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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

I have been seeing more and more press hits for "elite overproduction" recently. It stinks of an ulterior motive: the middle class has been under withering financial attack for decades and I fear is now weak enough that the overlords smell the opportunity for a frontal assault on the concept itself.

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The middle class has been bifurcating, with more rising into the upper middle class than falling into the working class. Where would you place the 60% or so of the part of middle class that "disappeared" by rising into a higher class? Are they the barbarians at the gate who need to be pushed down by the elites, or are they part of the power structure now?

I draw the lines based on the taxes. Those are a good proxy for true power.

If the bulk of your tax bill comes from special capital gains rates on the fraction of your net-worth-increase that you are ignominiously forced to admit constitutes capital gains, you're an elite. If the bulk of your tax bill comes from a higher income tax tier, you're middle class. If the bulk of your tax bill comes from a lower income tax tier, you're correspondingly lower class.

Needless to say, the principle that taxes reveal true power does not lead me to agree with your premise that 60% of the middle class has disappeared into the upper class.

A non-founder CEO (not a Zuckerberg/Bezos type that owns a large fraction of the equity in the company) that makes $20 million a year will probably be paying regular income taxes on most of their income. I’m not sure you can accurately describe them as middle class.

If this hypothetical CEO indeed pays regular income taxes on $20 million a year, I'd describe them as new money that hasn't yet assimilated into the power structure but will probably figure it out soon enough. With help, if necessary, and at those levels the help will seek them out.

Just to clarify, I'm saying of the small percent of the middle class that disappears every year, slightly more than half rise while slightly less than half fall. I acknowledge it was unclear, but I don't mean that 60% of the entire middle class is now upper middle class.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/squeezing-the-middle-clas...

> the main reason for the shrinking of the middle class (defined in absolute terms) is the increase in the number of people with higher incomes

This is my feeling as well. I might be concerned with "elite overproduction" if the middle class hadn't been shrinking for decades.

Not mutually exclusive, 'elite' never meant middle class, and you used to be able to attain a middle class lifestyle without having to be 'elite'.

I agree, and I think non-elites should also have more access to middle class earnings and status. They don't, and many of them are also frustrated at the lack of opportunities they face. But if I were to say that we have a non-elite overproduction as a result, that would sound stupid, because it is.

Right. That never stopped being the case and should never stop being the case. The concept of "elite overproduction" wants to trick you into thinking it did.

The "elite overproduction" framework begs you to not view the middle class as a group of people who have achieved a balance where they do valuable work and are rewarded with nice things, but as a group of scheming do-nothings who pose a burden to society as they foolishly aspire to elite-hood and repeatedly fail. It's a laser-guided propaganda missile aimed directly at a fault line in populist movements that have been gaining steam recently.

That's an interesting thought, I'm not sure I agree but I'd have to think about it more to differ.

I don't see that in the "elite overproduction" framework. I see a bunch of desperate kids trying to stay in the middle class that their parents supposedly were in. You need an increased level of specialization to stand still.

Let me offer a defense of the meme, because I think you've got the causality backwards. I think that because I'm of an age where, had I gone straight to university after high school, I'd have graduated straight into the teeth of the 2008 recession. So I know how my cohort thinks about plight of the middle class. And almost everyone my age or younger, given a chance to think about it, agrees that the middle class cannot be saved. It's considered a lost cause, and among those who do believe it can be saved, their arguments amount to a blinking confusion and insistence that it must.

Given that people like me have only ever participated in the economy during a time when the middle class was shrinking, what are we to do? Most of us agree, if our future is a world of a few 'haves' and many 'have nots', priority one is to become a 'have'. Even from the most moral stance imaginable, a 'have not' has no ability to help others. Hence, too many of us try to get into the elite. To aim for the middle class is to aim for grinding poverty, and why would anyone?

People write about the stuff they read.

People also promote ideas that benefit their interests.

You sound like a "disgruntled" and "disappointed" "status seeker". /s

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