[ultramundane828]

I don't quite get how "working class" got into the mix. I see that there must have been some cohesion to his original rant since it was linked to income disparity, but what does that have to do with homeless beggars exactly?

To me a discussion about the homeless doesn't entail a discussion about the "working class" or vice versa.

Just a little confused here...

[rmchugh]

he was comparing the working class (i.e. the people who live off the sale of their labour) to unemployed and homeless people (what Marx would have called the lumpenproletariat).

I guess your confusion stems from the fact that working class typically means manual labourers rather than intellectual labourers in common parlance. In this vein, one would see software developers as middle class, due to their relatively high income. However, this income is more a function of a temporary shortage of developers, rather than anything intrinsic about software developers.

I think he is right to use the term working class, but completely wrong in everything else he says.

[true_religion]

Funny enough, manual labour in my area is a fairly high paying occupation. So much so, that everyone I know who went into construction is married with fully paid off condos before the age of 30.

It may not be glamorous, but it puts them firmly in the middle class.

Developers are upper middle class like doctors and lawyers, and hiring shows the same tendencies to networking: wherein its not what you know, but who you know to get work. Look at all the people on HN who brag that they don't apply for jobs.