I’m not a fan of left wing views on “class”. Progressives often define class in terms of income or wealth, which makes no sense to me. I’ve spent time in all 5 income quintiles, from the bottom 20% to the top 20%, and yet I have never identified my “class” with my income.
The following tweet caught my eye:
So the leftist that is currently running for mayor of New York views people in the 1% and the 98% percentile (of income or wealth) as occupying the same class, at least regarding “us versus them” battles with the top 1%. A homeless person living in a back alley in the Bronx is united with an elegant lady living in a condo in New York’s Upper East Side in their battle for “economic justice”? Sorry, I’m not buying that argument.
In the old days, Marxists thought of class in terms of the capitalists, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Even that was far too simple, but at least it had a certain logic. Lumping together the 1% and the 98% into one group makes no sense at all.
Is this just harmless rhetoric? I don’t think so. Leftists keep assuming that various groups are part of their coalition–immigrants, blue collar workers, lower income people, and then are shocked to find them voting for a Republican candidate. Leftists don’t realize that workers in California making minimum wage (roughly $33,000/year), don’t view themselves as being in the same class with non-workers living off of various social insurance programs, even if their effective “incomes” are not all that different. And they certainly don’t view themselves as being in the same class as doctors and lawyers making $500,000/year.
Matt Yglesias has a post that relates to this issue:
An abundance agenda for normies
The name comes from Ruben Gallego’s remarks to Lulu Garcia-Navarro about the importance of articulating an aspirational agenda of material prosperity as part of Democrats’ pitch to working class people:
It was a joke, but I said a lot when I was talking to Latino men: “I’m going to make sure you get out of your mom’s house, get your troquita.” For English speakers, that means your truck. Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck, which, nothing wrong with that. “And you’re gonna go start your own job, and you’re gonna become rich, right?” These are the conversations that we should be having. We’re afraid of saying, like, “Hey, let’s help you get a job so you can become rich.” We use terms like “bring more economic stability.” These guys don’t want that. They don’t want “economic stability.” They want to really live the American dream.
This is, pretty literally, abundance. It’s about economic growth. In a good progressive way, it’s not indifferent to questions of distribution — it’s a pitch aimed at people in the bottom half of the earnings distribution. But it’s not about inequality as such, it’s about raising absolute living standards.
Whenever I hear progressives talk about the 1% and the 99%, I immediately suspect that they understand little about the role of class in America.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Jul 1 2025 at 9:55am
Meh. Read the old newspapers. There were always cartoons portraying the rich vs everyone else. The poor farmer being squashed by the rich bankers. It’s a pretty standard claim in politics, even being used by rich politicians to make claims about other rich politicians. You just dont get elected by saying you are promoting the interests of rich people. You have to hide it by claiming you will cut top marginal tax rates and claim it will cause trickle down or find some other way to make it sound good.
Anyway, I cant tell if this guy is sincere or this is just a way to garner votes. I am not especially good at figuring out motivations unless it’s pretty obvious. While he strikes me as a bit of a kook it is a bit worrisome that he is apparently so charismatic. The last thing we need is another guy who wins elections based on charisma and emotional appeals.
Steve
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 5:50pm
What politician hasn’t won by using emotional appeals?
This is the local level. People are blowing this way out of proportion.
David Henderson
Jul 1 2025 at 10:16am
Nicely done, Scott.
TMC
Jul 1 2025 at 1:19pm
Good post. Possibly class is a holdover from Old Europe and doesn’t seem to fit in well in America. And I agree with Steve. Obama snookered me too. I didn’t vote for him, but I found him to be much more preferable to Hillary.
Alan Goldhammer
Jul 1 2025 at 4:50pm
Anyone who has done a good job saving for retirement and owns a house if for certain in the upper 2% of the population ($2.7M). Getting to the top 1% is harder ($11.6M): Are You Rich? U.S. Net Worth Percentiles Can Provide Answers | Kiplinger
I don’t think class says anything about one’s politics. There are very wealthy people who are liberal and very wealthy people who are conservative. My bottom line is whether any of them have empathy for those below. Empathy is in short supply these days.
Rob
Jul 1 2025 at 10:05pm
This doesn’t seem right. A median US house is 417k. Say you earned 50k a year and save 10% of pre tax income for retirement for 45 years, you won’t end up with $2.3m at retirement.
