How Rich Are You?

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Let me ask you a very personal question which is of course none of my business, but do the survey and get that ‘feel good’ vibe.

The pandemic appears to have reversed the decade-long trend of shifting people from poverty into the middle class. Now you can see where you stand.


Us? We are High income. 

[rogerzilla]

Considerably richer than yowse 

[De Sisti]

I'm getting a monthly measly pension so I must be poor.

[T42]

We are  as well but you could have fooled me.  We live one pension payment ahead of our daughter's financial emergencies.

[nicknack]

About 20K for 2 people. Dunno if that's rich or not. Doesn't feel like it.

[MikeFromLFE]

None of your business
We're on two NHS pensions (one quite excellent) and one state pension. It feels comfortable, but I'm doubtful we'd stand a big major emergency.

[Beardy]

We’re about to move from higher to upper middle as we both move into retirement. But as T42 says, it doesn’t feel like it at all. The issue, as I’m sure a lot here would recognise, is that having live at a level for a long time, changes to that feel like hardship, when in reality they’re just first world problems.

[Regulator]

Interesting that it's based on income alone rather than assets as well...

[Socks]

Like nearly 50% of the UK population we're in the higher middle bracket.  I'm surprised to see such a high percentage.  It feels ok for us as for many years we were. in a lower income group.

[citoyen]

do the survey and get that ‘feel good’ vibe.

Seems to be missing the key point somewhat. There’s not much in the story to feel good about as far as I can see.

[Paul H]

As the article says $10 a day moves someone out of the poor category. I understand that on a global level, but it doesn't cover your basic needs in the UK, so what's the point knowing that? According the the calculator you'd be homeless and hungry and still classed as having a middle income.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

do the survey and get that ‘feel good’ vibe.

Seems to be missing the key point somewhat. There’s not much in the story to feel good about as far as I can see.

It was a sales pitch. Don't be fooled.

[citoyen]

do the survey and get that ‘feel good’ vibe.

Seems to be missing the key point somewhat. There’s not much in the story to feel good about as far as I can see.

It was a sales pitch. Don't be fooled.

What am I missing? I just found it depressing that fewer people have been able to escape poverty in the past year, especially in the context of other recent stories about global megacorporations getting ever richer and concentrating the world's wealth into ever fewer hands.

The article's title asks about class and then the article goes off at a tangent and asks about income.

It's an American website. That's how they define class.

[andrewc]

Your annual income of 9,371 UK pounds for a household of 1 is equivalent to $28/day per person in 2011 in purchasing power parity dollars, putting you in the upper-middle income group worldwide, along with 47.9% of people in advanced economies.


That's not my income,  that's UK state pension for a single bloke at age 67.    Upper middle .............. 

[citoyen]

Your annual income of 9,371 UK pounds for a household of 1 is equivalent to $28/day per person in 2011 in purchasing power parity dollars, putting you in the upper-middle income group worldwide, along with 47.9% of people in advanced economies.


That's not my income,  that's UK state pension for a single bloke at age 67.    Upper middle ..............

This, for me, is the point of the piece - demonstrating that if you live in an advanced economy, you may think you've got it tough, but in global terms you are rolling in it (notwithstanding that advanced economies also have their share of people living in poverty).

[rogerzilla]

ISTR that someone wholly on benefits in the UK is in "the 1%".

[T42]

It's all so terribly depressing...

[ian]

Your annual income of 9,371 UK pounds for a household of 1 is equivalent to $28/day per person in 2011 in purchasing power parity dollars, putting you in the upper-middle income group worldwide, along with 47.9% of people in advanced economies.


That's not my income,  that's UK state pension for a single bloke at age 67.    Upper middle ..............

This, for me, is the point of the piece - demonstrating that if you live in an advanced economy, you may think you've got it tough, but in global terms you are rolling in it (notwithstanding that advanced economies also have their share of people living in poverty).

Pretty much everyone in the developed world is richer, but what is happening is that within the developed world, is a widening split between a small number of very high earners and a large number of the relatively low paid.

I maybe lack imagination, but I'm not entirely sure why someone needs to earn several hundred thousand pounds or more and then hand themselves a couple of million more in other benefits, but it seems standard now. I assume bragging rights.

[Beardy]

Your annual income of 9,371 UK pounds for a household of 1 is equivalent to $28/day per person in 2011 in purchasing power parity dollars, putting you in the upper-middle income group worldwide, along with 47.9% of people in advanced economies.


That's not my income,  that's UK state pension for a single bloke at age 67.    Upper middle ..............

I take issue with

This, for me, is the point of the piece - demonstrating that if you live in an advanced economy, you may think you've got it tough, but in global terms you are rolling in it (notwithstanding that advanced economies also have their share of people living in poverty).

Pretty much everyone in the developed world is richer, but what is happening is that within the developed world, is a widening split between a small number of very high earners and a large number of the relatively low paid.

I maybe lack imagination, but I'm not entirely sure why someone needs to earn several hundred thousand pounds or more and then hand themselves a couple of million more in other benefits, but it seems standard now. I assume bragging rights.

I take issue with the phrase ‘very high earners’. There are very very few the very high income bracket that actually earn their income, and in fact I’d be tempted to say none of them in fact earn it. Earning an income suggests that they do something to deserve it, and no one does enough to justify receiving £100k a day/week/month.

[Mr Larrington]

Alain Prost noted the bragging rights thing when F1 drivers' remuneration started skyrocketing with the arrival of the Great God Television.  If Melmoth Motors offers me four million dollars a year but is only prepared to pay $RIVAL three million then they must think I'm 33% better.

I think it was Elizabeth Taylor who said that if someone was stupid enough to offer her a million* dollars to make a movie she was certainly not stupid enough to turn them down.

* in 1960s dollars

[CommuteTooFar]

I sometimes feel guilty about my above average income. I should not have more in retirement than I had when working. I only had above uk median wages for a few years when I was in my late thirties. When I was forty I worried that I was going to have very little in retirement. So I paid as much as I could into my Pension fund. This made me feel extremely poor for a while.  Now due to unexpected share price rises I have more than I need. Calculation Money Pile * 4% = Lots.

[Kim]

Upper middle, but it fails to account for how half of it pays some rich guy's mortgage.

[grams]

Probably lower middle based on income, but I'm also the guy I'm paying my mortgage to, and that guy is stonking rich, at least on paper.

(as long as nothing comes along that reduces the value of small flats in big cities)

[ian]

Since the mothership became publicly traded, I can now see senior exec pay and compensation. That's enlightening, if depressing. I think the standard argument for that level of compensation is that they're taking some kind of risk and responsibility, but if they do fuck up and share price tanks, they simply get a large pay-off and move to a similar or better-remunerated job elsewhere, or like a former CEO of ours, buy a giant yacht and float around the Caribbean.

[Mr Larrington]

My grate frend Mikey spent his career cultivating a moustache of epic bushiness and making prosthetic limbs and he’s now floating around the Caribbean on a not-so-giant yot.  This is excused on the grounds that it’s better for the environment than cranking up the heating in wintertime Toronto.