Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

How is someone both wealthy and middle class?

[Sheilbh]

Wealthy middle class woman with an apparently successful business and no political attachments?
I can't see where you say expected.

There's been a fair bit about this in the US - and I think a lot of it holds in the UK too. Not the most important voters, not the people rioting but important:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/trump-american-gentry-wyman-elites/620151/
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans-party-car-dealers-2024-desantis.html

And I think particularly key in the politics of grievance.

How is someone both wealthy and middle class?

Surely most of the wealthy are middle class?

[crazy canuck]

How are you defining wealthy?

[Tamas]

Surely most of the wealthy are middle class?

 

[Josquius]

Though the income connection of class is basically non existent at the bottom these days with there being plenty of middle class jobs paying worse than working class jobs, at the other end you still have to go pretty damn high before you become one of the elites.

[Sheilbh]

How are you defining wealthy?

Don't know - don't really have a definition. The wealthy are, perhaps, obscene in that way (and others)

[Jacob]

How is someone both wealthy and middle class?

Summary:

North American Middle Class = Anyone who isn't dirt poor or filthy rich (multi-millionaires who make money from having money rather than working). Generally (but not always) both the poor and the rich aspire or pretend to be "middle class" for social and political reasons.

UK Middle Class = People with lots of money who are not nobility. Much of what in NA would be called "middle class" is "working class" in the UK. Generally (but not always) the trend is for people to claim not to be "middle class" for social and political reasons.

[Sheilbh]

Summary:

North American Middle Class = Anyone who isn't dirt poor or filthy rich (multi-millionaires who make money from having money rather than working). Generally (but not always) both the poor and the rich aspire or pretend to be "middle class" for social and political reasons.

UK Middle Class = People with lots of money who are not nobility. Much of what in NA would be called "middle class" is "working class" in the UK. Generally (but not always) the trend is for people to claim not to be "middle class" for social and political reasons.

That's part of it. But also I suppose the definition I'd draw (which is more about middle class than wealth) they don't make their money through capital or ownership. They manage it. Ownership is, I think, an important element.

Although, I'd slightly flip it. I find the North American view that they're almost all middle class as baffling as the 60% of Brits who insist they're working class (and this has increased in recent year! ). I also think there's also a bit of social and political sleight of hand there is defining the wealthy as the filthy rich multi-millionaires.

Lots of the wealthy - at least in the UK - are the managers, professionals, lawyers, surgeons, consultants. They're the archetypical middle class professionals. They are often also very wealthy people - if not filthy rich.

Although part of this may be that UK has relatively low wealth inequality because so much wealth here is tied to property and housing particularly (also now mandatory private pension funds) - which is a very middle class form of wealth. It's high in comparison with the rest of our lifetime - but relative to other developed countries or on a longer timescale still fairly low. A huge part of that is housing wealth - teachers who bought 20 years ago and now own a £1 million+ property etc.

To try and sketch a definition of wealthy and class - I suspect most of the 50-99% are middle class and in the UK that group (skewed at the top where the senior managers, lawyers etc live) hold about 70% of wealth in the UK.

UK income inequality on the other hand is far worse.

[Sheilbh]

By the by - totally separately and back to "normal" politics. Interesting that the riots appear to have had a fairly significant impact on Tory voters' view of Farage:


Separately I thought this was interesting from John Burn-Murdoch on the Green vote in 2024 v 2019. I think the Green breakthrough will be more important in the long run than Reform (a hostage to fortune ) - and I get that in FPTP a broad coalition is key. I'm not sure this one is plausible as they've become home to a lot of Corbynite voters. So you have success in very conservative, deeply rural England (the Tory-Green swing voters - and I'd argue more interested in conservation and protecting "the environment" than stopping global warming) like Waveney Valley and the post-Corbyn left in, say, Bristol Central:


I think it'll be interesting to see how they try to straddle and how it survives as a party. For example we've already seen Labour absolutely hammering one leader (MP for Waveney Valley) over his opposition to pylons connecting renewable energy to the grid. There was a very strong statement on Gaza signed by MPs for more Corbyn-leaning seats (Brighton and Bristol) but not their rural MPs. And the other leader (Brighton MP) put out a relatively standard statement saluting Biden's decision to step aside (normal politics for a mainstream party) which was met with torrents of abuse on how she or the Greens could say anything positive about someone enabling genocide (Corbyn-era politics). As I say don't know how it'll work out, but I think it's important and is going to be really interesting to keep an eye on.

