The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion. Millionaires are closer to zero than they are the ultra rich.
People who say 'the rich get richer, the lazy live for free, and the middle class pays for it all' don't realize how expensive it is to be rich and how close middle class is to being below the poverty line.
Submitted 2 hours ago by SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com 1 hour ago
SparroHawc@lemmy.zip 15 minutes ago
Millionaires don’t count as ‘rich’ any more.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 hour ago
“I am closer to becoming a millionaire than Elon Musk is.”
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
most people middle aged people with six figure careers are millionaires. that’s why the number of millionaires keeps going up.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 50 minutes ago
Some of my peers should be rich enough to retire, but fell victim to lifestyle inflation. Sure they’re making $250k/year, but they moved into a $5k/mo apartment, go on expensive vacations, and just do whatever in their day to day. I don’t know where their money goes. Maybe they are secretly investing.
Meanwhile I live like a goblin on less
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 2 hours ago
There is no middle-class. There is the working class and the aristocrats.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 2 hours ago
That reminds me of a joke.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
The working class walks into a bar . . .
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
what’s the cut off?
Asafum@feddit.nl 1 hour ago
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
plenty of rich people debt spend.
Zorque@lemmy.world 56 minutes ago
Yes, but they can afford to debt spend for better things they end up spending less for in the long run.
Did you actually read the quote, or are you just going off the biggest text?
roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” - James Baldwin
No truer words.
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
As I’ve always said, the greatest trick the idle wealthy class ever pulled was convincing the middle class that the working class is the enemy.
SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.world 1 hour ago
The middle class is the working class.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
working class is dirty. middle class is clean.
my parents hated my working class friends and their parents because they saw them as dirty gross people.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
The rich are the lazy ones
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 51 minutes ago
the rich are a lot more paranoid than the middle/working class.
Today@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I say all the time how expensive it is to be poor now!! You kinda need a phone; you might find a cheap car but the insurance will be $$; i can barely leave my house without getting on a toll road; you might find a cheap apartment but the rent will include $200 in fees. Every interaction is designed to be profitable for someone and we’re losing.
I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Maybe there is one of the lucky 10,000 here who has not heard of boots theory.
Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 hours ago
Rimjobsteve moment
Rhaedas@fedia.io 2 hours ago
There is comfortable, wealthy, and the super rich. The first ones still look at money as the rest of the population, while the ultra wealthy (the top .1% or higher) use their assets for power. They don't have to concern themselves almost all of the time on price tags for things, it's irrelevant. It's what their influence can allow them to do that is far more important. So yes, the richest live an expensive lifestyle, but they don't care.
I agree with others on the middle class falsehood. You either have enough assets and income to be able to live well, or you don't. At this point many millionaires are not that well off either because their expenses put them in the same situation the poorer people have to deal with. Maybe it's not only one paycheck away from disaster, but they have their own buffer zone that's not as large as they'd like in bad times. Likewise, there are "poor" people who manage their budgets well enough that they are comfortable, but because they don't have a lot they are at the mercy of things around them so that can disappear quickly.
The rich line is where you can lose entire businesses or a house or other large material thing and the money part doesn't phase you.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
the people i know that bitch the most about being poor are the ones who are saving like 30% of their income for retirement.
they are just straight up morons whose perception of their financial reality is deeply distorted and often isolated from everyone else by their perception that ‘comfort’ requires 8 figures of wealth, when really most people with six figures of wealth are quite comfortable.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I have never heard that saying before.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
It feels very “white working class suburban conservative” in it’s sentiment. I grew up around a lot of people I can imaging saying that who were a bad month away from being truly poor.
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
There’s never been a middle class. The illusion of the “lazy poor” is fabricated by the wealth class to divide the working class.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 2 hours ago
Yes there was.
In 1960 the US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average house was $11,000.00.
Two kids could get married on high school graduation day and be self supporting homeowners by the time they turned 25.
Of course in those days, the rich were content with a mere $1 million…
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 29 minutes ago
You’re right, but that’s not middle class–that’s working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of “middle” class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.
EightBitBlood@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You are correct! And it’s crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.
Weird how everything’s turning to shit now that corporations don’t pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.
“Too big to fail” was actually just “too big to stop.” So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.
The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people’s bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.
Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.
Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.
Triumph@fedia.io 2 hours ago
It is worth noting that:
The top income tax bracket in 2025 is 37%, for income earned over $751,600 (~$69,000 in 1960, married filing jointly).
In 1960, >$20,000 and <$24,000 was 38% (married filing jointly). (~$219,000 to ~$263,000 in 2025 dollars). The top tax bracket then was 91%, with all sorts of steps between 38% and 91%.
ch00f@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Was going to bring up interest rates, but apparently a 30 year mortgage in 1960 was something like 7%. Which…isn’t that bad.
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
It’s not fabricated, these people honestly think one can live the “welfare queen” lifestyle. Reagan said the words and it resonated with the Republicans, Fox News ran with it. But really, this isn’t some master plan. Unless you’ve been through it or tried getting welfare, you can’t know how hard it is and how little you get. I’ve talked to many people like this.
You have to earn below 130% of the poverty line to get food stamps. More you make, less you get. I will say that when I first moved here I was getting a ridiculous amount for a single guy, and they just kept sending it, no questions asked for 6-months. Those days are long gone.
God knows what you have to do to get an actual check, but you have to be worse off than merely needing food stamps. And those checks are paltry. Unless you’re renting a room in someone’s house, you’re not making rent.
Unemployment is a fucking joke. In Florida, employers have to pay $7,200 when you first start, and they have 6 months to get it all paid into the unemployment fund. I would have got a MAX of $4,200, then it’s over. That was less than a month’s pay from my last job.
These is a gauntlet to be run to get a single penny. And you have to keep running that gauntlet, over and over again. I could go on and on, but I figured out 3 decades back that it’s easier, less time consuming, and more profitable, to work a shit job 40-hours a week.
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 24 minutes ago
This is a recurring theme in American politics in all sorts of areas.
I’m Canadian-born, and went through the process of a TN1 status, to a green card, to citizenship. There is an astounding amount of ignorance around how that works.
For example, the vast majority of Americans thought I would be granted citizenship when I married an American. Nope! The only advantage marriage gives is that you get to skip the green card lottery.
But the process still takes months, dozens of forms, and several thousand dollars (and I did the paperwork myself–those not fluent in English or not as confident in the paperwork will end up paying over $10,000 easily). And citizenship takes years and even more paperwork. People who think immigrants are just coasting along enjoying the easy life need to turn off Fox News and get out and talk to people.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
The rich 1% are the middle class. America discarded the hereditary upper class when we banned titles of nobility.
In our free society there are only two classes : those with enough money that they never have to work again, and those without.