Guest Post: America's Four Socioeconomic Classes

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog, A titanic political battle is brewing between the parasitic aristocracy, the dependent class and the two classes creating value with their labor.   In the conventional view, America's socioeconomic classes are divided by income and wealth into various layers of Wealthy, Middle Class and Poor.   If we extend the analysis presented in Why Employment in the U.S. Isn't Coming Back (January 29, 2013) and Why Employment Is Dead in the Water (January 28, 2013), we get an entirely different framework that breaks naturally into four classes:   1. Parasitic financial Aristocracy (creates no value, skims national surplus) 2. High value creation (employed, heavily taxed) 3. Low value creation (employed/informal economy, lightly taxed) 4. No value creation (unemployed, dependent) &n...