Seriously. My partner and I are millionaires. We’re almost 40 and have a net worth just shy of $2M. We’ve a couple of DINKS. We’re both engineers, are pretty good with numbers, and understand compound interest. We got on the property ladder pretty early. I bought my first townhouse in 2012 pretty much right at the bottom of the housing market. We’ve moved twice since then and have benefited from the full rise in house prices.
Our net worth is a little under $2M. About $10k of that is checking and savings. Another $80k in a taxable brokerage account as an emergency fund. $450k in home equity. The rest is in retirement accounts such as 401ks and IRAs.
We are working class. The closest either of us have ever come to hiring someone is when we’ve hired a plumber or electrician to fix something at our home. I’ve technically owned a business, but just for my own freelance tutoring work. And the closest either of us have ever come to being a landlord was when I had a couple of roommates at that first townhouse I bought.
We’re doing very well; we have no complaints. And while we’ve achieved some modest amount of wealth, it’s not ultimately about living large or in luxury. We live well below our means. We recently bought our first new car in many years, a new Toyota Corolla. It replaced a 15 year old Corolla that my partner bought new. We buy affordable reliable vehicles and drive them til the wheels fall off. I still get most of my clothes at thrift stores. We have a house worth over $600k, but our mortgage payment is just $2k, and that’s on a 15-year note. A few years ago when I was in grad school, I was literally a millionaire who road the bus.
But again, we’re not trying to get rich for the sake of getting rich. We don’t want to own some huge company and lord over a room full of workers. We’re not trying to hoard the largest possible amount of money we can. We don’t view wealth as a lifetime high score. It’s simply a means to achieve stability and safety. We’re on the path to early retirement. We hope to retire by the time we’re 50. We need to save up a couple of million not because we want to live in luxury, but simply because it’s the only way to have a decent stable and safe retirement in this capitalist hellscape we live in. In a world with universal healthcare and a universal basic income, we would have no need for millions in retirement savings. If my partner and I each brought in say, $20k a year from UBI? If we had a paid off house and also didn’t have to worry about healthcare? We could live quite well off just that $40k per year.
I’m a millionaire and I support much higher taxes on millionaires. I do this because ultimately the point for us for having a couple of million is not to have a couple of million. The point is to have safety and stability in our lives. And the more secure the social safety net, the less the need to cover those needs privately.
Petit bourgeois? Our money is all in our house and in retirement assets that are just America’s poor excuse for a pension system. If we’re petit bourgeois, so is every retired school teacher that’s worked long enough to earn a pension.
Petit bourgeois refers to people that have to work but also control their own means of production. Classically this meant artisans, tradesmen, shop owners, etc. People who aren’t having their labor exploited, but also still have to work.
In our careers, we’ve almost always worked regular salary jobs. We’re not immune to job loss. We do not own the means of production. We’ve had our labor surplus siphoned off by employers our whole careers.
That’s the whole point of this discussion. Even most millionaires are just working class people trying to achieve a little bit of stability in their lives.
You can have whatever definition you want. But for me, working class means just that - a person that has earned their bread through the work of their own hands, not through the exploitation of the labor of others, through rent-seeking, or from inheritance.
I’m sure you can cite plenty of theory, but frankly, I don’t care. I prefer a definition of the term centered in lived experience. If you go off raw wealth, you just end up classifying entire nations as working class or bourgeois, at which point the term loses all meaning.
Oh, you’re just a racist garbage person. Xenophobia does not become OK simply because the target are Americans.
Well, if I guess if I’m irredeemably evil simply because of where I happened to be born, then you have no room to complain. I’m just doing what I was born to do, apparently. I’ll disregard your words, because they’re irrelevant to an evil monster like myself.
You are saying that capitalists own the means of production, while “little capitalists” don’t.
I don’t think its useful to lump in high-income professional work with the low end of capital accumulation. The sums may overlap, but the actual class interests don’t, at least not entirely. Good analysis should recognize the distinctions here.
Seriously. My partner and I are millionaires. We’re almost 40 and have a net worth just shy of $2M. We’ve a couple of DINKS. We’re both engineers, are pretty good with numbers, and understand compound interest. We got on the property ladder pretty early. I bought my first townhouse in 2012 pretty much right at the bottom of the housing market. We’ve moved twice since then and have benefited from the full rise in house prices.
