[lbo-talk] Rich different

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Apr 18 07:04:06 PDT 2003


Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>
> apparently, someone making $300k annually
> running his own business is "middle class" (that's because
> he "might as well not work" because the government takes
> half his income).

Running his own business does put him into the small class of petty producers. (Calling them middle class is misleading because they are not in any material sense between other classes -- the prhase merely represents a point on a graph, ot material actuality.) And perhaps it would be misleading to call them rich. Clearly such a family could not live at their current level without continued returns from the business. And perhaps the woman made a good guess at the minimum fortune (and accompanying unearned income) which would allow not just the the current family but their descendants to be part of the rich without further business activity.

Many businesses at that level (less than several millions a year operating profit _after_ the proprietor's own "salary" -- have only one or two or three customers, and the decision of one corporation to do its buying elsewhere would sink the small business. A highly unstable position. The woman's pause is probably rooted in that instability.

Carrol



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