Username tracks.
Lower, middle, and upper class is such an antiquated way of dividing people into groups to keep them at odds with each other.
The fact of the matter is, there are truthfully only two classes. The working class, and the capital class. 95-99% of individuals fall into some strata of working class. If you earn a wage, a salary, or a commission in order to purchase basic necessities- you are working class. If your money makes you money simply by existing, and your assets passively appreciating in value mean that you do not have to work for a living in order to buy basic necessities, then you are in the capital class.
The working class and the capital class = The slave class and the ruling class.
Most people are a bit of both, no?
Most people are living paycheck to paycheck… But if you mean owning stock or a retirement portfolio makes you a capitalist then I think that is still incorrect. People who actually own the company of whose stock you “own” can make decisions that will ultimately decimate your retirement savings while enriching themselves.
Ideally, everyone would be in a position to break into the lowest strata of the capital class by the time they reach retirement age and can no longer work. For most people, that translates into a, IRA or 401k built over decades of years working, assets like a house appreciating in value (so that you can borrow against that increased value), and perhaps a pension or some other form of investment that yields dividends.
Even then. I’d argue that if you retire knowing that if you live within your means, your funds will last you for 20 years, you’re not actually in the capital class. It doesn’t matter for most people, because few people expect to be able to live for that long past retirement and they can always adjust their spending habits to push the number out a bit farther if it looks like they will outlive their retirement savings. But that’s just it, it’s more like a savings and not endlessly accumulating more and more wealth. For the true capital class, their money passively grows and generates more wealth faster than they can spend it.
The GP earning 6 figures for prescribing boomer cunts opioids is clearly in the same social class as the construction worker whose life expectancy is below the retirement age.
The construction worker and the doctor have more in common with each other than either of them do with the billionaire.
That mentality, that the two working class individuals are too different from one another to ever unify because of the fact that one makes more money than the other, is exactly the kind of mental attitude that the wealthy elite have cultivated for years to keep us at each other’s throats instead of theirs.
It’s class warfare
Always was…
Screwing the poor is a time honored tradition in capitalism.
From Cracked’s article, 5 Cruel Ways Being Poor Is Expensive
- Household Goods Like Toilet Paper Cost More For Poor People
- The IRS Audits Poor People More Frequently Than Rich People
- Poor People Have To Pay Extra To Access Money They’ve Already Earned
- “New Customer Fees” Are Thinly Disguised Penalties For Being Poor
- Nutritional Inequality Goes Much Deeper Than Food Deserts
From another article, 5 Screwed-Up Ways The World’s Stacked Against Poor People
- “Period Poverty” Is A Very Real Problem
- “Transit Deserts” Keep People From Finding Work
- Low-Income Housing Is Leaving Residents With Massive Energy Bills
- Low-Income Neighborhoods Experience Longer Emergency Response Times
- Low-Income Families Are More Likely To Be Audited
Finally, Why We Can’t Stop Hating The Poor
- We Have Laws Designed To Make The Poor Look Like Assholes
- The Hate Comes From Some Unexpected Places
- Poor People Smell Bad
- The Poor Remind Us That Sometimes The System Is In Fact Bullshit
- We Have To Believe People Deserve What They Get
how expensive it is to be poor
For anyone that needs the read, Terry Pratchett said it so well it is an economic theory now, the Boots theory.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.[4]From Men at Arms by Sir Terry Pratchett
Also, a history of “people don’t want to work” bullshit going back to 1894: https://thunderdungeon.com/2024/07/14/nobody-wants-to-work-anymore/
People don’t want to work and are lazy is a bullshit talking point even older than 1894.
The first ever modern self-help book ever published (literally called self-help) was made a man with a lifelong history of business and financial failure and yet also still believed that it was no legislation or social assistance, but personal ‘morals’ and ethics are what gets people out of poverty and into comfort.
It was bullshit then and bullshit now. It is such a dark realization that what causes so much quality of life increases is not productivity or technology but legislation and policy.
It is such a dark realization that what causes so much quality of life increases is not productivity or technology but legislation and policy.
And that’s how we got Prosperity Gospel: rich folk trying to justify their lazy asses hoarding wealth and complaining about the people who actually do the work wanting fair compensation for their time and effort.
