, so that part definitely did not need any extra explaining. Whether the clip made is seem like she was agreeing or not is what could be contentious.
I was born in a poor family in Russia. What do I mean poor? Its when all the parents salary goes into crappy food and your birthday gift is a pair of shoes you desperately need. But despite poverty, my parents had a good education and they helped me to get one too. I became a software engineer and left the country while I still could to do so. Now I think that I'm in the middle class. But why? Because I can afford to buy more condensed milk than I can ever eat. That's why =)
Dunno if you are programming but it is a good way to earn above average income. I felt poor because I needed to do heavy physical labor. Now I work from my bed typing at the computer and attending virtual meetings. By all metrics people consider that I'm having middle-class income and lots of savings. It's still hard to lose the poor mindset though.
This is what these Americans are not understanding… poverty is when your whole town cannot believe there exists such a thing as having your own car or a room to yourself
@@wave1016 This crosses the line into misery in USA. You are considered homeless if you sleep on the couch at a friends house for example. People living in poverty do have their room once they reach adulthood. A car depends where you live, big cities not required.
❤
Most of the IT blokes I've seen are "skilled working class" or some sort of wonky freelancers but in practice working class.
I’ve always considered myself just barely upper middle class. I got there the old fashioned way. I got a college degree and working at the same place for 30 years. I retired at 55 with a generous pension and now get Social Security. The working world is much different these days and I am glad to be out of it.
A college degree 30 years ago is more valuable than a college degree today, probably equivalent to a Doctorate or a Masters today. Nowadays so many people have degrees the only way to set yourself apart is to either get a pHD or get into top universities. Both of which requires alot of luck, money and effort.
on top of that, barely anyone gets pensions or even 401ks anymore, and social security is going to run out by the time this generation reaches retirement age (which keeps rising!). i'm glad you were able to retire early but the old fashioned way doesn't work anymore.
@@adam_stanheight I agree that things have changed. Pensions are a lot less available now but they still exist such as government, union jobs, military, and in my case, university jobs. When I started working the widespread belief was that Social Security wouldn’t be there when I retired and then Congress fixed it. Also, the prediction for SS is not that it will go away but that it will be reduced.
I would say that could be any sort of good working class job too. There is a number of working class jobs where people have college-equivalent training.
I tend to sort it by how much real influence and decision-making and creativity the job has. Like are you part of the management, or an in-between for the management, owners and others.
At least it's not an underclass job, where they have reinvented day labour and call it "freedom" or "flexibility".
It took me a decade to learn that the college way was only for the rich. If you are among the working class (most of us) stick with community colleges or trade schools, you will probably learn more that’s actually applicable and have waaay less debt of any afterwards if you play your cards right
There are trades that have paid apprenticeships and are in great demand. One goes to college to expand interests and to learn about the world. But, if you don't also learn to do something for which others will pay you, you're a fool. There are many of those out there.
nah, you should have learned that, if you are among the working class and want to go to college, go to school with the rich kids, a school where you are smarter than the average student, so they will pile up the financial aid to increase the economic diversity of their student body thru your presence. (i'm assuming you are from the USA like me with this advice)
If you're fine with not going to some ivy league level school, there are plenty of European countries that offer relatively cheap college prices to foreigners. I believe Greece even offers free college tuition to US citizens.
I paid for college with eight years in the army. It's the only way I could build financial success.
@@perfectallycromulentthat doesn't work for poor white guys. No 'diversity' money for us. Period. Only 'merit' scholarships for us. When I went back as a 30 yo white dude, I was eligible for no scholarships at all.
There are only two classes. Working class and upper class and if you have to wonder which one you fit into, youre in the bottom. Every doctor and lawyer is closer to the unhoused person they drove past on their way to work than they ever will be to the real upper class.
If ur upper class you don't have to work for money if you have to work for money then most likely you're working class doctors and lawyers are closer to the homeless man than the wealthy
@shroom8914 if you think high earning doctors or lawyers are close in lifestyle to billionaires, you don't know how they're living
@@shroom8914 Yes, in terms of lifestyle, and much closer to becoming like the bum in an instant.
@@shroom8914there are people in the USA, probably in every state, who have a 1 square mile estate and house. They'll have buildings for their car collection, or a greenhouse with exotic plants/and animals. They'll have helipads and dirt runways for small aircraft, a horse farm or ranch, Vinyard, with miles of roads and dozens of staff FOR ONE OF THEIR MANY HOUSES. A rich doctor may go to the same restaurants as billionaires but that's where most similarities end in terms of lifestyle.
@@hail_seitan_ That depends on what you mean by "lifestyle". Because one thing that doctors & lawyers have in common with upper class people is being able to take a shower when they get home.
I think it would hurt the masses far too much if they realized and acknowledged that they are poor and or (working poor) rather than sitting somewhere in the middle especially after having worked their entire lives without having moved upward in any way. It would make them realize just how unfair the system actually is and this is why I think people choose to be ignorant to it.
The Simpson not changing, but status moving from lower working class to upper class in 30 years says a lot about the state of things and it’s deterioration.
If you think of yourself as middle class, while living paycheck to paycheck, you have clearly misunderstood what that term means.
Depends on the paycheck. If you are spending every penny of $200,000...that's on you.
@@stevencooper4422 You are not middle class with a pay check of 200k. What you need to do in that situation is repackage your debts and lower your spendings. Middle class people can't lower their spending as much because the bare necessities have a price.
you can live paycheck to paycheck at any income level. just gotta find a way to have enough debts and liabilities.
I'm ultra-rich and i live paycheck to paychecl
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii world's smallest violin for anyone who is barfing away their entire $200k salary every year
I always just think about this in cultural terms.
