I think the whole two sides in a class war model is a bit dated. If you are thinking workers and owners of capital there is a spectrum between the Musks at one end and minimum wage workers at the other with most techies somewhere in the middle owning some property and or equity. The system should maybe be modified to make it fairer but the splitting into two side who fight each other thing doesn't really work.

The "class war" is between those who must sell their labor in order to survive, and capitalists who must purchase the labor of workers.

Up to you to pick a side.

Reform of the economic system, I presume.

I see three sides. Oligarchs like Musk, Thiel, Zuck, Gates. Fortunate people with a few million after 25 years of toil, and the large masses yearning to move up to a richer group.

If we're trying to define bands of shared values in the wealth strata, there are more than three, and your first two, while mutually distant, still have more in common with each other than with any other bands.

> first two, while mutually distant, still have more in common with each other than with any other bands

Not really. People in the oligarch sphere have unimaginable power. If they need a law they buy it through politicians and lobbyists. If they need a law ignored just for them, same deal.

Working class people who've toiled 25+ years and accumulated a few million are still just working class people, with nicer cars and slightly bigger house. But zero political influence and no ability to shape laws or enforcement in their favor.

I draw the line at around $20m.

Why $20m? Some back-of-the-envelope maths: if you got a decent salary, say $250K, for 40 years and made some smart investments with it, offsetting your tax and living expenses, you'd have $10m. Double that for elbow room and that gives the extreme upper limit of what someone could reasonably get to by just working for a living. You could earn more, sure, but you'd be in the top 0.1% of earners if you did and we can safely exclude you as an extreme outlier.

It's also enough money to do pretty much anything you want to do: sail a yacht around the world? sure. Never work again and live in luxury? Obviously. Make a difference to other people's lives in a good way? Achievable.

But it's not enough money to upset entire political economies or buy power at the scale we've seen recently.

If I had to implement a wealth tax, and I think we should, then that's the cutoff I'd put it at.

If one must toil for 25 years, then such a person is still in the working class. A few years of high inflation, terribly high medical costs, damage to a house that insurance won't cover, etc, etc, can ruin even a "wealthy" person in the working class. The oligarchs, however, are living in another plane of existence than the rest of us.

Yeah, I agree. Plus tech workers in the past 25 years were very fortunate, lots of jobs, lots of stock market increase. It seems to be getting worse. It's not a permanent thing.

you missed the people in extreme poverty. also, I think most people yearn to move up to a richer group. Not all, but I would wager more than 50% in any of these "groups".

There are just too many who yearn to move up to the "finally afford food and house" higher group. I don't see them mentioned much in politics.