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Upper class, middle class, lower class

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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby PrairieMule » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 20:27:03

Upper, Middle, and Lower class lifestyle have absolutley nothing to do with true wealth. I spent three analyzing years credit reports daily at my last job. The ratios of the allmighty FICO reveals everything. Show me a a textbook upper middle class 50 year old guy driving a Porche and a million dollar house. Probably makes 6 figures too. Then Mr.FICO reveals 3 million dollars in consumer/real estate debt that will never be paid off in their lifetime. The foreclosure rates on properties in the "nice part of town" don't lie.

We have become a nation where everyone has big hats but no cattle.
If you give a man a fish you will have kept him from hunger for a day. If you teach a man to fish he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Tyler_JC » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 20:39:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrairieMule', 'U')pper, Middle, and Lower class lifestyle have absolutley nothing to do with true wealth. I spent three analyzing years credit reports daily at my last job. The ratios of the allmighty FICO reveals everything. Show me a a textbook upper middle class 50 year old guy driving a Porche and a million dollar house. Probably makes 6 figures too. Then Mr.FICO reveals 3 million dollars in consumer/real estate debt that will never be paid off in their lifetime. The foreclosure rates on properties in the "nice part of town" don't lie.

We have become a nation where everyone has big hats but no cattle.


Show me somebody earning around the 6-figure mark who can afford a Porche and a million dollar house.

$500,000 in mortgage debt financed at 6% over 30 years is over $36k in mortgage payments in year.

Take out another third of the income for taxes...

And no Porche for Mr. Six Figures. :)

The average person defines rich as 20% more than they make right now.

Consumption Treadmill, anyone?
Last edited by Tyler_JC on Sat 17 Nov 2007, 00:25:55, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby PrairieMule » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 20:56:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrairieMule', 'U')pper, Middle, and Lower class lifestyle have absolutley nothing to do with true wealth. I spent three analyzing years credit reports daily at my last job. The ratios of the allmighty FICO reveals everything. Show me a a textbook upper middle class 50 year old guy driving a Porche and a million dollar house. Probably makes 6 figures too. Then Mr.FICO reveals 3 million dollars in consumer/real estate debt that will never be paid off in their lifetime. The foreclosure rates on properties in the "nice part of town" don't lie.

We have become a nation where everyone has big hats but no cattle.


Show me somebody earning around the 6-figure mark who can afford a Porche and a million dollar house.

$500,000 in mortgage debt financed at 6% over 30 years is over $36k in mortgage payments in year.

Take out another third of the income for taxes...

And no Porche for Mr. Six Figures. :)

The average person defines rich as $20,000 more than they make right now.

Consumption Treadmill, anyone?


Now I did say "Drives a Porche". Mr FICO report reveals a 36 mo F(lease) of $799 a month with a $50K balance. The underwriters who played fast and loose at credit company just saw the 780-800 Fico score. Why should they give a shit what the ratios are? Or if it's repoed in 13 months? Sorry Katlin, braces will have to wait, spend money to make money.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby lawnchair » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 22:26:43

Re-read Fussell recently myself. Interesting read, although it has nothing to do with the America I know about (small to mid-sized towns in Kansas and the Dakotas).

First, the living is *cheap*. Functional 2-bedroom non-trailer house? $30 or $40k. Trailers way cheaper than that. Homelessness is unknown, and lots of chronically unemployed n'er-do-wells own their homes.

One different group we have is the high-high-prole class. I'm near a nuclear plant, but also some skilled oilfield workers and chemists for a home products factory count in here. These are highly-trained, very smart guys who have no trappings of "class" in the city-folk sense. These are the well-paid engineers who chew tobacco, watch a lot of Springer, and just want to go deer hunting.

The doctors don't seem nearly as socially competitive as in other places. It's not like there's some private school they could send their kids to. I assume it's self-selection, since those who did care would open practice in a city.

Teachers and ministers make up the sorta-upper-mid as we have it. They're really the golf players around here. Both get paid basically the same as teachers or ministers elsewhere, but again, life is cheap. Since they get paid by outside money, they don't make that much less than bankers or lawyers around here who don't.

There is basically no merchant class left. Wal-Mart decimated it.

Capital, of course wins out. The out-of-sight-rich are "farmers". Not what you think of a family farmers, but a few guys who, after generations, have inherited huge tracts of land. That which they farm, they hire migrant planting crews, aerial herbicides, irrigation repairmen, and migrant cutting crews. They make their real money on government farm subsidies.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Pretorian » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 23:40:16

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I')f you make 250,000 a year and if you can't save $125,000 a year then you are a pathetic idiot. If you can make $250,000 over ten years and you don't have one hell of a nest egg saved then you deserve whatever fate befalls you.
spoken by someone who has never made 250,000 a year.

If you lived in California or Arizona, all that money would have been eaten up by the inflated home prices. The average, average mind you home was selling for well over half a million bucks. Furnish that sucker buy a couple of average cars like an accord for 50,000 thousand dollars, pay insurance and other expenses and it would be hard to save any money at all.