Working class's approach to money is something like "money is made round to go 'round", so spend it to enjoy it. Even if someone who is raised working class gets a high paying job, they're never likely to build much wealth.
Middle class people are wealth obsessed and do manage to build some wealth, but they're also conditioned against taking risks so they seek out the highest paying secure jobs they can find... they do eventually end up owning a house or three.
Upper class people don't even have to think about money because of social connections. Even if they go broke, someone they know will offer them the chance to get in on a business and a line of credit.
Nah I think lower middle class are basically blue collar workers, upper middle class are white collar workers. Basically.
A surgeon and a cleaner have something very important in common: they have a fixed and reliable income. One has a much higher income than the other, yes. But their primary source of income is through labour, amd their wealth generally grows lineairly.
I think that is a good way to define the 3 broadest classes. The under class has no reliable source of income, either work illegally or very precariously or are homeless. The middle class has a reliable income based on labour. The upper class primary income is assets and capital they own. Crucially, unlike both the surgeon and the cleaner, their wealth grows exponentially until some market is saturated.
@dekippiesip I think versions of the "class is money" explanation have some serious weaknesses, but the main is that they are point-in-time rather than predictive of actual financial behaviours.
Where does the cleaner end up? What do they spend their money on?
How about the white collar worker? Do they end up with 5 investment properties and kids who are studying to be doctors, or do they blow it all on holidays and have kids in public schools?
Obviously money is important to class, but I think looking at people's beliefs and behaviours around money gives a much better description than just point-in-time looking at their accounts.
And importantly, the value of a person's network and financial know-how are mostly cultural inherentance from their upbringing.
@BigAussieDonkey my definition was based more on the source of the primary income. If it is labour then you are middle class, if it's returns from investments it's upper class.
If you are a surgeon you are middle class, even if you invest some of your surplus income here and there. But once your returns from investments exceed the income you get from your job you are an upperclass person with a medical hobby if you still keep doing your job.
This is simply the definition I use. Class should be point in time. What you describe relates more to your potential to switch from one class to another. Connections and intelligence play a very important role there.
Umm no upper class don't work like that if they go broke they're useless it's like when famous people go broke and don't monetize them they begin to "fizzle off" and they're left for dead upper class has both money and connections and they maintain it which is why they never go broke
Working class people are more likely to help out family if they land a high-paying job. Elder care isn't cheap for people who worked for a pittance and didn't get good health insurance. It's a big difference if you're in a middle class family where everyone has money saved up.
I sure get taxed like I'm middle class.
No bro, we need those trillions for the roads. Don't you like roads? Are you some kind of anarcho-capitalist? Don't you understand the government needs to take 3 months of your life every year to pay for THE ROADS!?
Im not from America, and this is interesting because what americans think is “poor” or “working class”, as this video implies, is actually pretty wealthy in other countries.
For example, having a car, even an old one will be considered middle class in my country, most people cant afford a car.
When I was younger i watched “malcom in the middle” and i didnt know that the family in the series where considered “poor” i grew up thinking they were middle class till a friend told me otherwise , they have so much that we dont have here. Family of 5, living in a home with a yard, cars, cool suburb and Everyone went to school. Thats not usual around the world.
Maybe its a matter of perspective, people in the 1800 would think we are richer than the nobelty of the time
I grew up in the suburbs and I graduated from business school debt free. Never went to any fancy school but I got a degree and it got me a decent accounting job. My parents are middle class for sure. But if I were to move out on my own I think I'd be working class.
@@ziplokk1453 My mom stopped working 5 years ago so she lives off retirement money, rental income and other investments. My dad has quite a bit. Probably could survive 2 years or more. The house is paid off so it would be car payments, utilities, property tax, etc.
I wish I went to business school. I drive forklift in hot ass warehouse
You work for yours. That means you're working class. Until your $$ is earning $$$ you can live on without working, you are working class.
@@seapeajones that definition works for most people so yeah I can see that.
@@solelylovely4185 or you could do a trade but you still have to go take some classes to get certified so you can make a livable income. Just a suggestion tho since it's much cheaper than business school
I really like most of points made by author of this channel. Some time it feels like world went mad with all the buzzword and stereotypes. It is very good that some people keep having their independent sober opinion
😊
hate to break it to you but a lot of the stuff he says is arguments leftists use. this entire video is advocating against abolishing the class system.
I think that the world has always been a mess of buzzwords and stereotypes, the internet has just helped us see it by exposing us to all of them on a near-simultaneous basis.
This guys is ok but is the sterotypical bitter redditor on finances 😊
No lie, i'm a mechanic and wages have never been better. I've been at it for 10 years and I never dreamed getting paid this much without going to college
That’s nice but could you stop charging the rest of us so much? Haha. No but really.
@@orangebeagle3068Buy Asian
What does a mechanic make?
mechanic where at and how much do you make?
I think it's a reminder that paying people well is just as much of a motivator for working class jobs as anything else. People will take working class jobs happily if they're not forced into some wonky freelance status or forced flexibility.
If they don't want to pay garbage blokes, they can see how fun two days without garbage removal can be.
I remember reading an article a long while ago that there’s something like eight classes. Not one’s called the middle class. It considered the factors mentioned in this video.
Here they used more sub-classifications. Like "Industrial labour (skilled)" that meant you had a working class job with some college-level skill. Farmers were a separate category, farmers often owned their own land but were separate from the industrial capitalist class.
Then you can try to decide who goes where in the broad three-four classes. If you own a small business like a general store you could be close to middle class, you're not exactly a large industrial capitalist but you're not an employee. All office workers are not automatically middle class, the blokes in the mail room are much more adjacent to working class.