Our net worth is a little under $2M. About $10k of that is checking and savings. Another $80k in a taxable brokerage account as an emergency fund. $450k in home equity. The rest is in retirement accounts such as 401ks and IRAs.
We are working class. The closest either of us have ever come to hiring someone is when we’ve hired a plumber or electrician to fix something at our home. I’ve technically owned a business, but just for my own freelance tutoring work. And the closest either of us have ever come to being a landlord was when I had a couple of roommates at that first townhouse I bought.
We’re doing very well; we have no complaints. And while we’ve achieved some modest amount of wealth, it’s not ultimately about living large or in luxury. We live well below our means. We recently bought our first new car in many years, a new Toyota Corolla. It replaced a 15 year old Corolla that my partner bought new. We buy affordable reliable vehicles and drive them til the wheels fall off. I still get most of my clothes at thrift stores. We have a house worth over $600k, but our mortgage payment is just $2k, and that’s on a 15-year note. A few years ago when I was in grad school, I was literally a millionaire who road the bus.
But again, we’re not trying to get rich for the sake of getting rich. We don’t want to own some huge company and lord over a room full of workers. We’re not trying to hoard the largest possible amount of money we can. We don’t view wealth as a lifetime high score. It’s simply a means to achieve stability and safety. We’re on the path to early retirement. We hope to retire by the time we’re 50. We need to save up a couple of million not because we want to live in luxury, but simply because it’s the only way to have a decent stable and safe retirement in this capitalist hellscape we live in. In a world with universal healthcare and a universal basic income, we would have no need for millions in retirement savings. If my partner and I each brought in say, $20k a year from UBI? If we had a paid off house and also didn’t have to worry about healthcare? We could live quite well off just that $40k per year.
I’m a millionaire and I support much higher taxes on millionaires. I do this because ultimately the point for us for having a couple of million is not to have a couple of million. The point is to have safety and stability in our lives. And the more secure the social safety net, the less the need to cover those needs privately.
deleted by creator
Petit bourgeois? Our money is all in our house and in retirement assets that are just America’s poor excuse for a pension system. If we’re petit bourgeois, so is every retired school teacher that’s worked long enough to earn a pension.
Petit bourgeois refers to people that have to work but also control their own means of production. Classically this meant artisans, tradesmen, shop owners, etc. People who aren’t having their labor exploited, but also still have to work.
In our careers, we’ve almost always worked regular salary jobs. We’re not immune to job loss. We do not own the means of production. We’ve had our labor surplus siphoned off by employers our whole careers.
That’s the whole point of this discussion. Even most millionaires are just working class people trying to achieve a little bit of stability in their lives.
deleted by creator
That’s true for a lot of people in “first world” countries. One is ahead of billions of poor people basically for existing.
FYI, this person told me to kill myself because I said they don’t handle criticism well and tell people to kill themselves.
I can’t report it because I’m banned in the community for saying China isn’t perfect.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/73259654/27442305
deleted by creator
You can have whatever definition you want. But for me, working class means just that - a person that has earned their bread through the work of their own hands, not through the exploitation of the labor of others, through rent-seeking, or from inheritance.
I’m sure you can cite plenty of theory, but frankly, I don’t care. I prefer a definition of the term centered in lived experience. If you go off raw wealth, you just end up classifying entire nations as working class or bourgeois, at which point the term loses all meaning.
deleted by creator
Oh, you’re just a racist garbage person. Xenophobia does not become OK simply because the target are Americans.
Well, if I guess if I’m irredeemably evil simply because of where I happened to be born, then you have no room to complain. I’m just doing what I was born to do, apparently. I’ll disregard your words, because they’re irrelevant to an evil monster like myself.
FYI, this person told me to kill myself because I said they don’t handle criticism well and tell people to kill themselves.
I can’t report it because I’m banned in the community for saying China isn’t perfect.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/73259654/27442305
Thanks. Blocked and moved on.
deleted by creator
Lol cry harder halfwit
Removed by mod
I will not even dignify your overt racism with a response.
You are saying that capitalists own the means of production, while “little capitalists” don’t.
I don’t think its useful to lump in high-income professional work with the low end of capital accumulation. The sums may overlap, but the actual class interests don’t, at least not entirely. Good analysis should recognize the distinctions here.
I think you’re thinking of the professional managerial class.
deleted by creator
Lol cry harder halfwit
deleted by creator
Lol try harder halfwit