it’s becoming truer everyday that $1m is not enough to be considered “rich” thanks to inflation. the avg age of a millionaire in the US is 62 (approx retirement age for most countries in the world). if a 62yo owns their house and has enough to retire in the US, there’s a large chance they’re a “millionaire”.
controversial, but i think someone’s relation to capital is more important than their raw net worth. though tbf at some net worth number your relationship to capital does fundamentally change as something like investing in the stock market becomes enough proxy for ownership.
It’s simple, if you have or had to depend on your boss for your paychecks you’re a worker. If you got your paychecks based on other people’s work, who you have a stake in determining the way production is done, you’re a capitalist.
If you have to show up to work in order to get paid you’re not a capitalist
so managers are capitalists?
Managers (who have real jobs) are workers who have incentive to side with the capitalists
if you have or had to depend on your boss for your paychecks you’re a worker.
Sorry the phrasing is still just going over my head on this one I guess, but I think (hope) we all agree that managers aren’t capitalists.
if the majority of your income comes from wage labour, you’re working class
anything else and you’re some flavour of bourgeoisie, petit or otherwise (also could be some kind of lumpen too, though that’s mostly career criminals)
most managers live on their wages
, I get that, I just felt the original comment was incredibly unclear and muddied the waters rather than clarifying, and quoting the same phrasing back at me didn’t help.sorry for preaching to the choir lol
Other people gave good replies but since I wrote the original comment, no, because managers are not paid based on other people’s work. They still need to perform their own duties and are held accountable by their own bosses.
I guess to my brain a definition based on wage labor just seems more straightforward and more clear cut, ie what WoofWoof91 said below. Here’s what I mainly found unclear:
If you got your paychecks based on other people’s work,
This feels wishy-washy, what counts as “based on other people’s work”? If you structured a company where the managers compensation was based on the output of the workers they supervised, would that make the manager a capitalist? Maybe I’m just misreading.
who you have a stake in determining the way production is done
This I actually don’t understand.
and from your reply, I think this line is clarifying as well:
They still need to perform their own duties and are held accountable by their own bosses.
or to take a less descriptive approach, it seems simpler to say, capitalists are the ones who own the enterprise. Since that ownership is what gives them impunity/autonomy to do with the enterprise as they see fit. And I like WoofWoof’s comment because it also addresses the degrees of ownership (people who derive some income from owning capital, but a minority of their income)
Sorry if this is annoying lol
Don’t apologize, you’re right. The definition I gave isn’t perfect. It’s just what works for me in many cases where I’m talking with someone who is unfamiliar. But yeah, WoofWoof’s is clearer about those ambiguities in mine.
guess it’s reflexive at this point, to make clear I’m not just being a debate bro. I’m glad this site isn’t like that
It’s the manager’s job to ensure what goes on at the workplace benefits the capitalist. So not a capitalist themselves but a hired goon of capitalists
next struggle session: are all managers class traitors?
Is thar really a controversial take? They tske a higher wage to have the job of ensuring maximum worker exploitation. Management doesn’t get to join unions for a reason
There’s very much a dual role thing going on there. In addition to their enforcement role, they also do actual work of coordination and support.
It gets more complex of course, I work in a kitchen and the chef works the line just like the rest of us in addition to other responsibilities for very little money especially cause it’s salaried when you’re 'management’s he’s making less than he would with hourly. On the other hand he can fire us. I think in class theory the class traitor aspect is what really matters, but with the general lack of class consciousness, that middle management is usually a pretty shit gig as well and all that, the specific people in those positions aren’t generally the ones to be upset about as people. Capitalism organizes people these ways and while some are for sure gonna end out as open class traitors the rest are just people trying to have an okay job who probably don’t need to be shot. What lies where depends on the discussion at hand.
No, they’re petty bourgeois.
Not petty bourgeoisie unless they own the business.
No technically they are still workers, but they form a pseudo class because they are delegated managerial rights, but no legal claims to ownership or surplus value.
Marx made the distinction that some people show up to work every day for their wage, but that their labor goes into the logistics of distribution of capital, not into the creation of surplus value.
Whether managers fit into that may depend on what kind of manager you’re talking about. Managers have been historically excluded from unionization drives not because of some intensive class analysis but because they’re used as the front line of defense against union pushes. Personally, I don’t think it’s in the class interest of most low level managers to do this, but whether they’re class traitors or whether they’re PMC doesn’t make much of a difference to me if they’re spreading union busting propaganda.
Rich people hate hearing this, but it’s possible to be rich but still live beyond your means.
“We’re struggling to pay off our second homes!”
Thing is, they’re still closer to us in wealth, than they are to the top 1%. I honestly don’t have problems with millionaires. They inhabit roughly speaking the same world as ours.
Its the multi-billionaires whose feet never need grace the halls of society that I have a problem with.
