Reply to Why do so many affluent people insist they have "middle class" values?

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm not particularly religious, but one truth I think of the New Testament is what Jesus said over and over and over again, something akin to "It's nearly impossible for a rich man to get into heaven."

People don't like to admit they are fortunate or lucky, partly because they don't want the societal structure that enables their fortune to change.

They want to live the good life, but they also want to believe the narrative that they are salt-of-the earth and not guilty of the sins of excess, indulgence, and greed.

But in the great words of the White Stripes, "You can't be a pimp and a prostitute too."  People don't want to admit where they shake out in society.  Resources are finite.  It simply isn't possible no matter what school of economics you buy into for everyone to make that kind of money and have that kind of wealth.  So people who have it pretend like they don't or like they deserve it because they don't live a greedy lifestyle.  They don't want to believe that they're in the pimp echelon of society, that their wealth comes at a cost to other people.  So they keep repeating this middle class narrative.

As a society, we have such a backwards notion of wealth and resources and money.  We think that it is an unlimited resource.  Money is only an unlimited resources if it is pretend and not anchored to anything.  And that is bad news.

If it is anchored to something, then it is a limited resource.

The reality is that companies and even the government don't have unlimited budgets (while some people think the government does, the harsh reality of that error in thinking is starting to materialize).  So if employers don't have unlimited budgets, then it means that for some people to make significantly more, others have to make significantly less.

And that is why there is that huge widening in the gap between rich and poor.  But one way the rich can continue their self-denial is to refuse to believe or call themselves rich and -- despite the numbers that suggest otherwise -- insist they are middle class and simply living a middle class life.

And for all of the "in the DC area...," if you look at the numbers for average and median salary figures, it just isn't true that $300k hhi is middle class (or middle income if you're going to go down that "class is not about money" road).[/quote]

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