Prosperity Gospel is a bit older than that. There was a time when people thought that being rich or becoming rich was a direct blessing from god… ironically the people who really first disputed that in Europe were the Dutch, whose trade and double-entry accounting laid the foundation of modern capitalism.
I should mention that in 1001 Arabian Nights, at least in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Sinbad (as an old man telling his story to a young man coincidentally named Sinbad as well) that his fortune was more luck than anything. At least he acknowledged that.
There is no middle class. There are only working class and wealth class. Just because you are high earner in an office job doesn’t mean you’re not working class.
Where is the line though? Many people that could be considered middle class are realistically rich enough to never have to work again if they didn’t want to. But they want their flash cars and private school for the kids so they do need to work to keep that level of luxury. Even if they could still live comfortably without working.
If I was to start van living (hard as I can’t drive) and rented out my house I wouldn’t have to work another day in my life. Does that make me part of the wealth class, despite having always been at/close to minimum wage? Getting enough rent to pay for my mortgage and leave me with many hundreds extra would not be difficult. Go for a HMO and turn the living space into more bedrooms like a standard scumlord would possibly even leave me with over £1000 a month. The only work I would have to do is paint over some mould occasionally.
Where is the line though
The line is “do you need to work ever to maintain at least the current living standard”. That’s the division between working class and wealthy class.
If I was to start van living (hard as I can’t drive) and rented out my house I wouldn’t have to work another day in my life
Not maintaining at least current living standard.
The line is “do you need to work ever to maintain at least the current living standard”
The answer would be “no” for most europeans. Cost of living in asia is around 400EUR a month, with a higher living standard.
A retiree couple that scrounged up enough to have ~$50k yearly budget for the remainder of their days falls into your definition of wealthy, and I would argue that doesn’t line up. They are not, in fact, wealthy. The ‘line’ is far less clear than that.
Yup. Our family grew 5 years ago so we needed a bigger house. Well, didn’t “need” but would have to remodel the old to accommodate. We were within our means before moving. Still are in the new house but budget is a lot tighter than it was in the bigger house. Didn’t realize until hindsight that “bigger house, bigger (more expensive) problems” would occur.
We could move again and make a good profit on the house now, but I see it as an asset for future income down the road, although as my parents and aquantisces parents age, I’m learning more and more that at least in the USA, they take everything you’ve worked for away from you once you can slave no more. I’m going to do my best to protect my assets for my family before it comes to that.
Hopefully you at least have a will, but I would urge you to look at establishing a living trust as well.
Yeah, both are on the list but kids take a lot of time away! We have a hefty life insurance policy right now at least. I know trust needs established for at least 5 years to be considered enforceable.
kids take a lot of time away!
Honestly yeah, I feel you. Can’t even get my dishes done lol
So if I was already living in a van I would be wealthy?
When compared to other people living in vans? Absolutely.
I don’t know why everyone is avoiding the Marxist terms, as they are far more accurate than low/middle/upper or whatever people are talking about in this thread.
Those wealthy workers are petit-bourgeoisie. They own enough capital so that they no longer have to struggle in the rat race of capitalism, but not enough to be controlling entire industries or multibillion dollar companies like the bourgeoisie.
Initially wanted to say petit bourgeoisie isn’t the right term here but now the more I think about it, yeah?
It doesn’t really fit the normal examples of petit bourgeoisie but economically I think they are in the same place even if they are not small business owners or sole traders.
I thought petit-bourgeois made their money through assets? So they aren’t workers. High earners are still proletariat if they are selling their labor.
pretty easy. if you had a million in the bank at 4% return you’d have a income of 40K a year. if you could live on that income you’d be all set and not have to work.
so scale that up a bit, say 5 million in the bank at 5% return, that would be an income of 250,000K a year.
but the issue is people’s spending scales with their income/wealth, and most people spend more than they make so they are constantly seeking greater wealth.
That’s only part of the story. Seeking more wealth to spend more is not healthy in my opinion but humanly understandable.
There is an inflection point, I don’t know what level of wealth brings it, but after that it is not about earning more to spend more, it’s just growing your wealth for the sake of growing it. It becomes a game of increasing some numbers at the expense of everybody else.
