Sunday, April 12, 2015

The Changing World of Work I: America's Nine Classes

Eight of the nine classes are hidebound by backward-looking conventions, neofeudal and neocolonial arrangements and a spectrum of perverse incentives and false choices.

My theme this week is the changing world of work. The goal of this week's five-part look at the changing world of work is to look forward, rather than dwell with misty-eyed longing for what is now firmly in the past.

Let's start by establishing a socio-economic context for the discussion: the class and income structure of the U.S.



But this 3.5-class structure did not capture the changing nature of employment, income and wealth/political power, so last year I subdivided America's socio-economic spectrum into nine classes.

This nine-class structure is not feudal, in the sense of extremely limited social and economic mobility; only the Oligarchy Class is nearly impervious to upward social mobility, and even this class can be cracked open by anyone amassing billions of dollars in productive assets.

It is however neofeudal, a term I use to describe a society and economy dominated by financialization and the apex of wealth and political power that wealth buys. The classes below this apex are either tax donkeys, Upper Caste technocrats serving the apex, or the lower classes that are bought off with social welfare and various modern iterations of bread and circuses.

I described the tax donkeys in Neofeudalism 101: Strip-Mining the Upper Middle Class.

The bread and circuses class is aptly described in this first-hand report: I live better on Welfare then I ever did working.

Let's review the nine classes:




The key feature of the Deep State is that it makes decisions behind closed doors that the surface elected government ratifies and implements.


Membership in the Deep State class is not dependent on wealth so much as on relationships and power. One's origins matter less than one's ambition, moxie, smarts and ability to maneuver up through the political thickets of bureaucracies.


Whatever word you prefer, this small class is more or less the top .01% who owns a majority of the nation's financial wealth. They essentially own the political machinery of the nation, writing the rules that regulate their industries, taxes, etc.

Anyone who starts another Google of Facebook (and quickly diversifies their wealth into political power) can buy their way into this class.

3. New Nobility. This is the super-wealthy class just below the Oligarchs. They own a significant percentage of all assets but do not directly manage the political process like the Oligarch class. They hire CPAs and attorneys to protect their interests and constitute an influential political-financial class with global connections.

4. Upper Caste. I use this term to describe the technocrat/professional class that manages the Status Quo for the upper classes. They serve in both government and the private sector. These are the people described in the link above, who work hard for their corporate/state masters and who can afford to live in San Francisco, West L.A. and Manhattan, and pay for all the tech-enabled services that have replaced a dedicated private servant with a small army of people delivering prepared food, groceries, Amazon Prime goods, etc.





By this definition, the middle class is the cohort between 70% and 90%--households earning $80,000 or more. Even this is problematic, because in high-cost cities $80,000 is not enough to sustain middle-class conventions (owning a home, reliable vehicles, retirement funds, etc.) while it may be ample in lower-cost regions.

This 20% comprises about 24 million households.





This class is about 30% of all households.


9. Mobile Creatives. This is an emerging class that ranges across many income classifications and thus cannot be described by income alone. Some earn Upper Caste incomes, others are Working Poor. This class is self-employed, free-lance, entrepreneurial, sole proprietors with adaptive skills. They may collaborate with other Creatives rather than have employees, and may have part-time jobs.





This is the "wild card" class that falls outside all conventional class/income hierarchies. It includes those seeking outlier wealth and those who have chosen voluntary poverty as a means to an independent life that they "own" lock, stock and barrel.


The other eight classes are hidebound by conventions, neofeudal and neocolonial arrangements and a variety of perverse incentives, false choices and illusions of choice, including democracy itself.

I will end this examination of the Nine Classes of America with these questions:which class is having more fun? Which has a future as the Status Quo unravels? Your answer may say more about your aspirations and worldview than the class/employment/income hierarchy itself.

Of related interest:

go to Kindle edition








Laura Y.



Thank you, Kevin K. (kitchen knives), for your immensely useful gifts to this site-- I am greatly honored by your steadfast support and readership.

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