We tend not to like to talk about class (in the socioeconomic sense) here in Canada. We tend to be more comfortable thinking of ourselves as an egalitarian society that's beyond that sort of thing.
If you ask a typical Canadian to name the classes we have here in Canada, they'll hem and haw and, eventually, if pressed, probably come up with "middle class", "working class/poor", and "rich". We sometimes have sub-classes like "upper middle class" or "lower middle class", but essentially we have just the three basic classes.
I think it would serve us better - and, ultimately, lead to a more egalitarian society - if we had more.
For example, consider someone who makes $100,000 a year.
Are they rich?
Most people would say "yes". (Some people would quietly think to themselves "Well, not that rich!" but publicly would say "yes" so as not to seem out of touch.)
And someone who makes $100,000 a year is rich. They're close to the top 5% of income in the country. Most of us will never make that much.
But, at the same time, they still have to work. Unless they're very close to retirement age already and have an excellent savings and investment strategy and don't have any strokes of bad luck, a person who makes $100,000 a year could still run out of money if they never earned another dollar.
They also have to get a mortgage. Unless they've been saving very aggressively for many years and are in an area with lower housing prices, a person who makes $100,000 a year still can't afford to buy a house outright.
Despite being rich, they could have some bad luck that would result in them being poor.
Now consider a person with a billion dollars in wealth. That's $1,000,000,000. That's ten thousand (10,000) years' salary for the person who makes $100,000 a year.
The billionaire doesn't have to work. They could easily live on the money they already have. If their remaining life expectancy is 50 years, they would have to spend more than twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) a year before they could run out of money.
They don't need a mortgage. They could easily buy a house outright - they could buy close to a thousand (1,000) detached houses here in Toronto outright.
But both these people fall into the basic class category of "rich". When someone utters the words "rich people", that encompasses both these examples.
So why is this an issue?
Because a lot of people, even if they don't make $100,000 a year and don't have a clear line to making $100,000 a year, can identify with it. Maybe if you luck into a better-paying job, or get promoted into management, or get a lot of overtime one year. If you look at the Sunshine List, you can see jobs like police officers and high school principals - regular, everyday jobs that your neighbour might have or your childhood friend's mom might have had when you were growing up.
So when there's talk of taxing the rich, meaning billionaires, people who can identify with maybe possibly one day if they're super lucky making $100,000 think "Oh no, that could be me one day! But I don't actually have that much financial leeway!" and then end up opposing taxing the rich.
It happens on the other end of the economic spectrum too.
Making a below-average income in a stable full-time job is different from being caught in the gig economy is different from being on welfare where your monthly benefits are less than your rent, but they all fall under the label of "poor".
There are all kinds of nuance that make a real difference in socioeconomic quality of life.
Making $X a year and having your mortgage paid off is a very different situation from making $X a year and being fully leveraged, or just barely making rent.
Making a million dollars a year is very different from having a million dollars in total wealth, but we use the word "millionaire" for both.
Having wealth in the market value of your primary residence is very different from having the same amount of wealth liquid, or in a number of different assets that are less important than your primary residence.
Making below the poverty line for a few years when you're starting out is different from being below the poverty line for your entire life, and both of these are different from being below the poverty line after several years of having significantly more money.
Having no money readily on hand is different from having no money unless you tap your retirement fund, both of which are different from having no money and having no available credit.
Being evicted and having to go back to your parents' house and live in your childhood bedroom is different from being evicted and having to crash on someone's couch is different from being evicted and having literally no one who will take you in.
Maybe if we had discrete names for these different situations, discourse would be improved?
2 comments:
Big, complicated subject! Studies show that most people in North America consider themselves middle class, no matter what their income. People don't want to think of themselves as rich, and definitely don't want to think they are working class or poor.
IMO this is an obstacle to organizing around economic issues (i.e. getting more social supports). If more people identified as working class, perhaps we would see we had common interests, vote accordingly, and pressure governments to care more for ordinary people and less for industry/corporations.
Making below the poverty line for a few years when you're starting out is different from being below the poverty line for your entire life, and both of these are different from being below the poverty line after several years of having significantly more money.
Having no money readily on hand is different from having no money unless you tap your retirement fund, both of which are different from having no money and having no available credit.
Being evicted and having to go back to your parents' house and live in your childhood bedroom is different from being evicted and having to crash on someone's couch is different from being evicted and having literally no one who will take you in.
I thought of this often when I was in my early 20s. I was poor, but I also knew/assumed that I wouldn't be poor forever. I've heard people say there's a difference between broke and being poor -- meaning that in my early 20s I was broke, not poor. I'm not sure.
One thing I've been thinking about is all my things that have broken during the pandemic. I can afford the expenditure of replacing them, but I couldn't have when I was younger.
I could rightfully say, based on, like, the dollar amounts on my income tax forms, that I've been poor. But also, I stopped being poor/broke before my material possessions needed replacing.
So if I wasn't deliberately thinking about it for the express purpose of this blog post, my mental conception of "being poor" wouldn't include "having to replace things I already own that wore out." It was more along the lines of "not buying stuff for a while because I didn't have any money", but then later I got more money.
Post a Comment