Right, but someone living comfortably on the interest of £1m, are we really calling them part of the wealthy class, but not someone who works for a 6 figure salary and has more wealth than the first guy while living in more luxury?
it’s relative to where you live and your lifestyle expectations.
where i live people make 300K a year and feel impoverished. if you go three hours away, making 30K a year is a good salary.
I make 150K a year, so to 25 year olds working for 15/hr i’m rich. but to many of my peers i’m living in poverty because I don’t have ten million in the bank.
there are some objective measure, for sure, but people’s lifestyles are radically different. the MIT cost of living calculator for my city is like 80K, but most everyone who lives here would consider that a poverty level wage.
Because middle class is used wrong in North America.
Poverty class is simple, you don’t have enough to live.
Labor class is divided into three;
Low labor, your barely paid enough to scrape by.
Middle labor, your paid enough for your work to live.
High labor, you’re paid well for your work. Perhaps you own your own small business.
Middle class, you aren’t paid a wage or salary anymore, you’re income comes from the things you own. As rich as a politician or nobility but not much political power.
Upper class, in old Europe this would be the nobels. Duke’s, Earls, Lords, that type of stuff. In modern north America this would be the ultra rich. You have political power and you own a lot of stuff. This is where most representatives are.
Politician class, former Royal class. You rule, extreme political power and wealth.
Most people in North America think they’re in the middle class when really they’re in the Labor middle class, it’s very different
Working class is everybody who must work to live.
Wealth class is everybody else.
There is no such thing as a middle class, that is a lie. Everybody seems to think they’re in the middle class, because that puts somebody below them, and gives them a reason to continue working under wage slavery. This is the purpose of the lie.
The fun thing is that everyone thinks they are middle class. When I was making €45k a year I thought I was middle class because I had an university degree and a leadership position. At the same time my boss, who had just spent €5mio acquiring a 50% share in a second company and owned three houses (two of which he rented out) also considered himself middle class because he wasn’t a billionaire.
because middle class is good and noble.
being poor or wealthy means you’re an asshole and is considered shameful.
hence everyone is desperate to claim they are not rich and desperately afraid of being seen as poor by people richer than themselves.
I once had a friend, which gf had to send him like 10Euro per month, for him to get monthly more than minimal wage which was considered “middle class” for some fucking reason in this country.
He was so emotional about this shit, that I am still not sure if he was for real about that or not…
for some fucking reason
I’m very curious what the reason is
I bet it’s for their bank. At least in Europe, many banks charge for your account if your income is below a threshold. My partner can’t work full time so I send them like 50€ per month so that they don’t have to pay bank fees. Which is ridiculous, as we have our 3 accounts all at the same bank.
Nah, he was too young and student too, so not bank income tax yet.
He just wanted to feel better than those “bottom class losers”. And I do not joke. He study economics.
He study economics
Checks out
A better metric is homeownership to me. Someone who is middle class is secure and doesn’t have to rent nor pay debt. They only really have to work when it’s mutually beneficial. That is basically impossible to achieve in the modern world with the hundreds or thousands of micro taxes and cartel controlled corporate markets and complete lack of land for the lease it’s to live on without virtual indentured servitude. Even if you did spend your entire life buying a house the state would just take it away from your children with the brutal taxation. Without a home you are always going to be a slave and have to work at any shitty job just to have food and a roof over your head.
Even if you own the house and land outright, you still need to pay real estate taxes, and feed yourself. Either you have the money in the bank to cover those expenses for the rest of your life or you don’t. You can have unexpected medical expenses, houses require maintenance which is generally expensive, and transportation is still an issue.
If you have to work to live, you are working class. Full stop.
no.
plenty of people rent their entire lives are fine. and plenty of people own homes get them foreclosed because they can’t afford the payments, or buy too much house.
owning a home isn’t really a huge economic benefit or security, unless your house massively goes up in value. a house is also a huge liability if it has problems. home owning nearly bankrupted my family at one point because of the crazy expensive repairs.
People can inherit a house and still be poor. Look at india
If you’re going to talk about class society, you might as well use the Marxist terms: proletariat, petit-bourgeoisie, and bourgeoise.