[/quote

When I was making $500-550 a month, in the city which was rated by these stupid ratings as something very expensive/first ten/bla-bla, I was saving $250-350 a month. Haven't missed a thing I needed, plus of course beer, movies, restaurants 1-3 times a week and an occasional prostitute. Next.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby jasonraymondson » Fri 16 Nov 2007, 23:50:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I')f you make 250,000 a year and if you can't save $125,000 a year then you are a pathetic idiot. If you can make $250,000 over ten years and you don't have one hell of a nest egg saved then you deserve whatever fate befalls you.
spoken by someone who has never made 250,000 a year.

If you lived in California or Arizona, all that money would have been eaten up by the inflated home prices. The average, average mind you home was selling for well over half a million bucks. Furnish that sucker buy a couple of average cars like an accord for 50,000 thousand dollars, pay insurance and other expenses and it would be hard to save any money at all.

[/quote

When I was making $500-550 a month, in the city which was rated by these stupid ratings as something very expensive/first ten/bla-bla, I was saving $250-350 a month. Haven't missed a thing I needed, plus of course beer, movies, restaurants 1-3 times a week and an occasional prostitute. Next.



His little rant about how it is just to hard to live on $250,000 reminded me of some pro football players when confronted about make $10,000,000.00 per season screamed at the interviewer "Do you know how much insurance on a mother fucking Ferrari costs."

Eli showed his true colors there.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Twilight » Sat 17 Nov 2007, 00:06:15

So what, it's all relative. We're all closer to that than we are to the next 5 billion people on this planet. Hell, imagine the income disparity within the top 1%. The horror. Yet it's no different to the discussion we're having. On internet = rich. How securely rich, that is another question.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Tyler_JC » Sat 17 Nov 2007, 00:28:10

Money Versus Happiness.

Image

Sure, there are happy poor people. But there aren't any miserable rich people.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby TheDude » Sat 17 Nov 2007, 04:33:08

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'L')atin phrases to prove you are a smart drunk?


Sure. Classy too.

Wow, Saudis are happier than the Germans and French? So we don't need to worry about them blowing up refineries? Or did they restrict the polling to princes?

Many reports say workers in the US are putting in longer hours now.

From the WSJ:

Image

Admittedly they are often trying to keep from falling off that Consumption Treadmill. A good sized energy shock should short out the motor, thank God.

My gut feeling is that TPTB want to go hog wild on the materialist craze to bring things to an end that much faster, getting that much richer/powerful in the process.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he out-of-sight-rich are "farmers".


You mean someone like JR Simplot? He's the 214th richest person in America, with $3.6 billion. He was also pictured in Fast Food Nation sitting on a huge pile of potatoes. Or someone not quite so filthy rich? Cousins of mine do quite well farming for a lot of formerly independent people who can't hack it anymore; dunno if they're on subsidies though. What you're describing sounds like the ag version of Reagan's welfare queen.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Tyler_JC » Sat 17 Nov 2007, 23:39:14

The Dude,

The people of Saudi Arabia are happier than the French because their expectations aren't so darn high.

Saudis are very religious (for better or worse) while the French aren't particularly religious (again, for better or worse).

The result is that the Saudis feel as though life as a purpose and that the suffering on Earth is acceptable because of the rewards in Heaven.

I'd be willing to bet that the average French peasant in the 1607 was happier than the average French middle class worker today.

Not that we have reliable polling from the 17th Century... :)
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Ayoob » Sun 18 Nov 2007, 00:36:53

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrairieMule', 'U')pper, Middle, and Lower class lifestyle have absolutley nothing to do with true wealth. I spent three analyzing years credit reports daily at my last job. The ratios of the allmighty FICO reveals everything. Show me a a textbook upper middle class 50 year old guy driving a Porche and a million dollar house. Probably makes 6 figures too. Then Mr.FICO reveals 3 million dollars in consumer/real estate debt that will never be paid off in their lifetime. The foreclosure rates on properties in the "nice part of town" don't lie.

We have become a nation where everyone has big hats but no cattle.


I think this post really nails it. The six figure income person you're talking about is really part of the prole. He has no wealth, so he's the uppermost part of the lower class.

Middle class starts with ownership of something that increases in value over time, pays a current income, and is growing. It's worth consideration that the largest portion of millionaires in the US (as of about ten years ago before the RE boom/dollar plunge) were all owners of real estate who rented out to somebody else. A lot of them made their money in commercial RE and some did it with residential.

Once you own your 36 unit building in a working class neighborhood with low crime and high employment, you're sitting pretty. The checks come in, the bills go out, the repairs are made, and you have an appreciating asset that pays you monthly income.

Another way to go is to own a couple of Burger Kings, a liquor store, and a couple of car washes. If you have yourself diversified into a couple businesses like that, you're doing pretty well. You can take a month-long vacation and not miss a nickel. The attorney who makes $400K a year and has $390K in bills is no further ahead than the guy who makes $40K and puts $10K away for himself.