The soft benefits of having higher income/wealth parents is *NOT* to be discounted! I knew nothing about that world growing up and only got exposed to it in my 30's via my budding tech career and networking through a hobby. I've played serious catchup, now higher income/net worth. My kids are pre-teen, have peers with parents who are lawyers, doctors, high end real estate, etc. They have custodial investment accounts and know the difference between growth stocks, dividend stocks and ETFs. They have a f'in portfolio. They know that there are systems for getting into a career and how to research them to come up with a plan. They go to a school where studying hard and being smart doesn't get you bullied, rather it's expected and celebrated. Just think about all this vs a kid like me who grew up with lower earning, working parents, shitty schools where you were a 'nerd' if you studied, surrounded by gang members, drugs and success was literally 'having a job' and no criminal record. Then the country pretends it's a meritocracy, haha!
The wealthy kids are around drugs too. The main differences are that they're more likely to be recreational users and less likely to be targeted by the police.
As someone who works in Nonprofits I can tell you the actual number is that 40% (give or take) of Americans, cannot afford a 400 dollar emergency let alone a 1k expense. It's crazy out here.
Sounds like working class teetering on underclass, financially.
I don't like how many forced freelance/self-employment jobs have popped up. Like they have reinvented day labour and try to make it look cool.
where i came from owning a house two cars and having a small business and going to a vacation once a year is NOT middle class its ULTRA RICH
Investing in alternative income streams that are independent of the government should be the top priority for everyone right now. especially given the global economic crisis we are currently experiencing. Stocks, gold, silver, and virtual currencies are still attractive investments at the moment.
It is recommended to seek the assistance of a financial advisor or broker to diversify your investment portfolio through the inclusion of commodities, inflation-indexed bonds, and stocks of financially stable companies, rather than relying solely on growth stocks with uncertain future earnings.
Such market uncertainties are the reason I don’t base my market judgements and decisions on rumours and here-says, got the best of me 2020 and had me holding worthless position in the market, I had to revamp my entire portfolio through the aid of an advisor, before I started seeing any significant results happens in my portfolio, been using the same advisor and I’ve scaled up 950k within a year, whether a bullish or down market, both makes for good profit, it all depends on where you’re looking.
@@PhilipDunk Please who’s this Financial advisor that guides you?
I personally work with “Vivian Carol Gioia”, she covers things like investing, insurance, making sure retirement is well funded, going over tax benefits, ways to have a volatility buffer for investment risk. many things like that. Just take a look at her full name on the internet. She is well known so it shouldn't be hard to find her.
@@PhilipDunk Thank you. I just checked her out now and I've sent an email. I hope she gets back to me soon. I've been thinking of doing this for a long time now, and I've procrastinated enough already.
The ad integration and reference to adblock was HILARIOUS
If your goal is to be financially independent there's essentially only a few paths left. 1. Be born into it/be lucky. 2. Work your ass off and get lucky meeting the right people 3. Crime. Power is always available...to the one willing to stoop the lowest. If you can't be famous, you can always be infamous. 4. No kids then take your money and retire in SW Asia.
I'll see y'all on Lombok. The new American dream, outsourcing yourself
Damn I feel like number 3 is the new default.
I think you mean SE Asia…
The working class - upper class division based on need to work might work better if instead of evaluating each individual's ability to pay their personal level of spending, we determined levels of living standards/earning levels and determined upper class and different levels of upper class based on if you could afford those levels of spending with your existing wealth. That doctor paying for 7 room macmansion might need to keep working hard to pay for that mansion, but if they chose could stop working and live on 30 or 40k a year the rest of their lives.
This way you could also determine levels of upper class, maybe lower upper class could get by without need to work on lifestyle that would be considered poor but manageable (can pay bills, have home and eat healthy), something fire people might have as the minimum goal. Middle upper class could afford the general idea of middle class living without needing to work and upper upper class could afford high end lifestyle without working. None of this means they can't or wouldn't choose to work to have even higher standard of living, but they have the option to stop working and still remain one one of these standards of living.
Different levels of working class could also be defined based on if they are on the path to any of those upper class groups.
Perhaps the tl;dr version is that it's more meaningful to use net worth than income
College educated middle class folk are most likely to fall for scams. Its the confidence one gets from being middle class and college educated that makes it easier for someone to fall for scams because they can't imagine themselves as targets.
Scamming rich people requires connections and intelligence. Poor people are a waste of time. The middle class is the only viable target.
🎯
It's beyond me how people can fall for scams and rip-offs when information about them is readily accessible.
I used to work as a teacher in a remote Australian mining town with the highest average wage in Australia... poverty was common in the town. This is because despite the average person earning huge salaries ($150k+ in 2008), they were spending it like crazy. They were not wealthy. They were heavily in debt.
An example is that the town was 400km from the nearest large body of water, and every second house had a boat.
Haha no way... 😂
I'm super wealthy and i earn 50k a year
This is similar to mining towns in Kentucky and the Appalachias . They make a big income while their bodies can still handle the work or they come down with black lung disease . But, they’re all still broke even though they live in one of the cheaper parts of the USA. And they all end up poverty stricken when they’re older due to their poor health and the fact they never saved any $$$. And they all own boats too!!
what was this town called?
Is this WA?
Man thjs hits… I’ve always wondered how my colleagues can afford multiple vacations a year, expensive weddings, own homes etc. I know I make above average income but living comfortably in a major city to earn it nets to so little.
In a big city, you’re constantly confronted with class, extreme poverty and absurd wealth. It’s not just spending to keep up with the Joneses, it’s almost a pressure to establish where you are on the ladder
Ah yes. No nobility, but the upper class is basically hereditary again. Time may not move in a circle, but it definitely likes its throwbacks.
