Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "Most People Think They Are Middle Class (Most Are Not)" video.

  1. It's more than just education. I have a PhD in physics but I am far from being middle class. My parents started with literally NOTHING and so all I ever had was my education. Since I didn't care about working in the financial industries or similar high income positions, I had to make do with fairly mediocre salaries all my life. That's OK if you don't have children as you say and you don't want to leave them a better life than you had. Then you can be flexible and just enjoy, like I did, without running after the money. If you want more than that, then you have to go where the money is and do whatever it takes. Will it result in happiness? Not for the people I know who went that way. They have more money than I do, but I don't particularly envy them because I know how much they had to work for it.
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  2. That's exactly the delusion here. Middle class were always wealthy and comfortable. They were just not wealthy in the sense of an aristocratic landowner who had tens to hundreds of thousands of acres of land and a few (ten) villages under his control. Today's middle class have annual incomes of a million to tens of millions of dollars and they own one or several high quality properties free and clear. You would have to be extremely generous with the definition to extend it to someone who makes half a million a year, but that's probably as low as it goes for the "poor relatives" of the middle class.
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  3. In theory, yes, but in practice they are the first ones to be destroyed in case of a revolution. The political instability of Russia is the result of the total destruction of its middle class during the Russian Revolution and following decades. There simply are no serious, level headed political stakeholders left in Russia. There are only psychopaths and their victims. You can see similar trajectories in Mexico, South America and Africa.
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  4. Not really. You can tell by the number of unhappy American Trump voters. ;-)
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  5. Middle class people are rarely "leisurely". They are usually very hard working and constantly afraid to slide down. It's not a happy place to be. That the retired in the US are leisurely is also not quite backed up be the many old folks who are working low income jobs, e.g. at the checkout counters.
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  6. Yes, you were sold a lie about the middle class. Middle class always meant people with social rank and income stability that allowed them to make serious lifestyle decisions and moves. That was never more than the upper 1% of the population excluding the upper 0.01% of aristocracy and ultra-rich billionaires.
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  7. Spoken like someone who does not even have the financial stability of the USSR and is jealous. ;-)
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