By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)
Unless the third world includes the United States outside of the Bay Area and New England (which, judging by the term “fly-over country”, it probably does in lots of minds), then yes, LWers talking about attending CFAR’s $3000 workshops and traveling all over the place and how they’re already working for a big software giant and talked their bosses into giving them a raise are signs of being toward the higher end of the American Middle Class, if not higher. Just having so many programmers and the occasional psychiatrist is enough to put LW into the “rich even by first world standards” category.
This has come up before. Some LWer who is not rich points out that LWers are on average pretty dang rich, and most everyone goes “surely not! Just abandon everything you have and move to Silicon Valley with the money you don’t have and surely you’ll get a programming job, and realize how not-rich we are!” *
I am not trying to signal tribal affiliation when I say that LW unintentionally taught me to appreciate the whole “check your privilege” concept.
Having said all that, there are a few people who aren’t financially successful STEM lords around here. It’s just that they are decidedly not the majority of dominant voices.
* The first and last phrases might be a bit uncharitable, but the reaction is generally disbelief, in spite of the fact that LWers do seem to have thousands of dollars whenever they need them. Just a couple days ago, someone on Facebook was trying to get someone to go with him on a trip to Indiana, so they could split the gas money, but he realized he really needed to spend that money elsewhere. I’ve had reasonably middle-class people on Facebook trying to come up with someplace to stay, asking for donations for emergencies, saying how they wish they could justify spending money on things far cheaper than a new computer… and all of them are financially and socially way better off than me.
I conclude from the discussion that the term “rich” is too vague. The following is mine: I should be surprised to find many LWers who don’t find themselves in the top percentage of the Global Richlist and who could not afford cryonics if they made it their lives’ goal.
It looks like MOST of the descriptions people are using for “richness” are pretty vague, which I find to be weird since we actually have readily available numbers.
Median US individual income is $26,695 . Unless you want to claim that half of Americans are “poor” or lower class, you should probably start your middle class no lower than that.
(ETA: For a full-time worker over the age of 25 it’s $39k, so you could maybe push it up to that, but it disregards a lot of people who are stuck in part time jobs, or are kept working at just below full time so that they don’t have to be given benefits)
10%ers start at $82k. I think it would be silly to say someone in the top 10% of US earners isn’t rich. Almost all STEM LWers I’ve met either make well above this, or work for a non-profit.
I conclude from the discussion that the term “rich” is too vague.
Not that I suggest that everyone adopt these definitions, but I usually use these words in the following meaning:
Rich—“financially independent”, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to and still have at least upper-middle-class lifestyle.
Upper-middle—not worry about money too much, it’s sufficient for comfortable and socially adequate lifestyle, but you need a high-paying job and can’t really afford expensive extravagances.
Middle—money is kinda OK, you can afford all the necessities and some (but not many) luxuries.
Lower-middle—money is tight, you can afford most necessities, but few if any luxuries
Lower—Paycheck to paycheck (if you have a job), no reserves, any crisis can thoroughly screw you up.
There are three different variables: income, consumption, and wealth, which confuse any discussion of economic class. Someone who is high-income, high-consumption, and low-wealth is probably working >40 hours a week at a professional job and worried about money, but also might be driving a fancy car and living in an expensive house.
In terms of life satisfaction, I get the sense that the primary variable that matters is wealth, but in terms of social status (for most groups), the primary variable that matters is consumption.
All true, but I wasn’t trying to construct some sort of a comprehensive social stratification scheme. It’s really just a quick list of what I mean when I’m using certain words.
The context was the famous observation that subjects of psychological studies etc. tend to be WEIRD (Western, educated, from industrialized, rich, and democratic countries). So “rich in comparison with most of the world’s population” is probably the relevant criterion, and actually individual wealth as opposed to the wealth of the country you’re in isn’t really the point.
Although, if LW is mostly read by the WEIRD, having its content mostly written by and targeted at the WEIRD isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Just out of curiosity, do you mean $100k/year income or $100k assets or what?
(Looking again at the definition of WEIRD, it occurs to me that it’s immensely redundant, which isn’t terribly surprising since the items in the list were presumably designed to make the WEIRD acronym possible. Industrialized nations and rich nations are more or less the same thing. Both correlate highly with being democratic. “Western” more or less implies all three. Most people in Western nations are highly educated by global standards, though I guess it’s also true that subjects of psychology studies are better-educated than average even among Westerners. But “Psychology is WE” wouldn’t have sounded as good as “Psychology is WEIRD”.)
do you mean $100k/year income or $100k assets or what?
100k saved somewhere is the baseline, I don’t know enough about American prices to say about how much extra stuff should be worth. The most reasonable addition I can come with is no debt, or payments.
On a side note, I never really understood the whole “$x a year” thing. There are so many expenses during the year itself that what you made the whole year is pretty much irrelevant.
