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Go above and beyond
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
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Salaried employement is literally a different category than wages. At the level of 6-figures, you're more "company representative" or "asset" than employee.
6-figure salary workers generally get severance pay, even at companies that otherwise don't offer that. They generally can't unionize - THAT'S how en-meshed they are with their companies' interests.
You either have no idea how far the people you are talking about are removed from a wage-slave like yourself, or no idea how far you yourself are removed from wage-slavery.
These people are well into the top 15% of earners. Outside of the biggest cities, they run hospitals, school districts, multiple floors of office buildings. They are the ones getting special tax credits for their 2nd homes. They are landlords and/or small business owners(like myself). People with an exit plan, not just for their job, but for their state, for their country - plans they can impliment at the drop of a hat with minimal impact to their savings or retirement plans. They and their friends buy up neighborhoods together; They are the bourgeoisie. Near-aristocrats and merchant class that see themselves as poor.
The only kool-aid drinker here is you.
Not necessarily. My company doesn't do any severance, and that's true for many (most?) companies in my state. The only people getting severance are those who work for a company based in California or Washington or something where that's enforced at the state level, and the company just made it standard across everyone.
Some do, but many don't. That said, if you're making six-figures and are reasonably competent w/ money (not a given), you'll have a cushion of investments if there's some kind of mass layoff or something.
They are not necessarily the bourgeoisie, that's mostly the top-end execs making 7-figs or high 6-figs w/ generous options. There are a ton of people making 6-figs who fit into the worker class that merely get a taste of some of the things the bourgeoisie take for granted.
Six figs these days is middle to upper-middle class. Upper class starts at the mid-to-upper six-figs.
You're conflating "not having to work" with "not having to work to hold onto a middle-class standard of living", plain and simple.
My mother-in-law retired with $30,000 in her retirement account, and only gets $1300 a month from Social Security. She has a two-bedroom apartment and she is constantly buying DVDs and crafting stuff she never uses. I won't deny there's probably some money there we don't know about, I honestly don't know how she does it, but compared to that, you're saying $100,000yr is a struggling wage-slave?
It really depends on where you live. For example, in my area, a 1BR studio costs $1400/month, meaning ~$17k/year is going to rent alone. If you have kids, then you need more space, and 3BR apartments run $2k/month+ ($24k/year). After tax, that's pushing the 20-30-50 ratio (20% savings, 30% housing, 50% everything else).
My area isn't all that expensive either. If we look somewhere like San Francisco, triple those numbers (no, I'm not joking).
So yes, you can absolutely be cutting things close on $100k, depending on where you live. $100k in Mississippi would put you in the upper class, whereas $100k in SF would have you struggling for a lower-middleclass lifestyle. This site says $50k in Mississippi is comparable to $100k in SF. Here's an interesting article that compares income to be in the top 20% in each state (i.e. upper class):
Like I said before, $100,000 is in the top 16% of earners. Sure, nationwide, but even in San Francisco, that's enough money made in one month to relocate and start over comfortably across 99% of the globe.
People aren't static fixtures, much as privileged people in privileged cities like to pretend they are victims of circumstance, that its the rest of society disconnected from any notion of the true worthlessness of a measley dollar.
Personally, I grew up in California and have camped in Utah. Your numbers are pretending Salt Lake City, SF, LA and more don't skew the numbers for their states to a ridiculous degree.
Even minimum wage could get you there, assuming your budget is such that you are able to stay afloat. $10/hr is about $1800/month. If you stop paying rent and other bills, you could probably save more than half of that for 2-3 months before getting evicted. That's enough for a couple airplane tickets and a month or so expenses assuming you have an apartment lined up. Couple that with selling all your stuff and you should make it okay. You could probably even qualify for a new credit card to further juice your cash stockpile.
Whether you can flee a country isn't the proper metric here, at least for developed countries. The real differentiator is whether you're in the ownership class or worker class (i.e. if you stop showing up to work, what happens?).
I stand by my original sentiment here: OOP himself is likely not even making $100k/yr. This owner/worker class discussion is tangental.
Meanwhile, here I am, feeling lucky for my ~700$ pay
EDIT: Monthly
Assuming you're in the US or Europe, that sounds like you're working part-time, close to minimum wage?
If youre living somewhere else, it's not really comparable since cost of living can vary drastically.