Even well paid doctors are labor class mostly. Because even in the past doctors weren’t as well paid as today.
most doctors come from wealthy families. and if you are anything above a PCP, you’re making like 300K+ a year, you’re not labor class. you’re part of the 1%. yeah being a resident and an intern sucks balls, but you’re taking a short term low age for a long term massive payoff.
80% of med students come from families making over 200K a year. that’s a hard fact.
most of us who grew up in middle/lower class families never even dreamed of being a doctor because we knew it was basically impossible for us without rich parents to help pay the bills for med school.
This is something I want to address. Firstly, youre correct. The vast majority of medical students come from VERY privileged backgrounds and it shows. Hell, applications fees can run from 75 to 300+ bucks a pop and the MCAT itself is almost 400 dollars.
That being said, if youre smart enough to get into med school, you should do it. I grew up about as poor as you could, I graduated early and immediately went into working fulltime. After the dotcom burst I became an EMT then a paramedic and started working 72+ hour weeks to save up for my premed. I was MUCH older than your standard 23 year old med school applicant.
But even if you have a relatively decent job (65k in a low cost of living area), the finances work out to pull the trigger and get your MD. Without doing any self doxxing, I can say a relatively uncompetitive specialty paid more in one year than I made in 5 years as a medic. I took 2 years for premed, a gap year, 4 in med school and 3 for residency. 10 years total. Which I made back in 2 years and thats not including the pay as a resident which was actually a bit higher than medic pay.
Your circumstances might prevent you from being a traditional applicant, and AAMCAS needs to work on the financial gatekeeping. You can absolutely swing going to medical school if you have the desire, will, and capability to though. It will be hard as hell though.
Were you really born in 1944?
Let the Leftist infighting commence!
pretty much. this entire thread is just folks arguing over the meanings of middle class, and most of them denying it exists as if that is going to create class solidarity. it won’t. majority of posters probably are middle class folks who would never in a million years associate with truly working class people. esp because the working class is typically conservative and doesn’t have liberal/progressive values, at least in the USA.
In Belgium lower income people also tend to vote more extreme. It’s even shown that whenever extreme right parties grow, it’s usually because they convinced people that previously voted extreme left.
People who vote for the socialist party are typically retired or work for the government in some capacity.
The middle class exists, and it sides with capital in its class interests.
That used to be true, pre-1980’s, when the middle class was way, way bigger than it is today.
Yeah, I think people who say that don’t realize a few key things.
First, they don’t understand the ‘poverty tax’ - how not having money for things like a security deposit, reliable transportation, or bulk buying actually costs you more in the long run.
And second, they don’t see how thin the margin for error is for most middle-class families. One medical bill or job loss is all it takes to fall behind.
Earn 3 times the amount of a proposed rent? You’re golden.
Earn below 3 times the amount of a proposed rent (but still enough to pay it each month)? Now you have to pay a guarantor to back you up. Last estimate I got was $800 for that service. You’ve gotta pay that before a landlord will accept you.
So if you earn less, you’re forced to pay more. It’s so fucking backwards.
Source: currently homeless, on numerous “waitlists” for low-income apartments that can take years to get through, housing lotteries that have 10s of thousands of people also hoping for a home, and attempting to scrounge the bottom of the barrel with tiny studio apartments (which, even if I apply to immediately, I’m behind others who somehow got to them faster.)
The system is absolutely fucked. I’m just grateful I enjoy my job (which, yes, I work full time, and earn above minimum wage for. Modern US society has no mercy for any of us.)
They also don’t understand that the impact of the “lazy poor” is exaggerated by the rich to turn your attention away from The Big Theft.
There’s never been a middle class. The illusion of the “lazy poor” is fabricated by the wealth class to divide the working class.
Yes there was.
In 1960 the US minimum wage was $1.00/hour and the average house was $11,000.00.
Two kids could get married on high school graduation day and be self supporting homeowners by the time they turned 25.
Of course in those days, the rich were content with a mere $1 million…
You are correct! And it’s crazy how effective those high corporate tax rates were at distributing wealth to better society and create a healthy middleclass of consumers to fuel an economy and prevent it from collapsing.
