[blamestross]

Sure there is and it is mostly high skill labor like many of us or small scale landlords. It's not really a noteworthy chunk of the population. As a 15th percentile earner, I only make 4x median income which is paycheck to paycheck nowadays. Ziphy distributions are nasty that way.

[sokoloff]

I think describing that as 85th percentile is more readily understandable.

[anm89]

>mostly high skill labor like many of us or small scale landlords.

That's just not true.

Doctors, lawyers, small business owners, tech workers. You can't just hand wave these people away.

[blamestross]

I'm not ignoring them, they are exactly the people I am referring to as "high skill labor". There just are not very many of them relative to the population. Small business owners are a dying breed which is it's own problem.

[anm89]

The article pretty explicitly ignores them. It references three classes, Billionaires, Executives at Tech Companies and people living pay check to pay check. This is nonsense.

And there aren't not a lot of these people. Many many millions. If you are in the top quintile of American earners give or take and with some minor exceptions like living directly in SF or Manhattan, you are not roughing it unless you are making bad decisions with your money. The top quintile is greater than >60 Million people. The top decile, >30 million people, are living arguably the highest standard of living of any cohort of that size in human history. So again, hand waving these people away is not particularly useful or explanative.