OTOH, generational wealth dissipates pretty quickly, and accumulating enough wealth to retire early is more attainable than ever before.
@@ordinaryhuman5645sometimes. Other times, the wealthy not only stay so, they also increase their wealth
@@ordinaryhuman5645 It doesn't. Most of us will probably work until the day we die and even if we do get to it will probably be uncomfortably.
@@jghifiversveiws8729 If you're in a developed country and you're earning a better than median income and you have to work until you die, that's entirely your own fault for not saving and accumulating wealth to enjoy in your later years (which could be as soon as your 40s).
It's been more than a decade since MMM's "shockingly simple math" blog post, so the information has been out there for a long time.
@@charlesk22 Wealthy people do tend to get wealthier, but it tends to get diluted and dissipated by heirs (who are often more like lottery winners and less like the people who built the wealth in the first place, particularly once you get to 2nd or 3rd generation descendants).
4:10 when he said “ if you’re like me you can’t just bounce back from a night out” I thought he meant financially, that’s what I relate to
This is great content, makes it possible to learn something from other people's pitfalls. I was making well over $100k by the time I hit 30, and feel like this analysis holds. Surely it's a lot of money, but then I had zero retirement savings, was still renting and I had to work 60 hrs a week for it. It doesn't really let you change lifestyle that much. Fast forward 2 years and I got laid off, which is a problem the upper class really doesn't have to deal with. If you're earning a lot, it can still be taken away from you in an instant.
Learn how dumb you are. I earn HALF of that and I live a super rich lifestyle and actively look down on middle class people.
My dad’s a pipe fitter. He worked the same trade for over 50 years. On good years, he made $130k. In the 90s and 00s, I went to private schools, spent every Christmas in Cabo, and went to Disney world every other summer. He just retired at 72, with his house paid off and a pension. Similar story for my FIL, a carpenter who builds custom houses.
I never knew how good we had it because my mom was always social climbing. $130k makes you feel poor when all your friends make twice that or more. Now I realized we were downright spoiled.
My husband is a teacher and I’m a writer. We both have graduate level educations, but picked professions that are receiving worse pay every decade. I work from home so I can be with the kids. We have a modest mortgage, two paid off vehicles that are over 10 years old, and take a road trip to the Oregon coast every June (keeping it cheap by staying with family). I’d consider us lower middle-class: able to replicate a modest version of the middle class with discipline and frugality.
We’re encouraging our kids to take after their grandpas and go into the trades.
I think you’re middle-middle class, even a bit higher, not lower middle. If you married better, you’d be upper.
If there is something about being from a developing country that I completely appreciate is that people are good at assessing their financial status. We don't get shield away from financial realities. You either have money or you don't and if you don't, tell your kids everyday when they keep asking for stuff.
Watching the first half of the video I was confidently thinking "haha, what a bunch of Captain Obvious content, how is this even worthy of my oh so important time". And then later in the "Smart Risks" section I got thoroughly humbled. That part hit home A LOT, because it practically described me, down to career choices. Sure, it is also nothing revolutionary, but when put like that, concise and blunt, it really gets to you (to me).
So, suspend your attitude (if any) and watch this one attentively. It is good.
takeaway is that everyone is poor and there's no middle class :(
I work at a financial department of the government and the amount of people living way above their paygrade because "they feel they have earned that lifestyle" is insanely high. People literally plunging themselves tens of thousands of euros into debt because they have to live in an expensive house, have several kids, have every subscription service you can dream of and buy expensive groceries, get that new phone every year. It often feels like I'm in an episode of "Keeping up appearances". It would be amazing if just for once people would stop caring about how rich they look and we could just focus on learning to accept that not everyone can do everything.
Ya ! I know doctors that live “paycheck to paycheck “ but it’s is because they got in huge debt and keep living their life as usual but if they stopped living the “high life” they would be living even better than now they still have cleaner, buy everything they want , have new cars ect
Where are you located? Italy, Spain or Greece?
@@yomismo1888 the Netherlands 😶
I think that anxiety is the real middle class experience. Is this food good enough, can I be seen in these clothes, will my kids status drag down my own. And the whole time you can just barely see the world above and the world below.
Because past looking at things I can understand like employment and hierarchal authority and job safety are things much harder to define, like respect and status. Like what does it mean that a surgeon or a newspaper editor is more respectable.
I'm still a lot more suspicious of any "class doesn't exist" people, because it's often they who don't want to discuss their own class.
@@SusCalvin "I think that anxiety is the real middle class experience."
Very much so. If you are poor you only care about staying alive and basic needs. If you are rich those things are trivial and so is status... because being rich automatically gives you status (or at least in certain circles). Being middle of the road, and preferable lower end middle of the road) you have none of the certainties of maintaining your living standard while also having no noticeable inherent social status.
Social classes are defined by their relation to the production. Do you own the means of production ? Capitalist / bourgeois class. You sell your workforce for a salary ? Working class. You own a little shop were you work ? Petit-bourgeois (closer to the working class really)
Social classes have changed with the industrial revolution and the downfall of royalty/servitude. In today's world the economy is strong enough that you can be upper class, not work, not own anything and just piss off money all the time. So what it comes down to is simply wealth.
Finance capitalism describes the current global economic system wherein ownership of capital has moved away from those engaged in actual productive activity and towards financiers and speculators who by-pass the production of real goods and services altogether.
A basic perpetuator of this system is our increasing inability to understand the difference between money and wealth.
In the uk, to be middle class your parents needed to have a profession like teaching or a doctor on your 14th birthday. Lots of government questionnaires ask this. Its not about money.
