The definitive guide to identifying which class you belong to

Three years ago, I moved to Singapore.

If you'd asked me why at the time, I would have given you the sensible answers: business opportunities, tax efficiency, proximity to emerging markets. All true. But there was another reason I didn't say out loud, maybe didn't even fully admit to myself. I wanted to level up. I wanted to cross some invisible threshold from "doing well" to "wealthy." I wanted, though I wouldn't have put it this way, to change classes.

I grew up in Australia. Both my parents were educators. We weren't rich, but we had books in the house, took holidays, owned our home. We called ourselves middle class and it felt true. The path forward seemed clear: work hard, get educated, build something. I did all of that. I left home at 18, built a media company, moved between cities and continents. And somewhere along the way, without ever naming what I was doing, I began climbing.

I'm telling you this because I've come to realize something uncomfortable. Not just about myself, but about how most of us think about class. Which is to say: we don't. Not clearly. Not honestly. And that confusion serves a purpose.

Here's a number that should stop you: according to a Northwestern Mutual survey, roughly 70 percent of Americans identify as "middle class." Households earning $30,000 call themselves middle class. So do households earning $300,000. The term has become so stretched, so evacuated of meaning, that it now describes nearly everyone and therefore no one.

Meanwhile, Pew Research Center data shows that only 51 percent of Americans actually qualify as middle-income by any objective measure. In 1971, that figure was 61 percent. The middle class hasn't just been shrinking; it's been hollowing out while most people still believe they're in it.

This isn't just semantic sloppiness. It's a kind of collective hallucination, one that protects certain interests very effectively. When everyone believes they're in the same boat, there's no reason to ask who's steering it.

The structure no one talks about

Before we go further, let's establish some clarity. Because without a shared map, we can't have a real conversation.

Sociologists who study class seriously have developed taxonomies far more precise than the vague "upper/middle/lower" we learned in school. The most widely used is the Gilbert-Kahl model, developed by sociologists Dennis Gilbert and Joseph Kahl, which identifies six distinct classes in American society. Their framework, outlined in Gilbert's book The American Class Structure, draws on Max Weber's insight that class isn't just about money. It's about education, occupation, and what Weber called "life chances": the doors that open or stay closed based on where you start.

At the top sits the capitalist class: the super-rich whose income comes primarily from investments and ownership rather than wages. They comprise roughly one percent of the population. Their net worth runs into the tens of millions or higher. They don't navigate institutions; they fund them, sit on their boards, set their agendas.

The upper-middle class is perhaps the most misunderstood tier. These are senior professionals, executives, successful business owners: people with graduate degrees, household incomes between $150,000 and $350,000, and significant social capital. They often insist they're "comfortable but not wealthy" while their children attend schools that cost more annually than the median American earns. Gilbert and other researchers place this group at about 14 percent of the population.

I think about this tier a lot. Because if I'm honest about where I fit now, this is probably it. Maybe touching the edge of the affluent tier above. I run a media company. I recently moved to Sentosa Cove, which, if you're unfamiliar, is Singapore's enclave of gated properties where neighbors arrive by yacht. Writing that sentence makes me uncomfortable. That discomfort is worth examining.

The lower-middle class, roughly a quarter of the population, includes administrative workers, teachers, retail managers, skilled tradespeople. Incomes typically range from $50,000 to $80,000. They might own modest homes and have small emergency funds, but they remain vulnerable. One bad quarter, one medical emergency, and the slide begins.

The working class, another 30 percent, trades time for hourly wages in service jobs, retail, manual labor. According to Brookings Institution research, many in this tier live paycheck to paycheck, with limited savings and high vulnerability to economic shocks. For them, employment is a necessity rather than an identity.

Below that are the working poor and the underclass: those in persistent economic crisis, often multi-generational, disconnected from the formal ladders the rest of us climb. Together they make up roughly a quarter of the population, though their presence in our collective consciousness is minimal. We've built entire systems to ensure we don't have to see them.

What the numbers hide

Here's what took me years to understand: income is a poor indicator of class. The real markers are subtler, and once you see them, you can't unsee them.

Time autonomy. How much control do you have over your hours? Can you leave work for a child's school event without asking permission, without anxiety, without consequence? The working class punches clocks. The middle class negotiates flexibility. The upper-middle class sets its own schedule. And the wealthy? Their time isn't purchased by anyone.

