I think the author is referring to the 9.9 immediately below the top 0.1. Together they make up the top 10%
So wide that what it describes is alien to many of us.
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It can also be driven by lack of affordable housing (even for two-salary, middle-class households). Williamsburg Brooklyn – my old stomping grounds – has for the past three decades seen a massive influx of hipsters, moneyed entrepreneurs, and trust-fund babies who find the housing there more accessible than in Manhattan, with that process driving up housing costs dramatically thereby forcing out the previous population.
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So yeah on that… The spouse and I if you count the house as an asset are probably ‘rich’ not that we can see any of it unless we sell. It was a little highly priced when we moved in nigh on 20 years ago now but not out of reach for both our incomes. Now I am the only one working and at a pay cut currently for a new job. We can afford the mortgage, bills, food, and a few extravagances but not a lot. The neighborhood on the other hand between the housing bubble which didn’t deflate all that much for here and all the new things like a community center, multiplex theater that have come in since and we will be on the end of the new light rail line in a few years our house is ‘worth’ a fuckton. I have no clue what the people who buy up the 600K+ houses that go on the market here do for a living but they sure as hell must be doing a lot better than me to afford whatever the hell the mortgage payment are for that price.
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I think this article with its forecast of eventual destruction is what @bobzwrz means. It’s like an early warning for those in Stewart’s cohort–You can only have it this good for so long before a new ruling class emerges to screw everyone. Get ready to run, you kulaks; the commissars are coming to take your place.
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That sounds like the predictor for retirement-driven relocation (which can also involve having to move out of state)!
Just knowing what I know about life in SoCal (and its particular ethos), a couple, say, in their 30’s (i.e., still young and likely to be earning $ for decades), with each partner pulling down ~$80K minimum, could swing owning a $600K home… but (especially if unforeseen circumstances or children pop into the scene) would still have to be working into their 60s to handle all costs and eventually own the house free and clear. Strategy here is to hope for that $600K ‘burden’ to morph into a $900K golden goose, sell off, then make the move as stated earlier.
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If that was the intent then a more general link to the Russian or French Revolution would have gotten the point across more succinctly. Dekulakisation, in contrast, was a top-down programme of violent expropriation (tinged with ethnic cleansing) against what were perceived as rentiers and speculators that was perpetrated by an authoritarian government resulting from a revolution. The term conveys a specific meaning when deployed, and might be appropriate if applied to the American 0.1%.
As the article points out, the American 9.9% with some exceptions has done an excellent job insulating themselves from being portrayed as “freeloaders” or “parasites”. They work hard in schools and in their careers and their income usually derives from wages and fees and commissions rather than rents or inheritances.
Put another way, the commissars won’t show up for a fire lieutenant and his nurse-anaesthesiologist wife who somehow amass a net worth of $1.2 million, but they will definitely show up for (as an example) some no-value-added middleman who amasses the same amount through profiting off the broken health insurance system that helped inspire the revolution.
Despite this, Stewart says, the 9.9% are increasingly privileged in other ways and if they don’t acknowledge that soon the MAGA resentment and right-wing populism we see now will seem like an ice cream social.
Depending on where you live they might be making full cash purchases or (if they’re speculators or landlords) using other people’s money.
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It may feel like you are just getting by, but that should be instructive when you consider a 1.2 million net worth is pretty close to the lifetime earnings of about a third of the population. (A 50 year work life gives an annual income of 24,000 which is the 31 percentile).
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There’s another group who reads BB (disclaimer: I’m one of them): the educated not-well-off. We live comfortably, and wouldn’t be thrown into a crisis by a broken arm or a major car malfunction, but vacations aren’t generally in the picture. If we have a mortgage, it’s not in a gentrified area; our cars run until they can’t be fixed, we don’t have the latest and greatest, and buy secondhand most of the time. If we have kids, they probably don’t go to a private or charter school without a lot of scrimping and saving. If married, both adults work.
eta: I think this is what used to be called ‘middle class’.
