[lbo-talk] Rich different

Jeffrey Fisher jfisher at igc.org
Fri Apr 18 08:17:12 PDT 2003


On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 09:04:06 -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>
> 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.

well, he didn't mean middle class in the sense of petit bourgeouisie. he meant, not rich.


>
> 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.

are you conflating the stories? this woman's husband is an investment banker raking in millions. her argument for why they wren't rich was that she didn't "feel" rich and didn't live "richly" -- her kids' clothes come from lands' end, she said. for people like this, the old-style "plunge" might actually be instructive. i thnk there is a stigma attached to being rich that people want to avoid, in their own psyches, and that this has as much to do with the phenomenon of no one thinking themselves upper class as the famous keeping up with the joneses factor.

btw -- as a sole proprietor, myself, these days, i'm well aware of the instabilities. i don't think they apply to this one-investment-banking-income family of five. j



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