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 5:54pm
I’m with Rob. 60% of the US population lives in a home that they own (mortgage notwithstanding). The denominator that you’re failing to divide net worth by is the household size. Though I don’t think dependents count, this is still more typically two rather than one at the higher end of net worth, even with pre-nups.
Peter
Jul 3 2025 at 4:44am
Not sure I believe that 60% figure, you got data on that? I feel there is some filtering there where they are ignoring institutional and homeless people as well and household members who aren’t on the title (roommates, children, elderly parents, adult siblings, etc). I’d buy a third but not the majority. Also how are we counting trailer parks where people own the trailer but not the lot? Are we even counting trailers? A lot of people live in them but it’s not exactly what people think of when they talk home ownership.
Robert EV
Jul 3 2025 at 11:41am
65%, sorry. I remembered that it was 4 points down from the peak but misremembered what the peak was: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
This is from census data and I believe it’s counting households, not individuals. It is thus subject to self-reporting bias, so trailers in a park may show up as either. Some caveats from their definitions:
Mobile homes in total (not all of which will be occupied): https://www.howtolookatahouse.com/Blog/Entries/2018/12/how-many-people-live-in-mobilemanufactured-homes-in-america.html
And for condominiums, many of which are of course owner-occupied: https://www.caionline.org/getmedia/cf7d213d-75aa-439f-8341-f100b3af3a48/nationalcondostats.pdf
Peter
Jul 4 2025 at 4:34am
Fair on its counting household but as an absolute percentage of population that’s going to put it well under the majority of Americans for the reasons I mentioned, i.e. minor children alone are 20%ish of the US population and from the Census data I can find 35% of 18-35 year old adult children still live at home too. I’m not seeing data on roommates and multigenerational households (grandparents and adult siblings) but equally not trying to dive super deep, I’m sure it exists and will push that ownership level down even more.
I’m standing by maybe only a quarter to a third of Americans own their house. It doesn’t really matter to the OP but it’s something I think people don’t realize and creates really bad public policy. People really need to quit talking in households IMHO and talking about actual people as I think that bias hurts both poor and average American because we keep pretending the average American is a homeowner and they simply aren’t.
Robert EV
Jul 4 2025 at 1:55pm
As a renter I agree with you Peter.
But once you get to the age of 45, more than 2/3rds of households aren’t dependent on the good graces of a landlord. Averaging across all ages for head-of-household the percent of households which own or have a mortgage on their primary residence is 65.2%. Out of about 131 million housing units (vacancy rates below 1%) this is over 85 million households that live in a non-rental home. Which is approximately 1/4th of the total US population. Some of these homes will be joint owned, so your higher estimate of about 1/3rd is probably closer to correct, and the actual correct value may approach the high 30 or low 40 percents. If one counts community property as owning for a spouse who isn’t on the deed it’s probably closer to the low 40% figure. Still:
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/renters-vs-homeowners-statistics
Which translates to more than 220 people living in an owner-occupied home compared to a bit more than 102 million living in a rental. Even factoring out mobile homes doesn’t get you below 171 million living in an owner-occupied home, which is half the estimated US population.
So the absolute majority live in a home that is not subject to rent and a landlord.
Robert EV
Jul 3 2025 at 11:42am
I’ve got an answer to your question currently caught in the spam filter due to multiple data links.
Janet Bufton
Jul 2 2025 at 7:31am
This strikes me as uncharitable and so not particularly moving. The assumption at the top of the post that it’s simply about income because he’s a progressive is doing a lot of work.
It would be perfectly coherent to say that something about the current system means that the most advantaged people are not fairly advantaged, and that lack of fairness is bad for the rest of us, whether or not we’re in a vulnerable enough position to be feeling it yet. “1%” and “99%” are just rhetorical shorthand on the political left. Money is a form of power, and that power can bleed into politics. That really is bad for abundance and economic growth, for reasons this blog could explain well. His promise to aggressively upzone neighbourhoods like the one an elegant lady on the Upper East Side lives in suggests that Mamdani understands that more than you’re giving him credit for.
Scott Sumner
Jul 2 2025 at 8:18pm
“His promise to aggressively upzone neighbourhoods like the one an elegant lady on the Upper East Side lives in suggests that Mamdani understands that more than you’re giving him credit for.”
He advocates rent control and city-owned grocery stores. So no, he does not understand more than I’m giving him credit for.