[crazy canuck]

Summary:

North American Middle Class = Anyone who isn't dirt poor or filthy rich (multi-millionaires who make money from having money rather than working). Generally (but not always) both the poor and the rich aspire or pretend to be "middle class" for social and political reasons.

UK Middle Class = People with lots of money who are not nobility. Much of what in NA would be called "middle class" is "working class" in the UK. Generally (but not always) the trend is for people to claim not to be "middle class" for social and political reasons.

That's part of it. But also I suppose the definition I'd draw (which is more about middle class than wealth) they don't make their money through capital or ownership. They manage it. Ownership is, I think, an important element.

Although, I'd slightly flip it. I find the North American view that they're almost all middle class as baffling as the 60% of Brits who insist they're working class (and this has increased in recent year! ). I also think there's also a bit of social and political sleight of hand there is defining the wealthy as the filthy rich multi-millionaires.

Lots of the wealthy - at least in the UK - are the managers, professionals, lawyers, surgeons, consultants. They're the archetypical middle class professionals. They are often also very wealthy people - if not filthy rich.

Although part of this may be that UK has relatively low wealth inequality because so much wealth here is tied to property and housing particularly (also now mandatory private pension funds) - which is a very middle class form of wealth. It's high in comparison with the rest of our lifetime - but relative to other developed countries or on a longer timescale still fairly low. A huge part of that is housing wealth - teachers who bought 20 years ago and now own a £1 million+ property etc.

To try and sketch a definition of wealthy and class - I suspect most of the 50-99% are middle class and in the UK that group (skewed at the top where the senior managers, lawyers etc live) hold about 70% of wealth in the UK.

UK income inequality on the other hand is far worse.

But again, when you say most professionals are wealthy, what do you mean by wealth?  What do you think the average income of a lawyer in the UK is?  In the Canadian context there are certainly some wealthy lawyers - I would not say "lots".  Very few doctors (with the exception of a few specialties) would ever be considered wealthy.

[Sheilbh]

But again, when you say most professionals are wealthy, what do you mean by wealth?  What do you think the average income of a lawyer in the UK is?  In the Canadian context there are certainly some wealthy lawyers - I would not say "lots".  Very few doctors (with the exception of a few specialties) would ever be considered wealthy.

I said they are often also very wealthy - as I say it very much skews to the top.

Average salary for a lawyer is about £50k or double the national average wage - but I'm not sure it's necessarily about income.

Most own their own homes (with a mortgage generally), have private pension pots and often either savings or assets that could very quickly become liquid. They have wealth - often quite a lot.

I think defining the wealthy as purely multi-millionaires or the filthy rich is hiding an awful lot of wealth (at least in a UK context where so much wealth is tied up in housing and pension funds).

[crazy canuck]

Ok, what do you now mean by "often".  That is not the case in Canada as I described in my last post.

Someon who owns a house with a mortgage is often the exact opposite of wealthy.  They are often what we refer to as house poor.

[Sheilbh]

I wonder if we have different phrases and cultural ways of looking at that As we have a phrase (particular for retirees) who are asset rich cash poor. I don't think disposable income or a "wealthy lifestyle" is the same as wealth.

But also fundamentally someone owning a house with a mortgage is building their wealth.

As I say in the UK 70% of wealth is owned by the 50-99% group (skewing to the top - who I'd imagine are often the specialists as you say, but also older and more senior). My argument is most of that group is middle class. They're not the filthy rich, or multi-millionaires (or higher) and they build their wealth over their working lives (generally) but they have it.

The next generations going to be really wild when those unearned increases in house prices etc (and pension pots possibly) start getting inherited.

Edit: And I think that divide is what's key. In the UK and I think everywhere in the developed West except at the very extreme filthy rich/multi-millionaire scheme of things the gradations of wealth and how much you need to be wealthy is less important than the almost 50% who do not have wealth at all (and I suspect there are very few middle class types in that group - the ones who are are young and at the start of careers that will see them, over time, build wealth).

[Tamas]

If you have to work to maintain your lifestyle you are not wealthy.

[Josquius]

I've a far more traditional view of working and middle class.

Working class people are blue and pink collar workers. The people actually doing the labour.

Middle class people are white collar- whether workers or the lower echelons of owners.

The upper class are traditionally the nobility but this one is very much dead. These days it's just the obscenely rich who would have great difficulty ever becoming poor.

Also I would say this is far more where you spent the bulk of your life, with your vital childhood years counting for extra (taking your parents class), than your current situation.