Home sweet home for new upper class

American tycoon Malcolm Forbes, whose father founded Forbes magazine, is widely credited with one of the most contentious and misinterpreted appraisals of capitalism: ‘‘He who dies with the most toys wins.’’ Most of us move through life on modest salaries, settling firmly in the so-called middle class. We dutifully set aside a portion of our wages to meet the mortgage or rent, the groceries and necessities. We dream of owning other people’s toys.

Yet a recently published paper by researchers at the University of Sydney suggests the longstanding notion of ‘‘middle class’’ as referring to workers on the middle rungs of a hierarchy of earnings is increasingly untenable. Today’s upper class, according to the research, own their primary residences outright and have investment properties. The lower classes either rent or are homeless, and their situation is not likely to improve significantly in the absence of strong income or, indeed, an inheritance.

Assets, particularly property, have become the new markers of class, and dramatic property price inflation over the past 20 years has led to significant gaps between those who own and those who do not. Public policies at all government levels remain skewed towards ownership of housing and property investment. While first-home owners certainly struggle to get their foot on the rung, it seems the homeless are mostly forgotten in all this.