I certainly don’t expect things to turn around in my lifetime. The future I want would require radical, systemic changes, but most Americans don’t want anything to radically change. That doesn’t mean a majority of Americans are happy with things the way they are, not at all, but they don’t want to radically change anything, despite their unhappiness. The majority of Americans want things to get better without anything fundamentally changing. I believe that’s one of the definitions of insanity.
Not wanting to fight a civil war =/= not wanting radical change
I guarantee we’d have a very different nation if individual issues and policies were put to a vote, as they are in some European nations.
As if Americans have any control over the change. Even if they/we did want it our capitalist overlords would never allow it to happen. They only want the illusion of freedom.
I’m certainly not suggesting that wanting change is all that’s required for change to happen, but it is a very necessary first step.
If we’re not expecting anything to ever get better, there’s a solution to that too; rather the opposite of “business as usual.”
There are many more ways to make things worse than ways to make things better
That’s not middle class…
I don’t know if it has its own name, but it’s like the Overton window in politics.
Average people assume that they’re average and middle class means average, so they’re “middle class” despite having three figures in saving, no home equity, and a retirement account that will never be enough to retire.
Prior generations at least built up home equity over a lifetime.
As one of these middle class fucks I don’t know how to refer to myself. I’m supporting myself and a dependent adult on barely six figures a year (plus some disability money).
I know I have it way fucking better than folks working in a warehouse or migrant agricultural workers so I don’t want to falsely describe myself as lower class when I’ve clearly got it better… but I’m also being fucking squeezed and each month I eat into my savings. I will say that I am not carrying debt because I aggressively saved early in my career but I am slowly whittling down what should be my retirement savings.
So, what the fuck am I?
Fucked.
So, what the fuck am I?
Scrapping by
People focus on income, income ain’t the whole picture, it’s wealth that’s important.
It used to be owning a home built wealth passively, as you lived and paid your mortgage, you gained equity.
If people cant afford to buy a home, it’s almost impossible to build wealth. You just flush more money away on rent as you earn more money.
It’s what happens when they charge as much as people can pay for something we all need.
If you are struggling and you are not living above your means then you are not middle class you are lower class.
You’re lower class. (No offense)
No offense taken, certainly… that’s even true if I’m in the 97th percentile of earners (by age range) nationally?
Well, it’s hard to put you in a class without knowing your income. But if you don’t have a good chunk at the end of the month, you’re not in that stable middle area.
That’s extremely fair, I guess my point is less a question of what precisely am I and more about the fact that as someone in the top 3% of earners if I’m not in the middle class who the fuck is - is it the .3%-1.5% slice? I know I personally have some awful extenuating circumstances, but the past half a decade have felt like a game you can’t win no matter how lucky you get. (I also might clarify that I am Canadian and our CoL is really high atm).
Oh for sure. It feels impossible. We had a retirement savings person come into my office and they were doing math based on today. Saying that by the time I’m ready I would have “This much” Money. But if we adjust for inflation in the future, based on inflation in the past, that amount would actually be worth about a third of what it is today. I can’t survive on that at all. With the prices of everything going up across the board, it feels like most of the people I know have a lot less spending power than they did when they were making even less than today. I guess I just missed that sweet-spot for retirement (the boomer).
My retirement plan is a bullet. 🤷♂️
The “middle class” is currently defined by arbitrary income levels, not purchasing power. Considering the cost of living disparity across the US it’s an absolutely useless measure.
To be in the middle class 50 years ago, you were able to buy a reasonable family house on one income. To do that today if you’re in an area where the cost of living isn’t absolutely bottom of the barrel you’ve got to make what is currently considered “upper middle class” income or slightly above.
Middle class living is relegated to upper middle class incomes while middle and lower middle class have to rent that lifestyle.
upper middle class incomes
The middle class died the day they had to make the “upper middle class” a thing…
That’s the wealth distribution middle class was supposed to be. But it shrank down so much they had to make new class distinctions up.
In pre-revolution France, the bourgeois were the middle class.
99% in poverty.
O.99% bourgeois
0.01%, the aristocrats!
That distribution wasn’t sustainable back then, it’s not sustainable now.
As wealth concentrates at the top, there’s less for everyone else, and we’re all poor.
"65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle. "
That sounds more like a problem with the definition of the federal poverty level than it is a problem with the middle class.
If you’re struggling, you aren’t middle class.
Federal Poverty Level for 2024 is dependent on household size:
https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/federal-poverty-guidelines/
Oh, man, now I have to see if Lemmy can do tables… Hmmm nope!