Weird how everything’s turning to shit now that corporations don’t pay taxes and use all their earnings to influence government elections instead of needing to actually be accountable to them.
“Too big to fail” was actually just “too big to stop.” So now where there used to be a US government, there is a handful of billionaire cultists.
The middleclass 100% existed. Billionaires just stole it. The money that drove US spending across 3 decades is now all in 5 people’s bank accounts doing jack shit to help anyone but those 5 people.
Higher corporate taxes = a middle class. See most Nordic countries as a great example that still exists.
Thank you for making this point. A middle class is the sign of a functioning society.
actually most middle class voters voted and supported for the policies that destroyed themselves.
they started deinvesting our healthcare and education systems in the 70s, often as a part of the backlash of civil rights and the economic stagnation of the 70s.
Who do you think was responsible for convincing the middle class to vote against their own best interests?
It was the people who didn’t have to pay taxes after Reagonomics. They used their money to fill television, print, and eventually social media with propaganda. Propaganda that taxes were too high (for them) despite our entire social safety net outgrowing it’s sustainability.
And this form of propaganda was SO effective, the Russians figured they would do the same. Then the Chinese. Now the Saudis. So now we have just about every country in the world that hates America purchasing every second of entertainment they can to make sure we’re always voting against our best interests to the point we just about don’t have a country.
themselves.
there is no billionaire conspiracy dude. the average person is stupid and regularly does stupid shit that defaults their long term interests for perceived short term gains. it’s human nature. most people impulse spend on shit they don’t need or really want, but their monkey brain wants it because other monkey has it.
the few people who can value their long term gains at the expense of the short term tend to be those that are upwardly mobile economically.
People are just monkeys. Monkeys do what they see because they’re stupid and a product of their environment. Billionaires now control everything in that environment, so US monkies mostly see what those billionaires want.
FOX NEWS. Paid for by billionaires so USA Monkies want Citizens United, No child Left Behind, the Patriot act, and Trillions in the national debt for the first time in 200 years of being a nation. Bush W is now okay despite being an idiot because he’s surrounded by smart people. But smart people are definitley bad.
FACEBOOK ADS. Paid for by billionaires so USA monkies will vote against Healthcare, their own taxes, and educatiom to fight made up enemies like “libs” and “illegals”. Local elections are now won by the dumbest people imaginable that believe these enemies are real. Actual Proffesionals are now suspicious.
TWITTER. Now just owned by a billionaire so USA monkies think Trump is a genius, Fascism is good, and it’s totally okay more Americans died from COVID than anywhere else in the world, a death toll higher than all the wars America ever fought in combined. Trump is great because he punishes smart people, and people that point out his COVID bullshit, as those smart people are now your enemy.
This makes Elon wealthy. Zuckerberg Wealthy. And the Murdochs wealthy.
They covered the US in news that it was on fire and keep profiting off of selling fire extinguishers.
There is no fire. (Illegal immigrants, libs, trans, caravans, wmds in Iraq, war on drugs, war on terror, etc) But now half the country votes like there is because that keeps billionaires wealthy instead of actually taxed to benefit society. They are the problem. They know they are the problem. So they purchase as many media outlets as they can, like Bezos, to normalize their greed and it’s affects on our country. Just about to the point we don’t have one anymore.
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The top income tax bracket in 2025 is 37%, for income earned over $751,600 (~$69,000 in 1960, married filing jointly).
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In 1960, >$20,000 and <$24,000 was 38% (married filing jointly). (~$219,000 to ~$263,000 in 2025 dollars). The top tax bracket then was 91%, with all sorts of steps between 38% and 91%.
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You’re right, but that’s not middle class–that’s working class. Making minimum wage and having a comfortable life is working class. The concept of “middle” class was a method of pitting one half of the working class against the other, so the rich could move from millions to billions.
Now you’re just playing with definitions.
“Middle class” is the term most people use.
I mostly agree. They’re synonymous today, but I think there’s still an important distinction.
The term “middle class” is distinct from the “lower class.” But those two are more or less the same when compared to the “upper class” (what I would call the “wealth class”). Both lower and middle classes need to work in order to survive, while the wealth class has enough money to live without working (many of them still work, but it’s optional for them).