In the UK, I'd say it's a combination of income, job position and accent (to an extent). If someone is from an aristocratic family but is broke, do they become working class?
I have no problem telling people I'm poor which seems to be a social faux pas based on their reactions.
I remember you did a poll on this, and I put Working Class. I make $90k annually as a healthcare analyst and my gf makes $50k and we live relatively comfortably in a studio apartment with a dog (afford to take regular small trips, gifts, save, and invest) but we're far from the middle class. We live below our means and consider ourselves working class. There are only working and owning classes; don't let capitalism and these elected officials fool you.
If you're making six figures and don't own productive assets that's entirely a failure on your part.
@@ordinaryhuman5645found the boomer
@@ordinaryhuman5645it's amazing how whenever these discussions come up online you realise how fucking awful so many people are with money. I'm 30 and have a very similar situation financially to OP with my wife and I having a very similar combined income. I pay a mortgage on a small 3-bed house which makes up about 30% of my post-tax income and comfortably save another 20% in savings/investments per month, in addition to a pension after paying bills. I don't have the money to just buy myself whatever I want, but I have enough to at least buy some nice things and go out for food or get takeout once or twice a week, and take trips a few times per year, so I live a relatively nice lifestyle. I absolutely consider myself upper middle income not because I have zero financial worries but because I know the vast majority of people get by with less than I do, and if the shit hit the fan there are needless expenses I can afford to axe in addition to digging into savings for a while.
Even in an expensive city like NYC, the median HOUSEHOLD income is $75k, which includes much older people who have been working for much longer. If you're making 6 figures as a childless adult and are struggling, then barring some kind of extenuating circumstances like an expensive health problem in your family to pay for, you need to get yourself straightened out.
@@ordinaryhuman5645you missed the entire point of the video, didn't you? This is exactly the problem. He is now supposed to spend his money on "productive" assets to keep feeding on the middle class delusion.
This guy legit said "live comfortably" and "in a studio apartment" (and with dog and GF) in the same sentence. The level of cope...
Excellent video, as usual. The whole topic is obviously a can of worms, I could almost make my own video about it. Something worth mentioning is the psychological dimension of calling oneself middle-class. People don't like to call themselves rich because that could be seen as bragging or as a kind of invitation of being taken advantage of, something wealthy people have often an exaggerated fear of. On the other hand, people also shy away from calling themselves poor because that could be seen as fishing for compassion or money, or they are afraid of being called stupid or lazy, which is usually not the case. There is also the problem of wastefulness/overspending in US society, which I can expand on if anyone is interested.
Yep, I'm literally never calling myself an "upper class" (which I know I technically am in terms of my salary) in front of anyone IRL, and even generally online (this is the one exception), I'd refer to myself as "middle class" precisely because I don't want people to feel like I'm bragging.
Can you expand on the overspending part. TIA
@rahulkopparthi9039
Overspending has many facets, of course. What I mean is the following: I am from Germany 🇩🇪 and sometimes watch a German-language channel, which translates as "Life in the USA". A man called Bill, who immigrated from Germany, now a US citizen, often talks about cultural differences between Germany and the USA. Some things are better in the USA, some are worse, and some are just different.
One of many dubious American habits is buying certain expensive things on credit. Any good financial advisor (or even just your granny) will tell you not to go into debt for the following things: brand-new car, big wedding, expensive holiday, expensive furniture. If you don't have all the money ready for it, don't buy it. But as for the car, many (maybe most) Americans buy a brand-new car, even if it's their first one. In Germany, your first car is almost invariably a second-hand car, unless your daddy is rich. In the USA, even a uni student usually gets a brand-new car and then spends 5-8 years paying it off. The resale value then is very low.
Also, people often are only interested in what the monthly rate is, i.e. the installment for the loan. $300 a month is seen as more advantageous than $400, even though the monthly rate need not have anything to do with the total price. 100 rates at $300 are more than 50 rates at $400, yet many people seem strangely oblivious or irrational about such facts.
Another example are rings for weddings or engagement. Bill lives in San Diego, CA, and there, in certain middle-class circles, it is expected to buy a wedding ring that costs four monthly salaries, which is easily $20,000 or more. If you think that a $5,000 ring is enough, you're considered a cheapskate and the woman will not marry you. But buying jewelry is a lousy investment. If you buy a diamond ring 💍 for $20,000, the resale value is about half. The list goes on and on. I recommend the entertaining book "Priceless" by William Poundstone, which investigates the psychological aspects of pricing.
@@ToyTiger666 That was pretty interesting. Thanks for posting.
@@howtoappearincompletely9739 My pleasure 😊
I don't know why this is so confusing,years ago I looked up a definition of the middle class on Wikipedia,it defined it as ppl/ families with a third of their income not being spent on essentials.
first, you're presuming everyone is gonna agree with the definition you grabbed from wikipedia instead of a different one. second, what's an "essential"? sure, a place to live, but how many rooms per person? how big are they? do you also have to spend money on a car to live there? how expensive is that car? then you can go on with education and medical costs.
@@perfectallycromulent yes but the title is about ppl shoving themselves in the middle class even though they aren't. If you can afford a mortgage and a new car,and still have money leftover then you're probably middle class if you can't, you're not.
Even rich people have to spend more than that on essentials
@@user-dh5vx8ob7y have to?
You can make 300k in NYC, San Francisco, LA and not be middle class.
Amazing channel! Healthy doses of life realism freely offered with each episode.
Also enjoying the many down to earth takes/stories in the comment section.
Great episode!
