> What if you're one of those AI research folks making, say, $500,000/year in salary. Are you middle class?
Assuming you are completely dependent on the salary for support, you are high income working-class intelligentsia.
> What if you invest 70% of those 500,000 because your CoL is only 150,000. Still middle class?
Assuming the returns from those investments are as important to your ability to get by (even if you aren’t touching them currently, but they ade backstopping your labor income), then you’ve achieved middle-class (petit bourgeios) status, instead of merely working class.
> Cold hard cash is an asset if you use it like an asset. Well okay, your cold hard lucrative skills are the asset in this case.
“Skills to do labor that is valued by capitalists” are assets, sure, but they are the assets determining success within (and perhaps at the extremes the potential to move out of) the working class. Ownership of transferrable capital assets defines the difference between the working class and the higher classes in a capitalist economy.
Assuming you are completely dependent on the salary for support, you are high income working-class intelligentsia.
> What if you invest 70% of those 500,000 because your CoL is only 150,000. Still middle class?
Assuming the returns from those investments are as important to your ability to get by (even if you aren’t touching them currently, but they ade backstopping your labor income), then you’ve achieved middle-class (petit bourgeios) status, instead of merely working class.
> Cold hard cash is an asset if you use it like an asset. Well okay, your cold hard lucrative skills are the asset in this case.
“Skills to do labor that is valued by capitalists” are assets, sure, but they are the assets determining success within (and perhaps at the extremes the potential to move out of) the working class. Ownership of transferrable capital assets defines the difference between the working class and the higher classes in a capitalist economy.