Any distinction between lower and middle class ends up harming both, and allowing the upper class to hoard more wealth. I generally try to promote the term “working class” because it doesn’t divide us, and more accurately portrays the differences between classes.
An illustration in this vein:
I’ve watched people like you shoot themselves in the foot with useless arguments like this since I was in high school.
You can’t just say “Tax the rich.” No, we have to analyze every term and only use proper nomenclature. Heaven will fall if we call a Social Democrat a Socialist and the seas will part if we confuse an anarchist with a Trotskyite.
I’ve watched it for years, and I’ve never once see it help anyone actually win an election.
If you don’t use proper nomenclature or explain what is meant in detail you have no hope of truly being understood. People’s ignorance of what things actually mean is used as a weapon against further understanding, like the good old fashioned “socialism is when the government does stuff and is also evil and any hint of it will introduce satan” or whatever
Being hostile towards proper understanding of a subject is not going to help you actually comprehend it
Two points.
First, you can cut out a third of the words in a sentence and still comprehend the gist of the message. ‘Proper nomenclature’ might be important in a college essay or a legal writ but in the real world people slur their words and mishear the replies and still manage to get the point across. Words aren’t numbers; any word can have a dozen different meanings.
Look at former NYC Mayor LaGuardia. Back in the day he ran on a Fusion Ticket that included Socialists, Communists, and Republicans? You could spent a lifetime trying to sort out the exact definition of what he was. Do you think Nazi Germany was ‘Socialist’ because of National Socialism.
Second, how much comprehension is actually needed? Do you need to understand the difference between alternating current and direct current to know when to use batteries and when to plug a device into the wall? Do I have to understand aerodynamics to buy an airline ticket? Does someone have to know every single position a candidate holds in order to decide to vote for them?
Holy generalizations, Batman!
My purpose in making the distinction isn’t to be pedantic, it’s to help clarify the nature of the class warfare we’re dealing with. I don’t care if you want to use the term “middle class”. I only bring up the distinction because of the nature of the original post, which was explicitly noting the false narrative of the “lazy poor”.
Tax the rich, restore the middle class, use whatever terminology you want. But understand that the poor are not the enemy of the middle class, and they’re not the villains. The rich people are.
Holy genralizations yourself.
When did I say anything about the poor being the enemy of the middle class, or that we aren’t all at war with the rich?
If you’re going to put words in my mouth please order some chips and salsa to go with it.
It doesn’t matter if you wanted to be pedantic, you were.
Now we’re involved in a useless argument over terms.
I’ve made my point twice, and I’m not going to repeat it a third time.
I understand your point, and I disagree with it.
If you decide to continue, you’re proving my point; that you’d rather engage in an argument with someone on your side than step back and accept a minor disagreement.
Was going to bring up interest rates, but apparently a 30 year mortgage in 1960 was something like 7%. Which…isn’t that bad.
Lyndon Johnson wanted to have a massive war in Vietnam without raising taxes, so he printed money to pay for it. Nixon doubled down on LBJ’s plan. The OPEC oil embargo really made inflation soar. Jimmy Carter hired a man named Paul Volker to run the Fed and bring it under control. Carter’s plan worked, but only after Reagan won. Then Reagan turned around and started cutting taxes without a way to pay for the cuts.
In 1968 when Nixon came in, ‘middle class’ was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough left over for a few luxuries. By the time Bush Sr finished, ‘middle class’ was two incomes. In 1968 $1 million was a massive fortune; by 1993 it was what a rich guy paid for a party.
Mortgage rates were in the teens in the early 80s.
Yeah, that’s why I brought it up. I always assumed they were high in the 60s too.
Adjusted for inflation, 11k in the 60s is equivalent to 120k today. You can get a house for that money. Not a big house, but houses weren’t that big back then either.
“Adjusted for inflation” is a pretty silly term. It might mean something in an economics class, but it’s nonsense if you try to apply it to the real world.
$1 million in 1960 would buy you an estate in Beverly Hills, a townhouse in Manhattan, a few luxury cars, and you’d have enough left over to invest and live comfortably forever.
$11 million today might get you a bungalow in a pricey neighborhood.