It is pretty staggering to realize the Simpsons from the 1989 and even Family guys that started in 1999 have more than what more americans have now. A large house, a stable job, 2 cars, 3 kids, 1 dog, and a stay home spouses.
All my friends that are married are dual income and just surviving.
This is very true. I was lied to that I needed to go to college and work a corporate job to be successful. Here I am after graduating thousands in debt, unemployed, applying for jobs not even paying a median wage.
One issue that's ignored in blue collar jobs is that they take a toll on your body. This means more medical bills and being forced to retire early, which means less money.
So blue collar workers don't make better money, they just make money earlier and then they have to deal with the physical aftermath
This!! You can work a white collar job until you’re 100 if your mind is still good . Blue collar ? The clock is ticking . Even though some pro athletes make really good $$ , they’re really blue collar for this reason . And many come from backgrounds where they never learn to handle $$, so they become poor after their sporting days are done
I have the skills to work in a cleanroom. ~$150k a year starting salary... However, everyone I know who does that looks 10 years older than they are.
The part at 9:30 with all the challenges of those breaking into the middle class or upper middle class is very relatable. I graduated with student loans and had to build my financial foundation like saving a down payment myself etc. before I could start building wealth, and I also set aside some money to help family who need it. Though I really can't complain and my family has supported me as best as they could, but it shows the challenges people from less well off backgrounds face.
I hope you do well! You can give a good head start to the next generation (your kids).
@@SevenRiderAirForce I don't plan to have kids, but definitely want to find ways to help those who have been less fortunate than I have.
The dark secret of poor to middle class families is that once one of the kids “has made it” the rest of the family expects that person to carry the rest of the family. And if that person doesn’t they label them as selfish.
@@onemanturret1641 I can definitely see that being a burden for those trying to break out of the lower-middle class. I think it’s good for people in my situation to help their family. And my parents have been great to me, and have supported me as much as they could, so I have no problem helping them out. If I can solve a problem for them by giving or lending a few hundred dollars, I’m glad to do it. But there’s a difference between helping them out from time to time and feeling like you have to support the whole family.
"The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showin' up at those jobs." - George Carlin
Most of us are just one bad luck streak away of ending like the local homeless. We are closer to the lower class than actually becoming wealthy millionaires. And these wealthy people are just there, dangling the carrot in front of us to make us think we can actually become like them, but the majority will never get there. We are all working class people and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can start to actually change the world.
Meh
"Most of us are just one bad luck streak away of ending like the local homeless." Not all. Only those who are unable to save at least a few salaries.
"We are all working class people and the sooner we realize this the sooner we can start to actually change the world." I though that far left dumped working class in favor of sexual and ethnic minorities and the only group that even modestly cares is so called right-wing populism...
A millionaire is someone who owns a house in palo alto.
Middle class people don't pay any tax, they collect welfare. The upper class pays all the tax.
Now I understand why government supports poor people. So that we are afraid and work hard 😳
I'm glad you made this video. I've been noticing lately how everybody is "Upper middle class" or "Lower middle class" nobody is anything but some version of middle class. It's so silly.
If you live in a Western country you can't be middle class, they are all rich.
I feel this one’s gonna be depressing
Aren't they all?
@@HowMoneyWorks 💀
Honestly the more I've learned about economics and geo-politics: the more pessimistic I've gotten about the future.
Given that the definition of middle class in the 60s (watch The Munsters or The Jetsons) was only the husband worked, the family owned a home, a car and went on an annual vacation, then yes the video will be grim.
I was always confused what class my family was in growing up. My parents insisted we were middle class. They both owned their own businesses which seemed to mean they were middle class. But a lot of my friends thought we were rich because we "had a lady that cleaned our house whose name isn't mom". Then other friends would say we were working class because my parents worked in a trade or mostly manual labor. Mostly, my parents had wealthier friends but spent their money irresponsibly to keep up with them. We were well off and wanted for nothing to be sure. They still weren't financially literate or responsible with their money.
Wow, amazing video, eye opening, great job!
This is one of the best videos I’ve seen on UA-cam. I was lucky. My parents went from being Lowe class to lower middle class while I was with them. Then I married into a family that owned land and had rental properties. Then when we bought our first house, literally a starter home, the neighbor next to me also owned rental properties. Learning from these people has changed my perspective so much. You really are who you associate with.
I think we just need to divide people by owner class and worker class. The idea of middle, lower, upper classes always felt weird to me and like it was just built as a way to create class warfare and divide people.
I think my favourite graphs are the ones that show what the top 10% make in most countries, and then the top 1% and the top 0.1% and how quickly that graph ends up looking exponential.
Other than your video, how do we get people to truly realize they aren't middle class without waiting for what middle class is to erode to the point of "well, at least we still have this van to live in."?
“Be honest was the last ad an influencer bro, or do you have ad block?”
My ad: “Pizza Pizza!”
Thank you for quality & relavant content. Always love to watch.
There's only two classes. Working class and Owner class. If you can be laid-off, you are working class. That's it. that's the definition. There's nothing "blurry" about your doctor -> renter explanation, unless you are worrying about meaningless aesthetics. The idea that such a Doctor in debt is not working class was created to reduce our ability to have solidarity. Like most people, that Doctor is one unlucky day away of losing everything.
Yep. Second Thought covered this subject beautifully
With that definition the folks working at McKinsey or Covington & Burling are counted as "working class", yet are net beneficiaries of the system and it's far more likely that they or their descendants make it to the owner class than it is for them to feel any shred of worker solidarity.
I think of upper class as being in financial stability, where you don't need a job to support your living expenses. Then you are not working class, you are financially free to do whatever you want.
Adam Neumann of WeWork fame can and has been laid-off. He's enjoying his billion dollar severance package, life as working class CEO is hard.
