I discussing the topic with one of my most knowledgeable friends and would like to see some other outlook.
Taylor Swift net wealth: 1.6 billion.
Ah yes, working class.
Look, I get she works hard performing,
and likely started off with nothingbut I feel once you hit a certain income level you can’t be considered working class. Working class people don’t have private jets.Her dad was the type of banker to buy a farm, if you wanted to know what she started with.
Well maybe he gave her a small loan of 1 million dollars.
…wait, no. I’m confusing my rich assholes who were in the news for politics this past october.
Good to know, but I’m not surprised.
thanks
The fuck??? She makes something like 500 million dollars PER CONCERT, and has a tour of like 8 months straight. She doesn’t roadie her own equipment. She doesn’t drive the bus. I assume she’s not even there for sound check hours before the event. She’s given a microphone, told “go sing for 3 hours” and then she’s back onto a tour bus that’s more lavish than most peoples homes. Meanwhile, 30-100 guys do backbreaking labor of assembling, and disassembling the sets, driving through the night in trucks, getting to the next cities venue at like 6am, unloading the truck, and assembling the set in the next city. All while she’s probably in her $2500 a night hotel room sleeping on a fluffy bed.
What part of that sounds working class?
She doesn’t depend on, need or benefits much from working. It’s just a hobby at this point. Or perhaps she likes the influence she has, or is just very greedy.
I’d say “working class” would be people who depend on their job for survival. She’s not.
No. There’s no hard-and-fast definition of the working class that everybody agrees upon, but there are some common ones. She’s certainly not part of the Marxist proletariat, since I’m certain that she and her management team are smart enough to have invested her money so that she never need work again, if she so desired. Also, she employs a small army of people to put on tours. Similarly, she has far too much money to be part of the working class as loosely defined by people who must sell their labor to survive. From what I understand, she came from an upper-middle class family, so she’s not even working class by culture.
I can sort of see an argument that she puts on a very physically-demanding show, exchanging her labor for money, but performers traditionally haven’t been considered working class.
…no? Fuck no? I don’t know what kinda debate is going on about how to define “working class”, but if you have that kind of fame and that kind of money, you should be disqualified outright.
No
It’s an interesting question.
Where is the line between being working class and not?
I don’t know the official economic answer, but I suspect that it’s where you have enough money for the money itself to generate wealth as opposed to having to generate wealth from a paycheck every week.
Where is the line between being working class and not?
When thinking about where does the working class stops, it’s usually about people like engineers, doctors, upper middle management who earn way more than the median income, have some saving, and tend to benefit from “right wing policies”. However, it’s people who would need to cut-down their lifestyle if they work-less, it may not be as drastic as blue-collar, but they’ll need to work to preserve their quality of life.
When people have huge income, enough saving to make a “passive income” and could stop working tomorrow without drastically changing their lifestyle, they’re definitely not working class
Come on Lemmy, look at the name of the Community and stop downvoting honest questions, FFS. I don’t know about or care about TSwift and her billions, but there’s nothing wrong with the question that the OP posted.
apparently her parents ran a like christmas tree business and were well to do before all the fame. I have not verified this… my coworker is a swiftie and I hear way more than i care for… but work relationships and ish.
She was. Now she’s not.
Not sure how a kid of a stockbroker and a marketing exec is at all “working class”
With her current amount of money I think that would be a No. However, it is interesting since she directly makes what is she is getting paid for which is her music. There are obviously teams of people she employs to help with this process as well as the spin off products (merchandise, CDs, movies, etc.) but she directly makes what she sells like all musicians. If she was barely scraping by with just her music I think most people would say that she would be working class. So it gets blurry.
I think its similar to athletes who do the core work that they get paid to do (i.e. play the sport). But make additional funds by selling their name and likeness. So they could be considered working class but then you get to the amount of money they make as well.
If Tay Tay was taking all of her money and buring it in her mattress it might be an argument, not a good one but at least something, but something tells me she owns enough stock to live off the income for life.
No. I do not.
Eh, it kinda depends.
Is she running a company or other organisation that derives income from the labor of others? If so, it doesn’t really matter what the income level is, she ain’t working class in the sense of owner and labor classes.
And it has been a loooong time since her income from just her own work was at a level where she fit the usual ranges of “working class” in terms of pure money flow.
But, she does still at least partially derive income from her own labor (singing, dancing, etc), so you could say she fits by that standard.
However, there’s people that would say any entertainer can’t be working class because it isn’t labor, but they’d say the same about someone working in an office, even if the office worker made less than them.
That’s the thing with terms that have multiple usages, it’s harder to pin down a single answer.
No.