I don’t see what’s silly about it. It’s the purchasing power that matters - not the numeric value.
That’s exactly the point I was making.
So it makes sense to adjust prices for inflation because the numeric value itself doesn’t illustrate the purchasing power accurately.
That’s exactly the point I was making.
It’s not fabricated, these people honestly think one can live the “welfare queen” lifestyle. Reagan said the words and it resonated with the Republicans, Fox News ran with it. But really, this isn’t some master plan. Unless you’ve been through it or tried getting welfare, you can’t know how hard it is and how little you get. I’ve talked to many people like this.
You have to earn below 130% of the poverty line to get food stamps. More you make, less you get. I will say that when I first moved here I was getting a ridiculous amount for a single guy, and they just kept sending it, no questions asked for 6-months. Those days are long gone.
God knows what you have to do to get an actual check, but you have to be worse off than merely needing food stamps. And those checks are paltry. Unless you’re renting a room in someone’s house, you’re not making rent.
Unemployment is a fucking joke. In Florida, employers have to pay $7,200 when you first start, and they have 6 months to get it all paid into the unemployment fund. I would have got a MAX of $4,200, then it’s over. That was less than a month’s pay from my last job.
There is a gauntlet to be run to get a single penny. And you have to keep running that gauntlet, over and over again. I could go on and on, but I figured out 3 decades back that it’s easier, less time consuming, and more profitable, to work a shit job 40-hours a week.
This is a recurring theme in American politics in all sorts of areas.
I’m Canadian-born, and went through the process of a TN1 status, to a green card, to citizenship. There is an astounding amount of ignorance around how that works.
For example, the vast majority of Americans thought I would be granted citizenship when I married an American. Nope! The only advantage marriage gives is that you get to skip the green card lottery.
But the process still takes months, dozens of forms, and several thousand dollars (and I did the paperwork myself–those not fluent in English or not as confident in the paperwork will end up paying over $10,000 easily). And citizenship takes years and even more paperwork. People who think immigrants are just coasting along enjoying the easy life need to turn off Fox News and get out and talk to people.
My wife is fighting for her 10-year green card right now. It’s a fucking nightmare.
The rich 1% are the middle class. America discarded the hereditary upper class when we banned titles of nobility.
In our free society there are only two classes : those with enough money that they never have to work again, and those without.
no. they aren’t.
i have family in the 1%. they think they are middle class, but nothing about them is middle class. their perception is deeply distorted.
the only reason they need to continue to work is that they massively over consume. they have 6 cars, boats, four properties, etc. if they cut that down to one modest house, modest travel, and dumped all the cars and boats etc, they could have retired 10 years ago in their 40s. there are 100s of articles about these types of people in major newspaper in magazines. how ‘difficult’ the life of multi millionaires int he upper west side is because this year they had to cut back on their 50K ski vacation to a 30K ski vacation. the ‘struggle’ it is to own 10 million in property and how they are terrified they might need to sell the vacation home they use 2 weeks year because it’s not going up in value as fast as they want and the taxes went up.
but if you talk to them they think they are working class ordinary folks and all of this is entirely normal. and if you dare suggest it isn’t they will tell you are a jealous asshole who is just lazy and hasn’t worked hard like they did. they are also super mad right now that they have to pay full tuition to send their kids to college, they feel like they are being ‘punished’ my the schools because their children should go to free for being smarter and richer than other kids and the stupid poor kids should be the ones paying full tuition. they are being ‘punished’ for their success, and poor lazy people are being ‘rewarded’. they absolutely are stoked at what Trump is doing with colleges and removing DEI and international students, because it means their kids have a better chance of getting into an elite school.
and all of their 1% friends are like this. most of their friends are actually WAY weather than they are. but if you go to a party with them all they will do nothing but go on and on about how poor and unfortunate they are because they can’t afford condos in Hawaii or 100 ft yachts or how worried they are their kids might have to go to a public state school and not a ivy league school and what a horrible social embarrassment that would be for them because their friends/family will think they raised stupid shitty kids.
Wealth does messed up things to our brains.
Nobody wants to believe they’re the “bad guys”, or “privileged”, or anything like that. So when you have more wealth than 99% of other people out there, you (consciously or subconsciously) come up with ways to justify it.
