This is a really stupid distinction to take a stand on.
I’d like to politely ask you to cut out the insults.
There’s no single line where, once you cross, you “no longer need to work”.
That’s the thing about classification: It doesn’t respect the edges, where it’s pretty much always getting fuzzy.
Someone making high 6 figures a year is clearly not in the same situation as someone who has multiple billions, and they’re clearly not the same situation as someone working minimum wage.
Here, it gets complicated: Since it’s highly incentivised by capitalism to invest your capital, most “upper middle class” people don’t actually have all that money sitting in a bank somewhere. It’s usually invested somewhere which makes them (partial) rent-seekers and extractors of other people’s surplus value. This is where the edges get fuzzy.
However, adding a cathegory of middle class, while vaguely pointing in a general socio-economic direction isn’t helpful for discussions about capitalism. The broad strokes of capitalist and wage-dependent class still stands. And adding further distinctions could help understanding a more gomplex model. But it’s never used this way. Whenever you hear someone talk about some “middle class”, 80% of the time, it’s about populism and not about some deeper economic analysis. And if it’s used for populism, it’s always used to divide the wage-dependant/working class.
That’s exactly why the middle class definition is important and meaningful
Can you give a coherent definition of middle class? I’-e never come across one that makes sense.