This Marxist definition is anachronistic nonsense. A person who makes 2K/mo in investments(capital) + 3K in labor is by his definition "working class". But when the same person retires and makes less money - 2K/mo in investments and 1K/mo in social security - then this person is part of the "owner class" because most of his money is now made in investments EVEN THOUGH HE EARNS LESS EACH MONTH. That retiree and many more like him are now part of the owner class. You can't say the working & owner classes are always in conflict when millions will be living off of 401K and investments - there are a lot of "owners".
As someome who studied in academia and accrued loans then turned my back on intellectual work i love it when other academics tell me how the trades function.
They are almost always correct and never gloss over deep rooted systems of prejudice and malicious work culture.
This is the way I generally see social class in strictly financial terms:
Lower Class - you panhandle or live only off welfare
Working Class - you work for a wage (and possibly still live off welfare)
Middle Class - you work for a salary
Upper Class - you live off an inheritance or off passive income
Not quite.
Class under capitalism is predominantly determined by your relation to capital.
Middle class is an oxymoron, like democracy… it doesn’t exist in reality. It’s a propaganda myth for the mind.
People who can live off passive income, their capital enables them to do so. People who pay taxes on earned income are all working class, or what people think of being “middle class”.
You can have somebody making 20k a year, on unearned income be far better off than somebody who makes 100k a year who has to work for it.
Just pure healing wisdom and much needed guidance words for those who suffer from the modern financial traumas 😔 thank you immensely! 😊
Compounded daily, now that's a name I've not heard in a long time! As always keeping it real!
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Same here, My portfolio has been going down the drain while I try trading,l just don't know what I do wrong
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the stock footage on this one is top notch. Also I thought I was middle class as a kid because we weren't on food stamps.
i was just thinking about this topic the other day, but was too lazy to research it. thanks!❤
Overspending has many facets, of course. I am from Germany 🇩🇪 and sometimes watch a German-language channel, which translates as "Life in the USA". A man called Bill, who immigrated from Germany, now a US citizen, often talks about cultural differences between Germany and the USA. Some things are better in the USA, some are worse, and some are just different.
One of many dubious American habits is buying certain expensive things on credit. Any good financial advisor (or even just your granny) will tell you not to go into debt for the following things: brand-new car, big wedding, expensive holiday, expensive furniture. If you don't have all the money ready for it, don't buy it. But as for the car, many (maybe most) Americans buy a brand-new car, even if it's their first one. In Germany, your first car is almost invariably a second-hand car, unless your daddy is rich. In the USA, even a uni student usually gets a brand-new car and then spends 5-8 years paying it off. The resale value then is very low.
Also, people often are only interested in what the monthly rate is, i.e. the installment for the loan. $300 a month is seen as more advantageous than $400, even though the monthly rate need not have anything to do with the total price. 100 rates at $300 are more than 50 rates at $400, yet many people seem strangely oblivious or irrational about such facts.
Another example are rings for weddings or engagement. Bill lives in San Diego, CA, and there, in certain middle-class circles, it is expected to buy a wedding ring that costs four monthly salaries, which is easily $20,000 or more. If you think that a $5,000 ring is enough, you're considered a cheapskate and the woman will not marry you. But buying jewelry is a lousy investment. If you buy a diamond ring 💍 for $20,000, the resale value is about half. The list goes on and on. I recommend the entertaining book "Priceless" by William Poundstone, which investigates the psychological aspects of pricing.
It's very stupid but it is what it is. If you want to marry into a well off family you need to pay for the ring. I'm sure many would rather buy a pretzel and a beer for engagement but in USA culture that would not pass. The mentality still is go big or go broke. The reality go big and go broke doesn't sound too reasonable but has a certain appeal. People would go bust, bring back the car keys, give the house to the bank and attempt to start all over again.
ha yeah. Married men are the biggest suckers in America. The economy depends on their foolishness though - they are basically who fills up crappy jobs because they NEED the money, and they are the ones who have to go into debt for appearances or their families will leave them but are still entitled to his future earnings (ironically the very shackles that force him into his rat race). Childfree single people actually get taxed more here - an indirect punishment tax - for essentially beating the system 😄.
I bet that the cost of the engagement ring is inversely related to the length of the marriage.
@@amicaaranearum I don't know. Price of the ring is corellated to social status. Single moms don't really fit in.
@amicaaranearum1560 There's actually a study that claims exactly that. YT auto-deleted the link, but you can google it.
"Two cars, a well furnished single family home and multiple vacations are all part of an upper middle class income starter pack"
Don't forget that golden good boi. Very important!
😂😂😂 for certain type of people.....
What golden good boi?
@@ToyTiger666he's referring to a pet dog. Typically shown as a golden retriever.
@@ryanpoulter6286 thx!
Lol right
Something my grandpa said has stuck with me.
"As long as you have enough to pay for the essentials, then the rest is a luxury."
Honestly, if you aren't making terrible decisions with your money, you can very comfortably and happily live off the average US salary WITH some left over for investing + vacations. You really don't need more than that, especially if you have healthy relationships in your life.
Where you live really factors into this . When housing costs skyrocket , a regular job won’t keep you off the street
TBH, most Americans don't make the average US salary and vacations cost a lot unless you are staying in a forest service campground.
Keep in mind the “average” salary includes the 1% in the calculations. Seeing as most wealth is concentrated at the top, the actual average American is living paycheck to paycheck paying regular bills.
@@starmorpheusyeah. Average annual income is a joke. The median income is only $32k. Meaning half of all workers make $32k or less. Median age of those workers is over 40. Those numbers are 2-3 years old, but still.