In this case, the multimillionaires believe they are the “normal”, middle-of-the-road class, because they compare themselves against the ultra-rich. And anyone who has less than them must be lazy, or bad with money, or some other moral failing. Because if the millionaires aren’t morally superior, the only other explanation is privilege or greed, and they can’t live with that.
There are a handful of wealthy people who haven’t succumbed to that as much. Dolly Parton is a great example–one article I read suggested she’d be one of the wealthiest people in the world if she weren’t donating 90 to 95% of her income for most of her career. But when you have empathy and a lot of wealth, you end up with just a little wealth and a lot of grateful people.
Yeah thats the “middle class”. They aren’t part of the working class (serfs) but also arent the hereditary owners of counties (nobles.).
Rich fucks who have more money than anyone else and yet bitch about how hard they have it has literally always been what “middle class” means.
Washington and Jefferson was middle class. FDR and JFK were middle class. King George, Queen Elizabeth and King Charles are not
Middle class, at least the income bracket that was middle class has been butchered.
Middle class IS below the poverty line.
The poverty line is a number made up by the wealthy to keep the “less poors” at odds with the “more poors” So that we don’t join forces and guillotine the motherfuckers.
There are conventional definitions of the poverty line. In France, it is defined by the national institute of statistics as:
The poverty threshold is conventionally set at 60% of the population’s median standard of living. It corresponds to a disposable income of €1,288 per month for a single person and €2,705 for a couple with two children under 14 years old. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/5759045
Yeah, we do a lot of inner fighting and it is difficult to get through it. I even find myself getting frustrated at people, who earn twice as much as me, complaining about how they live paycheck to paycheck. The cost of living is not high here (and I save a lot myself), and I think about the wealth I could build if I had their income; basically I think, “why are you complaining??” But we have to remember we are on the same team. We are all ultimately getting screwed over by the owner class.
That guy earning twice as much as you is still far closer to you than to the guy above him. He may make twice the amount as you, but the guy above both of you makes literally 400 times as much (per day sometimes). It’s like you said, we’re all on the same team.
a lot of people are just idiots who don’t understand that money in has to be less than money out.
i’m not on their team. like I’m sorry you chose to be a bicycle mechanic because you think it’s ‘cool’ and you only make 30K a year, but if you choose to spend 20% of your yearly wage on traveling each year… and whine about how poor you are, you’re just an asshole. nobody is forcing you to spend 6000 traveling, you choose to do that and you choose to keep yourself poor by not saving and investing in yourself and/or seeking a career that offers better wages. even more so when you shit on other people who have better jobs than you for being ‘rich boring losers’. i won’t even go on about the ‘artist’ crowd I’m all too familiar with.
a lot of idiots love to be miserable and glorify their self-imposed poverty. no matter their income level. i’ve dated doctors who made 500K a year who did nothing but complain about how poor they were.
Cool story, bro.
It has literally nothing to do with the topic. But hey, good rant there, bud.
There is no middle-class. There is the working class and the aristocrats.
That reminds me of a joke.
The working class walks into a bar . . .
In this economy‽
I’m about to walk into my fav microbrewery… Cheers! 🍻
what’s the cut off?
When you start using your capitol to sway local governments in your favor
Shit, I think that last $3 Uber tip last night pushed me over the line. Sorry, everybody. Now get back to work!
Whether you own and control the technologies that transform input raw materials into output finished products, across the economy.
There’s the Working class, who can’t live in society without trading their time for money in some way, or being given charity. And the Capital class, who can live in society without doing either.
I will add this to my vocabulary as I find it captures the issue in an easy to understand way.
Thanks, viewing it this way really puts retirement into perspective as well. The big promise of modern capitalist countries is that if you, the Worker, take 25% of your paycheck every day for 40 or 50 years and pump it into the stock market, that perhaps you’ll be able to live in the capital class (aka off money you already have) at an extremely low level for a while right before you die. That’s really all we’ve been promised and what a lot of people dream of as the peak achievement. Trading half your waking life away for decades to someone who is making more off your work than you are making, so that just maybe, if the market is good at the right time, you get a tiny taste of how the owners and investors have been living this entire time before you die.