Middle class is defined by ownership of an asset that increases in value over time and pays a current income.

An upper class person owns so much that it's nearly impossible to end up broke. Look at Paris Hilton. She's upper class. She has so much money tied up in different businesses that she can swing from dick to dick like Jane of the Jungle and walk around hammered all day long and the money presses just keep printing enough to keep her in little dogs, coke, and limos.

She will never go broke and probably couldn't outspend herself if she tried. I understand that she owns a cologne company, a chewing gum company, one or more clothing companies, and I don't know what else. Someone that wealthy has people constantly knocking on her door with one investment idea after another. I would be very surprised if she didn't have an attorney and a CPA whose job is just to review business proposals for her.

The guy who works the oilfield, chews tobacco, and just wants to hunt... lower class. Nothing wrong with that, but that's where he is.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby TheDude » Sun 18 Nov 2007, 05:50:31

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'T')he Dude,

The people of Saudi Arabia are happier than the French because their expectations aren't so darn high.

Saudis are very religious (for better or worse) while the French aren't particularly religious (again, for better or worse).

The result is that the Saudis feel as though life as a purpose and that the suffering on Earth is acceptable because of the rewards in Heaven.

I'd be willing to bet that the average French peasant in the 1607 was happier than the average French middle class worker today.

Not that we have reliable polling from the 17th Century... :)


You'll pick up the same inference from reading about rural people in the early 20th century. Poor people led a hard life but had community and culture for emotional sustenance, if that's the correct phrase. Read about the joy of the working class in John Seymour's books and learn about self-sufficiency to boot.

Religion was a part of that but far from the whole. Your young Saud full of seething resentment looking forward to a covey of maidens in the great beyond - is he "happy"? Or typical?

Another curious thing I'm picking up from Fussell's book is that the Top-Out-Of-Sight Upper Class he describes could be said to have Powered Down - rather than constantly buying new junk they make do with threadbare clothes and junky old cars - and he mentions a magazine article profiling the houses of the ultra wealthy where you only see one TV out of 100 homes. Whereas he says the lower the caste the more likely the TV is on round the clock. The TOOS UC also eschew washing machines - why buy an appliance when you can hire a servant? Hrmm. Should we frame Conservation as Class Warfare?

Not that we're doing very well with Paris's excesses, or Gore's jetsetting. Those people aren't really Top-Out-Of-Sight though.

Curious too that I'm the only one wanting to discuss Class in terms of behavior, as opposed to material gain. You guys have nothing to lose but your chains!
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby vision-master » Sun 18 Nov 2007, 11:53:39

I'm lower class, but time rich! :cheers:
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby erb » Tue 20 Nov 2007, 16:35:44

shit any of you well to do'ers want to help a brother out? or maybe you know someone with a buisness in south western ontario (niagara) that could give me a job

my wife and I moved out of toronto back near our home town, I make 35k a year and most 90% of it goes to bills/mortgage/food. my wife has started a wed design/marketing company its not very profitable yet but i'm happy she's trying and its something she likes. http://www.dcdigital.ca

i dont want to be rich at all i'd just like to have a job i enjoy and not worry about not being able to keep our house warm and food in the fridge, some savings or investment would be nice i think we have about 5k saved... right now its prety much hand to mouth. i'd be happy working the fields in a farm if it paid 40k ;-)

edit - oh yea, I graduated college and have a diploma in graphic design/marketing but am educated enough i can learn and do prety much anyjob short of serious engineering hehe
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby Ayoob » Wed 21 Nov 2007, 03:45:02

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'I')'m lower class, but time rich! :cheers:


Nothing wrong with that. I'm in the same boat, and don't expect to become middle class any time soon.

You never know, though. I've got plans, and they're flexible. I might end up middle class if I'm not careful.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby culicomorpha » Wed 21 Nov 2007, 06:38:52

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Fussell's X class.

Seems he found a category of people who escaped the trappings of class and status displays. I forget all the details, but it included people who are idiosyncratic and who have behavior patterns more in line with the top out of sight rich, yet they generally are not wealthy. They have eclectic interests and broad intellectual pursuits, and are often artists of one form or another. They don't really care about status, seeing it more as a human curiosity than grist for the mill. They like cheap wine. haha I remember that one.. :lol:

I read the book years ago and thought I was best described as upper lower by birth, but X by inclination. As time goes on, I seem to be going even more that way. Probably a lot of people here are X class in some ways.

Great comments in this thread... Class issues seem so central to so many problems. It's great to see the discussion.
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Re: Upper class, middle class, lower class

Unread postby culicomorpha » Wed 21 Nov 2007, 06:56:53

Pioneering Study Shows Richest Two Percent Own Half World Wealth

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Pioneering Study Shows Richest Two Percent Own Half World Wealth.

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER).

The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken also reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total.

In contrast, the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth.

The research finds that assets of $2,200 per adult placed a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution in the year 2000.

To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world required $61,000 in assets, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1%, a group which — with 37 million members worldwide — is far from an exclusive club.
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