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Comment by embedding-shape | Hacker News Reader

Most workers neither have pension funds or "personal investments", what rose-tinted clouds you live on? Most workers are dirt poor and can barely survive the current month, some are lucky that the government forces them to build their pension, but it's such a tiny part it'd be unfair to call it "capital owning".

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And so we've arrived broadly back at white and blue collars after all.

How many workers are exposed to the stock market does actually seem a genuinely interesting question. I'm not sure who would be keeping reliable statistics, but the English-speaking world might be hovering up at around 40%-50% households [0].

Seems a bit lopsided though; I wonder if they are only considering selected stock markets or something.

[0] https://hellosafe.ca/en/investing/broker/stock-ownership

Maybe that's a reasonable definition of white vs blue collar worker?

If you have enough excess income that you can build wealth in assets/investments until you become financially independent and no longer dependent on selling your labour, you're white collar.

If you don't, so you're condemned to work forever (apart from state support), you're blue collar.

White vs blue collar has always been about office/intellectual workers vs non-office/non-intellectual ones.

It has never been about how much money you make.

The overwhelming majority of self employed professionals I know (electricians, mechanics, plumbers) make way more than the average white collar worker (southern Europe).

Just to make it clearer: my SO, which works in governance of a major italian bank, makes way less than her brother painting walls.

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