Unless the third world includes the United States outside of the Bay Area and New England (which, judging by the term “fly-over country”, it probably does in lots of minds), then yes, LWers talking about attending CFAR’s $3000 workshops and traveling all over the place and how they’re already working for a big software giant and talked their bosses into giving them a raise are signs of being toward the higher end of the American Middle Class, if not higher. Just having so many programmers and the occasional psychiatrist is enough to put LW into the “rich even by first world standards” category.
This has come up before. Some LWer who is not rich points out that LWers are on average pretty dang rich, and most everyone goes “surely not! Just abandon everything you have and move to Silicon Valley with the money you don’t have and surely you’ll get a programming job, and realize how not-rich we are!” *
I am not trying to signal tribal affiliation when I say that LW unintentionally taught me to appreciate the whole “check your privilege” concept.
Having said all that, there are a few people who aren’t financially successful STEM lords around here. It’s just that they are decidedly not the majority of dominant voices.
* The first and last phrases might be a bit uncharitable, but the reaction is generally disbelief, in spite of the fact that LWers do seem to have thousands of dollars whenever they need them. Just a couple days ago, someone on Facebook was trying to get someone to go with him on a trip to Indiana, so they could split the gas money, but he realized he really needed to spend that money elsewhere. I’ve had reasonably middle-class people on Facebook trying to come up with someplace to stay, asking for donations for emergencies, saying how they wish they could justify spending money on things far cheaper than a new computer… and all of them are financially and socially way better off than me.
I conclude from the discussion that the term “rich” is too vague. The following is mine: I should be surprised to find many LWers who don’t find themselves in the top percentage of the Global Richlist and who could not afford cryonics if they made it their lives’ goal.
It looks like MOST of the descriptions people are using for “richness” are pretty vague, which I find to be weird since we actually have readily available numbers.
Median US individual income is $26,695 . Unless you want to claim that half of Americans are “poor” or lower class, you should probably start your middle class no lower than that.
(ETA: For a full-time worker over the age of 25 it’s $39k, so you could maybe push it up to that, but it disregards a lot of people who are stuck in part time jobs, or are kept working at just below full time so that they don’t have to be given benefits)
10%ers start at $82k. I think it would be silly to say someone in the top 10% of US earners isn’t rich. Almost all STEM LWers I’ve met either make well above this, or work for a non-profit.
Not that I suggest that everyone adopt these definitions, but I usually use these words in the following meaning:
Rich—“financially independent”, you don’t have to work if you don’t want to and still have at least upper-middle-class lifestyle.
Upper-middle—not worry about money too much, it’s sufficient for comfortable and socially adequate lifestyle, but you need a high-paying job and can’t really afford expensive extravagances.
Middle—money is kinda OK, you can afford all the necessities and some (but not many) luxuries.
Lower-middle—money is tight, you can afford most necessities, but few if any luxuries
Lower—Paycheck to paycheck (if you have a job), no reserves, any crisis can thoroughly screw you up.
I just split people into “spends less than half of what I do,” “reasonable,” and “spends more than twice what I do.” [/joke]
Yeah, these are also known as “poor bastards”, “regular people”, and “rich bastards” :-D
There are three different variables: income, consumption, and wealth, which confuse any discussion of economic class. Someone who is high-income, high-consumption, and low-wealth is probably working >40 hours a week at a professional job and worried about money, but also might be driving a fancy car and living in an expensive house.
In terms of life satisfaction, I get the sense that the primary variable that matters is wealth, but in terms of social status (for most groups), the primary variable that matters is consumption.
All true, but I wasn’t trying to construct some sort of a comprehensive social stratification scheme. It’s really just a quick list of what I mean when I’m using certain words.
I’m with you. I believe we use different meaning of rich. What do you mean by your own “rich”?
I can’t really give a reason for this, but 100k dollars would be “rich” for me, and that includes a lot of luxuries, too.
The context was the famous observation that subjects of psychological studies etc. tend to be WEIRD (Western, educated, from industrialized, rich, and democratic countries). So “rich in comparison with most of the world’s population” is probably the relevant criterion, and actually individual wealth as opposed to the wealth of the country you’re in isn’t really the point.
Although, if LW is mostly read by the WEIRD, having its content mostly written by and targeted at the WEIRD isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Just out of curiosity, do you mean $100k/year income or $100k assets or what?
(Looking again at the definition of WEIRD, it occurs to me that it’s immensely redundant, which isn’t terribly surprising since the items in the list were presumably designed to make the WEIRD acronym possible. Industrialized nations and rich nations are more or less the same thing. Both correlate highly with being democratic. “Western” more or less implies all three. Most people in Western nations are highly educated by global standards, though I guess it’s also true that subjects of psychology studies are better-educated than average even among Westerners. But “Psychology is WE” wouldn’t have sounded as good as “Psychology is WEIRD”.)
100k saved somewhere is the baseline, I don’t know enough about American prices to say about how much extra stuff should be worth. The most reasonable addition I can come with is no debt, or payments.
On a side note, I never really understood the whole “$x a year” thing. There are so many expenses during the year itself that what you made the whole year is pretty much irrelevant.
shrug I could afford cryonics if I made it my life’s goal [pollid:1076]