Not anymore. That ship has sailed. People can no longer afford to save and live comfortably from an average salary.
I think i could comfortably say Im from an upper middle class family. My dad owns like 5 houses and has a very good tech job. Never had to worry about finances at all and we travel to multiple new countries every year.
Where I live, the law actually requires companies to fire newer employees first.
They try to find ways around this, of course, but in general the longer you've worked the more secure you are.
I've got an ad for wall decor. Where do I stand in the middle class spectrum? 😂
11:11 I have UA-cam premium and was extremely confused by that segment
I have to give it to you with integrating ads into your video, I was bamboozled when an Amazon drop shipping hustle ad played.
It is kind of hard not to be just above the poverty line when one trip to the hospital or "bad day." Can put you out on the street. This goes even for 6 figure earners too because your job has way too many life implications.
I'm super rich and I earn half of six figures. If you live in a Western country, even welfare will make you ultra-rich.
It is interesting to contrast UK and US understandings of class categories. Despite the way it's talked about, American social mobility around the same as in the UK, but in the UK far more people, a majority, identify as working class and the middle class is usually subdivided into lower middle and upper middle. In the UK, class is understood more in socio-economic terms e.g. what accent you have, what supermarket you shop at, did your kids go to private school...etc. It's more about the lifestyle of your family as you were growing up than the actual amount of wealth you currently have.
While the British class system has issues, I do think in a lot of ways its a more honest than the American 'system' and probably that of other developed countries (if almost everyone calling themselves middle-class can be considered a system). Wealth, life experiences and cultural attitudes are so massively tied up with each other, its useful to have terminology to refer to that.
Right! This has made me realise how relatively detached the UK class system is from relative income
Bro the UK literally has a House of Lords. Unelected body of government with political power.
If the UK were truly honest they'd just admit they are a oligarchy.
sure thing mate.@@LittleBigPoet
Good one with ads, not gonna lie. My was about how it's crucial to take risks, even if it's causing only pain, because pain it's a great teacher. How witty and presice - thought I. How ironic - thought I after trying to rewatch this video. (I don't seen screen during video).
I love seeing you become more and more class-conscious. Keep it up!
One issue with only having a working and upper class is both groups are too broad to be meaningful terms in most cases.
A lot of this video describes my life…... I came to this country when I was 8, got a college degree and I make an upper class income. I have a closet full of expensive shoes (walking barefoot makes you value quality footwear, yes, quality, not designer) two old paid off Honda’s in the garage of my too big house. My daughter shops at thrift stores and my son has never said he wants expensive sneakers. My daughter is going to college on a scholarship with great social skills and office soft skills because I’ve been schooling her since she was a preteen. I’ve been at my job close to 20years because leaving is way too risky in my mind and I have to cough up a lot of money every month so that my mother and brother don’t have to come live with me. My daughter has had great internships the last three years and will probably exit college making a very good starting salary. In other words, this video was spot on….as per usual.
Lol amazing way to squeeze in an Ad without hurting content.
For people looking into careers, the hygienist salary is slightly inflated, the truck driver salary is majorly inflated,the farmer salary is actually under inflated and chemical worker is about the same. (According to the U.S bureau of labor statistics)
All that money and still living check to check 😮. They need to watch Financial Audit. That’s crazy!
I knew the moment I saw the title this was gonna be a "live below your means" video, which I agree with because living below your means usually mean a happier life (although a hard skill to hone).
I'm doing the 'live below your means', got enough saving to live on it for about 7 years. not living the dream though and feeling poor
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii What is "living the dream" to you?
@@AwesomeHairo Very good question.
Broadly speaking I consider all doors are closed to poor people and all doors are open for rich people. Living the dream meaning being rich.
And I draw the line of being rich as being able to afford a complete staff. Chef, driver, trainer, fixer.. you name it. Your staff is working 24/7 to make sure every door is open in front of you.
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii If that is what truly gives you peace. But perhaps not... What if they're compensation for a feeling of lacking? I mean, those are nice to have, but would you be completely fine without them?
All of this video hits home, luckily I can look at parts of it retrospectively and realized a lot of the financial risks I was taking were based on generational bias and not on my current state.
Thank you for defining it for people!
I think what looking at simply income misses is how much a family is spending (hence the inability to afford modest unexpected expenses). It should be something like your total value of assests times your net savings. So someone making a lot of money but buried in debt wouldn't be middle class.
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I chose the trade path, went to a technical highschool, and going to college for free for additional industry certifications. Choose what you like, makes it a whole lot easier.
Amazing video.
Thank you once again for sharing your insights
Having worked in the electric sign trade and mettle smithing trade I can say working class jobs can be a financial trap. Be careful! Does the company you work for consider your future? Joining a union changed my life. Lets talk about bringing back unions. The 1950's middle class didn't happen by accident. It came after union struggles.
One of the reasons I've been very successful in life is that my father belonged to a labor union.
Yep. Regan destroyed the middle class with his union busting and the rest of the world followed suit.
Middle class is where you are able to make an income to comfortably pay for necessities. Working class is when that is not something that is secure. Upper class is when you would never have to work at all to achieve those things through ownership of productive assets.
So in that doctor example they are upper-middle or upper class, as the 7bed mansion is not a necessity and they could likely live comfortably in their area without working again given their net worth.
@@zUJ7EjVDyes, I believe that is far more accurate.
There was another video which I saw which phrased it quite succinctly.
There are those who have to work to survive
and those that don't need to work to survive.
If you can eat, drink, travel without needing to work then you are in the second class.
Thank you for adding the dog at 6:47. Having a pet is a regular expense with some other large costs along the way. Pets are a luxury.