Full-time, 9 hours 6 days a week. It's Serbia
OK, in Serbia that makes sense. Apparently the average wage is 11,570 $ (15,016 $ gross) vs ~$80k in the US. That corresponds to ~$940 monthly, so you're a bit below average in Serbia, but not alarmingly so. Rent seems to be $425-575 depending on the area, whereas in the US, rent is $1400-1700.
I'm not implying lifestyle is equivalent between countries just by comparing "cost of living", I'm merely pointing out that directly comparing costs isn't very effective. I could probably live a lot better on $50k in Serbia (would probably have servants and whatnot) than I could on $100k in the US (basically paycheck to paycheck in many parts of the US).
I'm in a small city, so bit above minimum wage.
Lol what, someone making 100k in some mid-level technical job or lower management is not "the bourgeoisie". Nurses, insurance underwriters, project managers make that much. In the places where most Americans actually live and work that's barely enough to rent your own apartment without roommates. It's about 1.5 times the average wage, you can't buy up a neighborhood with that lmao, what kind of fantasy world are you living in?
I see your .de instance and yeah, someone making 100k€ in Germany outside of Munich is pretty well off, maybe they can get a second house when they're 55 or whatever. Still not the bourgeoisie.
I'm on a dutch server because that's what r/machinists and a bunch of related subs migrated to. Not hard to find comments where I spell out my actual (US)location, nevermind that I always use dollar-signs explicitly.
Someone making over $100,000 strictly due to all the overtime they work, like a nurse or OTR trucker, is an entirely different matter, but at the same time, still the same people whose families are actually well-off but refuse to admit it due to the bread-winners' martyr complex, drug/alcohol/smoking habits and resulting legal issues, and yeah, sure, they are working themselves to death as if they have no choice in the matter. If you aren't making $100,000yr on 50 hours or less per week, going home almost every night, sit down, we aren't talking about you. As if that person is even reading this.
Insurance underwriters and Project managers? Some of the most deluded penny-pinchers I've ever met. You're talking people who should have a couple mil by middle-age, yet still will have nightmares about being poor in that case. HOW ARE YOU NOT FREAKING OUT ABOUT SAVING $5 A MONTH ON CAR INSURANCE!!!
Ok sorry but like I'm not gonna read your comment history for that, I believe you if you say you're in America. Plenty of people have lived in both.
Anyway. I just pulled those job titles randomly from the BLS statistics, you can find an arbitrary number of them which are that or near that. https://data.bls.gov/oes/#/industry/000000
One hundred thousand American dollars is not some magic number. It's a high wage but still a fairly ordinary one now. It's a decent wage for quality of life but it doesn't put you in charge of or representing anything.
That's great, but its still not OOP's-victim -levels of peon, either. The distance between the two is as great as that between "only desperate people would ever take an un-paid internship" and the truth; The reality is that only the extremely well-off can afford to take on such an internship.
They love pretending they are poor when it suits them, yes indeed. Stop parroting their non-sense. They are one SIGNIFICANT disaster away from sharing a homeless shelter with the poors, or more realistically, couch-surfing or staying in a friend's guest-room. They are also more likely to do those things quickly, versus genuine poor people. Meanwhile, their bank accounts are flush from selling off furniture, and maybe one of their vehicles. Retirement plans un-touched.
gods help them, they might have to rent-out a house or cash-out some of their equity! I'm sitting over here with a family of four, $130,000 in yearly income between my wife and I, and you think my "plight" is comparable to the trailer-park residents, Section 8 - apartment dwellers, and/or people with multiple un-related roommates scraping by on the median income of $35,000 a year?
Had your power or water shut-off because you were genuinely unable to pay it in the last 5 or ten years? Ever been on food-stamps for more than a few months(we have, over 10 years ago)? I'll bet not, or you wouldn't be spouting this garbage.
I'll bet you're angry the genuinely low-income kids are often exempt from fees for extra-curriculars, while yours(or a neice/nephew, or friends' kids) aren't. Anyone you hear bitching about that is full of it.
Personally, we pay an absurd amount of money for things like sports, dance lessons, scouting, friggen motorsports for teens!!(okay, that's the neighbors), and more, but here's the thing; We can afford to. When you hear about cutting out Starbuck's Coffee and Avocado toast, you're right to think that's not helping anyone and the people saying it would never actually do it; We have SO MUCH FAT to cut from our budgets if things get bad enough.
Hell, most of my friends went FIRE. Still working part-time jobs in their mid-30's, but they don't even need those. They don't have kids, so they live like kings and I don't even have reason to envy them. None of their parents made over $100,000/yr, not even as families, and they still don't.