Security of income source. This is the threshold that separates the professional class from actual wealth. Salary is middle class, regardless of the number. Even a large salary. What separates classes isn't the size of the paycheck but whether you need the paycheck at all. Dividends, rental income, business profits that arrive whether you work or not: that's the dividing line. The wealthy don't trade time for money. Their money generates money while they sleep.

Your relationship to institutions. The working class approaches institutions with anxiety. Banks, hospitals, government agencies, schools: will I be approved? Will I be helped? Will they make this difficult? The middle class approaches them with competence: I know how to fill out these forms. The upper-middle class approaches them with expectation: of course I'll be accommodated. And the elite? They run the institutions. They sit on the boards. They make the calls that determine how everyone else is treated.

Who takes your call. Not who you know; that's too vague. Specifically: if you needed a favor, a recommendation, an opportunity, a loan, an introduction to power, who would pick up the phone? Social capital is invisible until you need it. Then it's everything.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu spent his career mapping these invisible advantages. He called them "cultural capital" and "social capital," and he argued they matter as much as economic capital in determining life outcomes. The way you speak, the references you catch, the ease with which you navigate elite spaces: these aren't incidental. They're inherited. They're taught. And they compound across generations, just like money.

Getting around with style.

The ladder I didn't notice I was climbing

My parents were teachers. Both of them. They valued education because they saw every day what it could do, and they passed that value to me with such conviction that I didn't recognize it as a form of capital. It just seemed like the obvious way to think.

I was the first in my extended family to build a business. The first to leave Australia for good. The first to chase something that didn't have a name, exactly, but felt like escape. From what? From limitation. From the ceiling I sensed above the life I'd been born into.

Moving to Singapore accelerated something that had been happening gradually. Here, wealth is visible, concentrated, celebrated. The gap between the gleaming towers and the workers who built them is stark, and yet strangely unspoken. You can live here for years and never develop a vocabulary for what you're seeing.

I've started to realize that my "mission" to join the upper class wasn't just about money. It was about identity. About belonging to a group I thought was winning. About distancing myself from a group I thought was losing.

But here's the thing I didn't see until recently: the group I thought was winning doesn't actually share my interests. The system that allowed me to climb is the same system that keeps millions from climbing at all. My success didn't happen despite that system; it happened inside it, shaped by it, in ways I benefit from without having earned.

Why we don't name it

Americans will discuss race, gender, sexuality, mental health: topics that were taboo a generation ago now fill podcasts and dinner party conversations. But bring up class, and watch the room tense.

Part of it is the myth of meritocracy. If you've "made it," talking about class feels like diminishing your achievement. If you haven't, it feels like making excuses. The American Dream depends on everyone believing that class is temporary, a way station rather than a destination. Why bother naming where you are if you're planning to leave?

This conveniently ignores that class mobility has been declining for decades. According to research from Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights, more than 90 percent of children born in 1940 went on to earn more than their parents. For children born in the 1980s, that figure has dropped to roughly 50 percent. The Brookings Institution has documented that wealth mobility in the United States is low and decreases with age. A child born poor today has worse odds of reaching the middle class than a child born poor in the 1940s.

But there's something else at work, something more structural. Class confusion protects the interests of those at the top.

When a household earning $400,000 believes it's "middle class, just doing okay," it will vote and advocate for policies that protect the middle class, which is to say, policies that protect households earning $400,000. Meanwhile, actual median households earning $75,000 get lumped into the same political category, their distinct interests obscured.

When everyone thinks they're in the same class, there's no class conflict. No organizing. No demands. The working class blames immigrants. The middle class blames the working class. And the wealthy remain invisible, their structural advantages unexamined, their tax arrangements undisturbed.

The 70-percent-middle-class delusion isn't an accident. It's a feature.

The case for seeing clearly

At this point, you might be feeling defensive. I know I did, when I first started thinking seriously about this.

There's a voice that says: isn't focusing on class divisive? Isn't it reductive to put people in boxes? Aren't we all just individuals, making our own way?

I used to find these objections persuasive. I don't anymore.

Here's what I've come to understand: class exists whether you name it or not. The question isn't whether you'll be shaped by your class position. You will be. The question is whether you'll understand how.

Naming your class isn't a limitation. It's a liberation. It lets you see the water you're swimming in. It lets you understand why certain doors open easily for some people and stay locked for others. It lets you stop blaming yourself for structural barriers and stop taking unearned credit for structural advantages.

And crucially: naming your class lets you locate your actual interests. Not your aspirational interests, not the policies that will benefit you once you're a billionaire. Your actual interests, given your actual position, right now.

