I often feel like most people navigating the economy with a psychological map drawn in the 1950s. Back then, “middle class” meant a stable job, a mortgage, and a predictable financial future. That model worked because wages could actually buy those things.
But that map no longer describes our reality.
It doesn’t even describe the mechanics of modern wealth.
If you strip class down to its functional core, it’s not about lifestyle or status.
It’s about your dependency on labor vs your dependency on capital - the same distinction economists and sociologists have used for over a century now. (Marx & Weber for example)
Once you look through that lens, the class structure becomes pretty simple:
Dependency → Autonomy → Power.
Everything else is decoration.
Dependency: The Real Working Class (0–€5M)
Most people imagine class as a spectrum of income. But income is a distraction.
The test to see if you are working class is pretty easy:
If your life collapses the moment you stop working, you are in the dependency class.
A lawyer earning €200k is working class if losing their job destabilizes their life. A doctor making €300k is working class if their lifestyle requires continuous income. Even a freelancer billing €2k/day is working class if they must keep producing to survive.
You might have prestige, but structurally, you are labor. You are an asset owned by someone else (even if it is a client or the market and not a boss).
The “middle class” was never middle class. It was just a form of working class with better furniture and clothing.
This is the part most people resist. They want class to be about consumption - the apartment, the car, the holidays. But lifestyle is a costume. Class is defined by how long you survive without selling your time.
A dependency loop is still a dependency loop, even if it’s golden. I think most people don't get that, thats why they buy stupid stuff.
Autonomy: Where the Real Middle Class Begins (€5M–€30M)
The true middle class begins at the point where income is no longer required for survival. Not because you “retired,” but because the reality of your financial life changed.
Roughly around €5M, something interesting happens:
- A conservative portfolio can yield ~€180k–€220k/year.
- Market volatility can’t destroy your living conditions.
- You can select what you want to work on.
This threshold isn’t arbitrary.
It’s where capital reliably covers both survival and freedom.
And freedom isn’t the absence of work. Freedom is:
- being able to quit instantly
- relocating anywhere in the world without financial problems
- taking risks without risking financial collapse
- choosing your circle of fellow humans
- rebuilding without starting from zero
Freedom is not the absence of work - it is the absence of obligation.
Below this threshold, choices are expensive. Above it, choices are cheap.
This is the real middle class: people whose survival no longer depends on continuous labor input.
Power: Where Wealth Becomes Gravity (>€30M)
Around €30M, wealth stops behaving like personal finance and starts behaving in a way that it can influence infrastructure.
At this scale, you don’t just go with the economy. You can actively shape it.
- Assets can generate €1–2M/year on autopilot.
- Deals appear because of your existence, not your effort.
- Capital compounds faster than you can possibly consume it.
Why €30M?
Because that’s where compounding outruns consumption permanently - a point where your capital shapes your environment instead of being shaped by it.
Below this threshold, you navigate the economy.
Above it, you can quietly distort, bend and shape it.
Not through conspiracy - through ownership and access.
The 1950s: The Historical Bug We Mistook for a Baseline
The only reason our old class definitions feel emotionally correct is because the 1950s created a temporary distortion.
For one rare window:
- wages outpaced asset returns
- a single salary bought a home
- unions had leverage
- labor scarcity inflated incomes
- global competition barely existed
People assumed this was normal.
It wasn’t. It was a post-war anomaly.
Since then:
- wages flattened
- assets exploded
- ownership concentrated
- dependency returned to its historical default
We didn’t lose the middle class.
We lost the illusion that wages could substitute for ownership.
Why This Matters
Misclassifying yourself is dangerous.
If you believe you’re “middle class” because you have a high salary, you will optimize for the wrong things. You will upgrade your lifestyle (consumption) instead of buying your freedom (equity). You will only build a life that looks rich but without the freedom.
Escaping dependency is brutally simple in theory, but emotionally difficult in practice:
- own assets that earn while you sleep
- keep burn rate below income
- put the margin (earn rate - burn rate) into compounding assets
- systematically reduce dependency on labor
Autonomy is not a reward.
It is a state you can engineer.
Freedom is not built by earning more. It is built by needing less and owning more.
Most people look rich.
Very few are free.