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No doubt. There are also well-off people who choose to live la vie Boheme, shabby genteel types, Fussell’s “Category X”, etc. reading the article and BB. Probably underpaid and underemployed poor educated people, too. The resentful right-wing populist followers Stewart describes would lump all of them, including much of his 9.9%, into the category of the hated “elites” for no other reason than that they’re educated. Meanwhile they make a shady con man real estate developer worth hundreds of millions into their hero.
There was a relatively brief time in this country when you didn’t need a college education to be middle class. This is in part what drives so much resentment on the part of the Know Nothings described by Stewart, even though they spent three decades actively cheering on and voting for the agents of their own demise.
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[citation needed]
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Hey, I was just trying to be kind to “the best, really the classiest billionaire in history.”
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Goes to show that it’s the parents, not the school, that makes the difference. My wife is a teacher in a poor rural Kentucky district. Time and time again, the strongest predictor of success for kids is the attitude of the parents, not their income or the school district itself. Parents trying to get kids into a good district are usually the same type of parents that are involved enough that their kids would do ok anywhere.
My personal experience mirrors this. Went to a high school where graduation rates were about 60%, teen pregnancy was about 25%, and college admissions averaged below 5%. My classmates bragged about becoming 4th generation welfare. Which, perversely, was an income on par with what my single mom made working for the school. But I made it out of there and into college because of mom’s expectations … not the school district.
So where do my kids go to school? They ride with my wife to her school one county over. Because, yeah, after parents and their kids, the next factor for success is the school. It’s a poor hick school that decided that’s no excuse.
Later, they will go to high school in a different district because, frankly, it’s hard to offer much class variety at smaller school. My son wants to be an engineer, so (contrary to what most people think) he needs to take shop classes.
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Bourgious scum. Enforcing Victorian sentimental values which put safety and care of life ahead of revolutionary justice.
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As far as I know, there’s no evidence to support this on any large scale, perhaps because attitude is near impossible to quantify.
However, there is a huge body of evidence that shows parental income is an extremely accurate predictor of academic success, and that it is becoming more accurate over time as the public school system continues to economically stratify.
It’s kind of chicken-and-egg, though, since the same people who push themselves to achieve tend to push their kids, too. And I suspect if you looked at the very small minority of cases that don’t follow the norm, you’d find some very determined parents.
I could not possibly agree more. I made my son learn digital logic so he could be a better computer programmer!
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Heaven forbid anyone suggests raising their taxes, after all these are job creators whose wealth will trickle down for the benefit of the “good” members of the 90% who are willing to work hard and someday become rich, too! /s
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Sad how?
Sad that you can’t live wherever you want and also get your superior kids into a superior school?
Sad that privilege has limits?
It is pretty subjective. But it does seem that the parents/guardians who show up for more than disciplinary meetings have kids that behave, pay attention in class, participate in class, and get stuff done. If nothing else because my wife can say “I have your grandma’s phone number. You want me to call her right now?”
And no doubt things are stratifying. I can’t fault parents. Why wouldn’t you seek an advantage? Maybe you could fault them for complicity in a system that lets them seek advantages. But again, it’s really hard to convince people to want to change the status quo when it appears to be in their favor. Calling them names (i.e. aristocracy) solidifies that position by perpetuating a them vs us confrontation theme.
When it comes to improving the world, we’re all us. There is no them.
(did I just kill a grammar Nazi?)
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I know I’ll probably get flagged for being off-topic, but why would you need to scrimp and save for a charter school? I’ve never heard of one with tuition. My kids went to a great Charter (nonprofit and Union contract) because we literally won the Lottery. The admission Lottery that is.
Re gentrification: it seems even fewer people will admit to being a gentrifier than admit to being wealthy! It’s a stupid stigma, no one should be looked down on for moving where they can afford.
From what I’ve seen, some charter schools demand a lot of volunteer time from parents (this is the secret sauce that makes a lot of them more successful than traditional public schools). Getting time off work has a cost.
There also seem to be more “not mandatory but, yeah, mandatory” activities requiring additional fees at these schools. I assume the cost of uniforms might also factor in for poorer people if no subsidies are available.
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