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Comment by jorvi | Hacker News Reader

.... which inevitably turns flying / vacationing far abroad back into something exclusively for upper class people, which is easy to advocate for when you work in the tech salary bubble.

If we're gonna slash subsidies and introduce carbon tax on flights, it needs to hit corporate and expensive tickets as hard as possible whilst sheltering cheaper tickets as much as possible.

There's so many things HN proposes should be taxed / excised extra: cars, flights, gas, soda, alcohol, meat, rare metals in devices, batteries, electricity consumption etc etc.

They aren't bad ideas (hell, I agree fully with the sentiment of most of said ideas) but it's so easy to be blind to the fact that you'd basically be turning daily life into a two caste system where only the rich are allowed vices.

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Hmm - if you have super rich you have inequality be definition - don't know why you are focusing on flying - what about super yachts or effective immunity to prosecution?

If you don't like inequality then there are other ways to deal with that - rather than using it as an excuse to keep flying.

I do however agree that a frequent flyer tax would be a good start, though be aware that a lot of airline routes are effectively funded by business class seats, so you might find flight frequencies dropping - but that's the point right?

> .... which inevitably turns flying / vacationing far abroad back into something exclusively for upper class people

Is it not already primarily upper-class people vacationing far abroad?

> Is it not already primarily upper-class people vacationing far abroad?

I don’t think of someone who makes $400k+ a year working as a software developer as necessarily upper class. In my view, upper class means someone who is financially independent and can afford to not work for money for a year or longer without a change of lifestyle.

Only on HN will you find someone seriously arguing that a salary of over 400K USD a year does not make you upper class. Sure, you can't afford to stop working for the rest of your life, but with a salary like that you're only a few years away from being able to if you wanted.

> Only on HN will you find someone seriously arguing that a salary of over 400K USD a year does not make you upper class. Sure, you can't afford to stop working for the rest of your life, but with a salary like that you're only a few years away from being able to if you wanted.

Sorry but I think we need to be real. We are not the middle class. We are poor working class people. Most of the 10% is squarely the middle class. I'd imagine a big chunk of the 1% is middle class because one medical crisis could likely bankrupt them. Look at the wealth distribution graph.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Wealth_d...

400k a year is not "poor working class" by any definition of the word. The median salary in America is 45,000. "Poor working class" is significantly below that. 400k is upper middle class, and if you've not managed to save up for a rainy day on those kinds of wages, it really is your own fault. Actually poor people manage it.

People from the Bay Area really need to get out more. Source: I come from the actual poor working class.

I meant to say those making 400k are the middle class. I don't make anywhere near that much.

400k is not "middle class" -it's upper (upper upper) middles, and yes, there is a huge difference. It's literally top 1% of income!

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/which-incom...

I'm all for fighting inequalities but the way you frame this argument is frankly obscene to me. The average salary in the US is about $60k/year. Worldwide average is hard to establish precisely due to the many factors to consider but it must be around $10k to $20k.

Saying that you're part of "poor working class people" when you earn in a year what a significant number of your compatriots wouldn't earn in a decade is a ridiculous thing to say.

I commend you for being outraged at the insane inequalities in our civilization and I largely share your concerns but you really need to work on framing that better IMO.

A well-paid peasant is still a peasant.

Remember when the big tech co's were conspiring together against their own employees?

"Apple and Google's wage-fixing cartel involved dozens more companies, over one million employees"

https://pando.com/2014/03/22/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage...

You're just buying into "The Man"'s propaganda to keep the working class divided, yo.

(It reminds me of a joke from Futurama. Leela gets a bunch of valuable stock and says, "Wow! I suddenly have an opinion about the capital gains tax!")

You need to spent a year of two being really middle class in the US.

I wasn't completely serious just then, eh?

Anyway, I am "really middle class".

Heck, I was homeless for about four or five years.

When poor serfs complain about less-poor serfs I like to point out that it's the lords they should be grumbling about, if anyone.

The existence of the mega-rich doesn't make the "merely wealthy" middle-class.

Here's a bit from the Washington Post in 2017 talking about the difficulty of defining what is "middle class" in the modern era. They arrive at an umbrella of $35k-$122k. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/25/is-10...

No amount of salary makes you upper class when the class boundary is defined by having passive income sufficient to meet all expenses.

A salary of 2x expenses will put you in the upper class within 22 years (with average market returns), and passive income will fully replace the salary within another 8 years, but until then, that's still middle class.

Basically, if you can afford to invest 1/6 or more of your income, you can make it to upper class within your lifetime, and still have time left to enjoy it.

I make $20k-$30k/year, and though I don't fly very often, I do enjoy traveling and seeing new places. I have flown to quite a number of destinations and I'm definitely not upper class. I would fly still more if ticket prices continue coming down, though I'll want window seats.

I guess the question is: if it got more expensive, would that mainly result in people no longer being able to vacation abroad, or just not doing it because they don't think it's worth the money, even though they can afford it?

If it's primarily $400k+ software developers who currently vacation abroad, then that wouldn't be that strong of an argument against removing the tax incentives.

I know it has some pretty poor "optics" but I like what I've heard of carbon pricing that Canada. From what I've heard, there is a decent allowance for every household and it starts to cost money when you go over the allowance. The allowances are set so "most households will get more back than they pay as a result of pollution pricing". https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Ex... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada

I am not opposed to a more progressive income tax. In fact, I firmly support higher income taxes on everyone. I could never run for political office in the US because how will I ever walk up to a constituent and say "I want to drastically increase your taxes?" and at the same time walk up to public sector employees and say, "I want to take away your benefits".

Yes, we need to address climate change. However, I think we also need to encourage travel so we can facilitate movement of people and ideas across the world. Not everyone who travels will change the world but I'm sure it can't hurt.

> In my view, upper class means someone who is financially independent and can afford to not work for money for a year or longer without a change of lifestyle.

Someone making $400k/year should easily accrue the savings to do that.

If they're not after a year, they need to re-evaluate spending habits.

> There's so many things HN proposes should be taxed

I think you got my statement backward. I was advocating for the removal of taxes, since AFAIK subsidies generally utilize tax money. Maybe as you suggest, "hit corporate and expensive tickets hard" to subsidize the flying for the poor (economy) classes (which I'm assuming already happens).

> whilst sheltering cheaper tickets as much as possible.

I'm sorry, why? I don't see being able to travel across the world at high environmental cost to be some god given right. It's not sustainable, especially as use of long-distance travel continues to grow with no end in sight. Make it expensive for everybody, instead of subsidizing it for whatever group you have a bias for.

I still can't wrap my head around the prominence of this idea that the only way to solve our problems as a species is to live worse lives and to be more disconnected from others.

Whether "it" is international travel, point-to-point personal transportation, or whatever, make it sustainable for everybody, instead of criticizing it for whatever group you have a bias against.

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