This is what class consciousness means. Not resentment. Not envy. Just clarity about where you stand and who you stand with.

Locating yourself honestly

So where do you actually fit? Not where you feel you fit. Not where you're heading. Where you are.

Here's a framework, drawing on Pew Research Center's methodology and the Gilbert-Kahl model:

Start with net worth. Add up everything you own: savings, investments, property, retirement accounts. Subtract everything you owe. Under $50,000 puts you in working or lower-middle class. $50,000 to $500,000 is middle class. $500,000 to $2 million is upper-middle. $2 million to $10 million is affluent. Above $10 million is wealthy.

Check your income percentile. The 50th percentile, the true middle, is roughly $75,000 household income in the United States. The 80th percentile is around $150,000. The 95th is around $350,000. The 99th is around $600,000. Where do you fall? Be honest.

Consider the source. Is your income from wages, trading time for money? That's middle class, regardless of the number. Or does money arrive independent of your labor: investments, rental income, business profits? That's the upper-class marker.

Assess your security. Could you absorb a $5,000 emergency without debt? A $50,000 setback? A $500,000 lawsuit? Your answer reveals your floor.

Examine your access. Who would take your call? Who would give you an opportunity, a loan, a recommendation? Social capital is harder to quantify but equally determinative.

Acknowledge your trajectory. Are you the first in your family to hold your position? Or the third generation? Class is inherited momentum as much as current status.

Run yourself through these questions. Let the discomfort come. That discomfort is information.

What gets lost in the climb

Here's what I've been sitting with lately.

For most of my adult life, I've thought of myself as middle class. Not in the careful sociological sense, but in the vaguer identity sense: I work hard, I'm not "one of those rich people," I'm fundamentally regular. I've clung to this self-image even as my circumstances changed. Even as I moved to one of the world's most expensive cities specifically to accelerate wealth accumulation.

That's the delusion I'm talking about. Not a delusion about numbers on a spreadsheet, but a delusion about identity. About which team I'm on. About whose interests I share. About who I have solidarity with.

I've spent years chasing upward mobility without ever naming what I was doing. And in that silence, something got lost.

Solidarity got lost. The understanding that my success isn't separate from the system that also produces poverty. The recognition that wealth, when hoarded, corrodes something. That aspiration is healthy, even necessary, but it has to stay connected to something larger than personal advancement.

My parents understood this. They were teachers because they believed education could lift everyone, not just their own kids. They saw themselves as part of a collective project. Somewhere along my climb, I stopped seeing that project. I started seeing only the ladder.

Class is not destiny

I want to be careful here, because there's a version of class analysis that curdles into fatalism. If class is so determinative, why bother? If the game is rigged, why play?

This misses the point.

Understanding your class position isn't about accepting it as permanent. It's about seeing clearly enough to act strategically. It's about knowing which battles are structural and which are personal. It's about building solidarity with people who share your actual interests, rather than your imagined future interests.

People do move between classes. Just less often and less easily than the mythology suggests. And more importantly: classes can organize. They can demand. They can shift the rules of the game itself.

That's the history of every major expansion of rights and opportunity. Not individuals climbing out of their class one by one, but classes collectively refusing the terms they'd been offered.

The question I'm left with

I'm not writing this from some position of resolution. I haven't figured it out. I'm still living in Singapore. Still running the company. Still, in most practical ways, continuing the trajectory I've been on for twenty years.

But something has shifted. I've started to see the water.

I notice now how I flinch when someone brings up class directly. How I want to change the subject, to insist I'm "not that rich," to maintain the comfortable fiction that I'm still basically middle class, still basically one of the good guys.

That flinch is worth examining. It's protecting something. A self-image, yes. But also a political position: one that lets me enjoy structural advantages without naming them, without feeling obligated to question them.

I don't think the answer is guilt. Guilt is useless. Guilt changes nothing.

But clarity might.

Knowing where you actually stand. Knowing who actually shares your interests. Knowing what you've gained and what you've traded away. Knowing that the category "middle class" has been stretched so thin it now functions mainly to keep people from seeing each other clearly.

Aspiration isn't the problem. I still believe in building, in growing, in reaching for more. But aspiration untethered from solidarity becomes something else. It becomes extraction. It becomes isolation. It becomes a ladder that leads nowhere, climbed alone.

Most Americans think they're middle class.

They're not.

And until we can name what we actually are, until we can see the structure we're moving through, we'll keep climbing in solidarity with no one, toward a destination that keeps receding.

That's the con.

The first step out of it is seeing it.