That’s serious sophistry. Someone with $100,000,000 is substantially closer in wealth to a homeless person than a billionaire if you view wealth as a crass matter of net worth, but the fact of the matter is that someone that rich is functionally closer to the low-end billionaires in that they generally own their own means of production and have a great deal of security if they choose to fold and fuck off. There are lots of millionaires who have like 1 - 2 million and are, like, recent retirees or thereabout who do have more in common with you and I, but let’s not use them to smuggle in fuckers who own entire towns.
That’s a good distinction I hadn’t considered, but I don’t think I’m against anyone owning their own means of production. I applaud them even, so long as they don’t conspire to keep others down.
Millionaires do exploit the working class with their relative wealth, but the exploitation level is almost nothing in comparison to sheer levels of open corruption and wealth warfare employed by the 1%.
The thing is that the value of the commodities – what the means of production produce – is other people not having them, i.e. it is market value rather than use value to the bourgeois, and therein a vehicle for the extraction of labor value from workers.
I have no interest in moralizing about anyone, what I am saying is that it puts the owners of these establishments, land, etc. in an antagonistic relationship with workers, i.e. they have material interests that are broadly opposed to that of workers and incentive to undermine labor power in favor of power for the owning class, to which both they and those billionaires belong.
You can find an Engels here and there, but the most obvious and direct implications of their conditions make the bourgeoisie as a class, even the smaller members, the enemy of workers.
Ratios are probably more appropriate. Let’s say we use $100,000 as a reference point. Is a millionaire closer to $100k or to a billion? Subtracting says $100k, and taking ratios also says $100k, because $1M/$100k = 10 < 1000 = $1B/$1M. That’s fine, as we agree that excluding people who’ve just paid off a house isn’t the move. Repeating with $100M, subtracting says $100k, but ratios say $1B, as $1B/$100M = 10 < 1000 = $100M/$100k. So ratios align those folks roughly appropriately.
Of course, just using different math can’t undo all the problems stemming from using net worth as a class proxy.
Somebody who has scraped together a net worth of 1 million on a dual income household over the course of their life is upper middle class. You don’t get to $10 million or more without being a capitalist. The line is somewhere in there.
Then $50 million is obscene wealth already despite being “only” 5% of a Billion.
Doctor/engineer/lawyer types, especially if they’re DINKs, can easily reach $10 million lifetime wealth in the US just from wages. Although I’ll grant you they usually start investing in various businesses & real estate at some point (what else is there to spend money on?) and thus become capitalists.
Would anyone with millions or close to a million ever not be using that money on some sort of investment? Even my folks who didn’t do anything special have some kinds investment retirement thing going on which does technically make them capitalists as stakeholders. There’s many asterisks in class relationships in modern times.
I have a net worth of like $20k or so and I have investments lol I’m not a capitalist
Where do you think investment dividends come from? Your own labor?
Karl Marx was a capitalist I guess
I can believe somebody worked hard enough or did something brilliant enough to warrant control over $1,000,000 of stuff. I can believe a handful of people create $10,000,000 of awesomeness for the world - at which point they get some sort of seat at the table to tell us what’s good. I have a hard time believing that any work on Earth is deserving of more than that.
I’m not too keen on investing as a means of accumulation for a society worth living in. I think worker’s counsels more readily manifest democracy than firms and investors because investors concentrate wealth and influence while a counsel always needs to be listening to what consumers and workers desire. A wealthy investor can shut off private access to public spaces so people use private spaces and give them more money, but a worker’s counsel is going to call that bullshit. But in terms of somebody taking public research, turning it into something dank, and getting rewarded with a life of luxury to the tune of $10MM, people’s attention, and influence; that’s a pretty fucking good deal.
Most millionaires are people close to retirement that own their home. With housing values climbing far faster than inflation, this was something middle class people (working class but making a decent wage, it’s not a real class) could do for people who are now nearing retirement. They have approx $1 million, all in the house and a retirement fund.
Newer generations won’t even have this, of course. Wages are decreasing relative to core prices, including housing. But that’s not something to get pissed at other working class people about. We should channel our anger at the capitalist system.
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the short answer is ‘more’
Allow me to explain the concept of the ‘Hedonic Treadmill’. ‘Hedonic’ means ‘good’, ‘treadmill’ means ‘thing’. There can be no greater pleasure than endlessly running on the hedonic treadmill, why else would they call it that?Is this millionaires by annual income? Or millionaires by net wealth?
Big differences between those two
Millionaire normally means net wealth.
Glassdoor just put out an article with the same tone. HENRYs are in a bad spot! High Earning Not Rich Yets. They’re getting squeezed.
I hate this timeline so much.
Won’t someone think of the middle managers who might have to wait another year to remodel their kitchens!
Can you imagine? The absolute horror! In the richest country on earth (depending on how you gauge that)!
I wish I was a ten-thousandaire
I wish I was a sub-thousandaire
I wish I was a positivenumberaire
This
Jihad
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New struggle sesh idea by these comments
