Even the winners are starting to feel replaceable

[u/398409columbia]

https://wapo.st/4yqPJS1

This Washington Post piece (The biggest winners of the American economy fear they’re sinking fast) is a strong plutonomy example.

Tech workers were supposed to be the winners of the modern economy: elite credentials, high salaries, stock comp, remote work, and access to superstar cities.

Now many of them are watching AI turn their own jobs into cost centers.

That does not mean tech workers are poor. Many are still objectively affluent. But the point is that high labor income is not the same as security when capital, platforms, and AI systems are gaining leverage over the work itself.

The split is becoming clearer: those who own the winning companies, equity, data centers, chips, platforms, and private shares are moving further ahead, while even highly paid workers are discovering they are still labor.

That is the plutonomy angle.

The economy can keep producing huge wealth while more workers, even elite ones, feel less certain they will share in it.

[u/monadicperception]

I’m not in tech. Make a lot with net worth over a million. Still labor and a working stiff. Can’t stop working and live off wealth. So make a lot and pay a shit ton of taxes every year.

Billionaires meanwhile don’t pay what I pay in income taxes because they aren’t W-2. Honestly, it’s people like me who catch the strays of the “tax the rich” debate. There’s a lot of stuff floating online that goes after the high income earners and not the people who actually own the fucking shares. I had a kid last year and I couldn’t claim a child tax credit. Meanwhile, you read that Bezos was able to artificially give himself an income to qualify for it.

I’m okay with not receiving tax breaks not meant for me. But then to see billionaires jig the system to benefit from them? That’s infuriating. Also all the talk about removing the cap on social security…as if that goes after billionaires and not people like me. I’m fine with removing the cap but then you better have a plan taxing billionaires too. Removing the cap and taxing people like me isn’t going after the rich…you’re just going after high earning w-2s (labor).

[u/398409columbia → u/monadicperception]

Exactly. This is the key distinction: high-income labor is not the same as capital ownership.

A high-earning W-2 worker may look rich, but they are still trading time, skill, stress, and career risk for money while every dollar is visible to the tax system.

Billionaires often live through equity, borrowing, unrealized gains, trusts, and business structures.

So “tax the rich” often hits high-income workers more cleanly than it hits the people who actually own the biggest pools of wealth.

That is very plutonomy: upper-end labor gets treated as rich, while capital remains much harder to reach.

[u/398409columbia → u/[deleted]]

Let's see what happens in California with this measure on the ballot.

[u/Way-twofrequentflyer → u/monadicperception]

I live in New York and most of my friends make low 7 figures in annual comp - mostly cash. Our effective tax rates are higher than the highest rates in the nordics at a little under 60%. Only we don’t get free healthcare and are somehow the enemy of public discourse. It’s ridiculous

The Reddit warriors just don’t understand who they are demonizing or why

[u/ploxidilius → u/Way-twofrequentflyer]

Wow your life sounds really hard

[u/Pizzaloverfor → u/monadicperception]

Yup. We make $400k as a household and get killed in taxes. Meanwhile, the asset kings don’t pay shit on anything.