The problem here is not that some people have too much, it’s that NYC has very poor governance. I recommend the Matt Yglesias post on stationary bandits.
Janet Bufton
Jul 4 2025 at 9:26am
I am only commenting on whether or not Mamdani has lumped in all of the 99% as a coherent political bloc, not commenting on the problems or merits of his policy proposals. Mamdani understands that the homeless person and people who live an upper-class life on the Upper East Side are not part of the same political bloc with shared interests just because neither are in the top 1% of earners, as evidenced by Mamdani’s promise to dramatically upzone expensive neighbourhoods against the wishes of elegant upper class ladies for the benefit of people priced out of the market.
Jeff
Jul 2 2025 at 7:43am
“I’ve spent time in all 5 income quintiles, from the bottom 20% to the top 20%, and yet I have never identified my ‘class’ with my income.”
Isn’t this a strawman? I don’t think many would seriously argue that a single year of income is a strong indicator of class. Rather, class signifies how much capital one controls—not only quantity of wealth but also one’s level of control over it, as well as the social, cultural, and political capital that an individual has access to.
I’m not sure it’s so easy to write off the claim that, say, the 5th and 95th percentiles—maybe even the 1st and 98th?—aren’t terribly dissimilar in that regard.
Scott Sumner
Jul 2 2025 at 8:22pm
I spent 8 years in the bottom 20%, not just one year. More broadly, people may understand this point, but they frequently cite income distribution data that ignores this. The NYT reports that 73% of Americans spend at least part of their lives in the top 20%. If true, then taxes that hit the top 20% actually hit 73% of the population.
Mark
Jul 3 2025 at 11:38am
I’ve heard it said, “I may be poor, but I’m not in poverty.”
Good perspective in your article.
Knut P. Heen
Jul 2 2025 at 9:22am
If we calculate the present value of future income, we will quickly realize that we are rich as young and poorer as we get older because some or even most of that income has been spent. The failure to account for the depreciation of human capital over time leads to all sorts of fallacies regarding who is rich and who is poor. A bank is more likely to lend $100,000 to a broke 20-year old than to a broke 100-year old. Cash is king, but youth is God.
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 5:48pm
The median physician is not in the top 1% of income or wealth. Second to last paragraph: https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/investment_manager.html
I’m in the non-homeowning class (the renting class), and am unlikely to leave that class unless I can get a higher paying job in another state.
Scott Sumner
Jul 2 2025 at 8:28pm
To be clear, my post assumed that doctors and lawyers were typically NOT in the top 1%. It’s people like Mamdami that lump them together with homeless people as part of the “99%”
Robert EV
Jul 2 2025 at 11:43pm
As the link also notes, with VC buyouts and roll-ups of hospitals and independent practices, physicians as a whole are in a more financially precarious state than the physicians of yesteryear. With the hits to Medicaid coming down the pipeline this precariousness is likely to increase. So I think it’s fair to lump them in with the rest of the 99.5% for some policy statements.
Jack Towarnicky
Jul 5 2025 at 8:17am
Medicaid cuts won’t harm medical provider incomes.
Rand reports that employer-sponsored health plans pay, on average – and averages can be deceiving – two and a half times as much as Medicare for the same service, by the same provider, at the same location on the same date.
Worse, Medicaid only pays, on average – and averages can be deceiving – seventy two percent of Medicare.
So, as has been the situation since the feds and states started to fix prices by limiting Medicare reimbursements over forty years ago – DRG, RBRVS, etc. – should the One Big Beautiful Bill further limit reimbursements, providers will simply increase the costs charged to those Americans who do not have the “protection” of government price fixing – where limiting medical spend by those covered under Medicare, Medicaid and the VA has been part of Congress’ everyday scheme to buy votes.
Robert EV
Jul 5 2025 at 11:53am
My employer offers multiple tiers of medical plans. I’m already on the minimum in order to save money, and don’t user medical services outside of a rare vaccine (though I do have issues that could be helped with medical care). If prices go up, more people will drop down to the minimal plans in order to save money, and at some people more will roll the dice and pay any penalties that their state *may* impose for having no insurance at all. And, like me, they won’t use the services in order to save on copays.
You can’t require people to pay more, you can merely raise your prices and hope that they don’t jump ship.
Robert EV
Jul 5 2025 at 12:03pm
Sorry for the typos, I hope it’s still understandable.
“and at some people more will roll the dice” = “and at some point more people will roll the dice”