Comment by vparikh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vparikh | Hacker News Reader

The problem that these people are experiencing is that they are in a very special privileged position (weather through their own work or through inheritance), yet they realize that most people they will interact with will never attain their status.

It is not about hard work, or "bootstrapping" yourself. Its all about the luck. And they have been lucky. They are reaping the benefits of their luck at a disproportionate rate then the these other people. And they aren't doing anything about it.

It is ridiculous that people who make $250K or more a year (and I don't care where you live) think that they are "middle class". Bullshit. You are wealthy. Most other people are not. The quicker you admit to it - the more the economic disparity becomes obvious and something has to be done about it.

In Inequality for All—a 2013 documentary with Robert Reich in which he argued that income inequality is the defining issue for the United States—Reich states that 95% of economic gains went to the top 1% net worth (HNWI) since 2009 when the recovery allegedly started. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_for_All)

By continuing to state that they are 'normal' or 'middle class' or 'frugal' - they are really trying to convince themselves that they are not the on the "taking" part of society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_for_All)

"The 400 richest Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 150 million combined. "

http://www.investopedia.com/news/how-much-income-puts-you-to...

"According to statistical data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the top 1% had an adjusted gross income of $465,626 or higher for the 2014 tax year. "

People earning about $250K/yr also pay the highest income tax rate and are exempted from means-tested welfare programs.

Yes, the upper middle class do quite well, often after spending a lot of money and opportunity cost on long-term education, as well as working long hours, and they pay (and vote in favor of) substantial taxes, and donate kilobucks to charities.

Meanwhile, the Very High Net Worth cohort collect far more, and more from investment gains not labor, and fool the public into blaming the upper middle class HNWI

> Meanwhile, the Very High Net Worth cohort collect far more, and more from investment gains not labor, and fool the public into blaming the upper middle class HNWI

I think Thomas Piketty's proposal at the end of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" for a progressive global tax on wealth, not income, could be a very positive thing.

One of Piketty's points was that even putting in place a wealth tax with a pretty negligible tax rate would require governments to establish the necessary bureaucracy for collecting data on the wealth of their citizens and residents, and a few years afterwards there would be a lot more data for citizens, academics and policy makers to use when discussing and designing taxation policy.

> It is ridiculous that people who make $250K or more a year (and I don't care where you live) think that they are "middle class". Bullshit. You are wealthy.

If you are making $250k/year through a job, and you depend on that money for daily life, you are not wealthy. You are a high-income earner. You can kind-of put your kids through private school and maybe even get a rent-a-maid more often than lower-earning folks, but if your yearly spend is close to $250k/year, you're not wealthy.

If you are making $25M/year through a job, and you depend on that money for daily life, you are still not wealthy. You'll be classified as an ultra high net worth individual by banks and money managers and qualify for a lot of cool rich people shit. You'll probably trade American or Delta for NetJets or Delta Private Planes (a benchmark a lot of folks in this article used as "elite snobbery," which it really isn't in many cases), or you'll make the mistake of buying your own jet, but if your yearly spend is >$25M/year, you're not wealthy.

Why? If you lose your job in both cases, you are screwed.

Wealthy is never having to work for your money because your money works for you. Having a high-income helps towards getting to wealthy, but you can also just buy more expensive shit with that income and just stay high-income.

The way I see it: you're wealthy when you can do, wear or say nearly whatever the fuck you want and not worry about your money/lifestyle going away.

>If you are making {$25M|$250k}/year through a job, and you depend on that money for daily life

Here's the thing: the second half of this snippet doesn't make any sense. No one needs that much money to get along with their life. Living frugal is precisely that: requiring much less expenditure than you make. It's entirely possible to live on $40k in expenses per year. Many, many people do that every day with $40k or even lower.

How can one depend on so much expenditure? There's no reason. That amount of money minus absolutely vital expenses calculated according to minimum market rates for healthcare, housing, and food will always be more than enough to retire on very early if saved wisely.

If you set yourself up to be screwed even after making that much money, you're making very poor decisions.

You don't need that much money per year, but I'd be very happy with that level of income (and I'm getting closer)!

>The way I see it: you're wealthy when you can do, wear or say nearly whatever the fuck you want and not worry about your money/lifestyle going away.

That is not the point I was trying to make. The point is, people in that income bracket have an easy time living a good life AND saving.

If you make $250K a year, you are fully capable of being financially independent very quickly. The average family in the US lives on 50K a year. So lets double that - you use 100K a year. That still leaves $150. Lets say your taxes are 50K (20% which is about right) you still have 100k a year in Savings. That is twice the incoming in savings of the average US family. In 10 years you will have 1 million in savings (not to mention the other assets you ave created over the years).

If you can't bring yourself to live on that budget, you really need to take a good deep look at yourself and your priorities in life.

Putting kids in private schools and getting a rent-a-maid are not requirements to a good life.

If you have to work 2k hours to make the 250k each year you aren't wealthy.

Yet.

If you can save and invest half of that eventually you might be.

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