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $15,060 - $30,120
2 - $20,440 - $40,880
3 - $25,820 - $51,640
4 - $31,200 - $62,400
5 - $36,580 - $73,160
6 - $41,960 - $83,920
7 - $47,340 - $94,680
8 - $52,720 - $105,440
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760So let’s take the prototypical nuclear family, 2 parents, 2 kids.
$62,400 is 200% poverty. I could see that being a struggle. I think maybe what we need is to re-define the poverty level.
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $31,200 - $62,400
2 - $36,580 - $73,160
3 - $41,960 - $83,920
4 - $47,340 - $94,680
5 - $52,720 - $105,440
6 - $58,100 - $116,200
7 - $63,480 - $126,960
8 - $68,860 - $137,720
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760Yeah, and consider how bad it is for the class below the middle class. We’re literally fucking drowning in debt.
I had to dig a bit, but I found out the source poll’s threshold for “middle class”: 200% or more past the poverty line.
The poverty line is about $15k for individuals. People making $30k a year are, clearly, not middle class. The current standard puts the beginning of middle class in the low $50k’s.
This is doomer clickbait bullshit.
But debt is good! Inflation has encouraged everyone to take out loans where they previously couldn’t. Hooray!
/s
A small amount (obviously less than we’ve had recently) of inflation is actually ideal. Deflation incentivizes literal hoarding of cash, instead of spending it on things, which is a very reliable way to bring an economy to a screeching halt.
No offense but this is exactly the belief I was being sarcastic about. The economy wasn’t halted before Nixon introduced inflation as we know it today. And “the economy” at this point is practically a euphemism for rich people getting nearly the entire surplus while destroying the environment.
Please stop spreading this dangerous misconception.
A feature, not a bug of an oligarchy and an economy run by effective monopolies.
You will own nothing and be happy.
Have they tried investing in GME? and Hodling?
To hell with the middle class, what about the working class? You know, the ones that get all the physical labor done so you can get your next day Amazon order before hitting the Starbucks.
We’ve really bastardized the terms middle class and working class. It’s feeding into the class warfare that is being used against us.
If you have to physically work for a living, you are working class. Let’s point our ire at the correct people here.
If your income is primarily from your labor (physical or not) and not from the capital that you own, you are working class.
Speaking of class only contributed to class warfare only insofar as you see class warfare as the inevitable outcome of class distinctions.
the working class is the middle class.
unless you mean people who are in poverty.
It’s not a “who is suffering more” contest. Bad things are bad things because they’re bad.
The moment enough of us decide this has to change, it will.
Relink productivity and wages! 90% tax rate on all the cash you earn in a year after the first $10M Close corporate tax loopholes
We can solve this, we just need to decide.
Maybe a general strike is out and we should just start a quiet friday strike, and just start extending that back through the week. Productivity just keeps falling until the wealthy decide they don’t want to suffer with the rest of us and take the fucking haircut.
After the first $1MM. Ten million dollars in a single year would set me, and likely just about anyone else, up comfortably for life twice over.
But 90% tax means that $10MM becomes $1MM.
Why does anyone need more than $10 million?
Progressive tax brackets. This hypothetical tax is only on money earned over 10M/1M.
You appear to have missed the word “after.”
Not in our current tax bracket world.
Alright. You make good points. I agree with you. However there is a problem. Alex jones is a nutjob with no redeeming qualities. He has a base, and called on his base to blockade his house to prevent law officials from repossesing his house, his infowars platform, and anything else worth any monetary currency. Notice, I didn’t say “value” because let’s face it. It’s alex jones. What value could there possibly be with him.
Trump did the same thing with J6. Gets his base in a frenzy to do his dirty work, and uses them to attempt a coup. I fully believe the vast majority actually there on J6 didn’t even know thats what it was. They didn’t know where were attempting a coup. But they were fully prepared to follow daddy oranges commands.
My point is, yes we CAN take this country back from the rich. But we will have to fight a second civil war to do so. This civil war won’t be about racism. It will be 100% a class war. And the rich will 100% throw every brainwashed moron they can find into the front lines to die to protect their wealth.
So if we want to take the country back, we’re going to need to fight. Quite frankly, I’m looking forward to it. Either I die and stop suffering in poverty, or I get a better life. When you push the public down to the point that they have nothing to lose, don’t be surprised when death doesn’t scare them.
If you’re a Russian trying to fuck with us, fuck off.
Assuming you’re a legit US citizen: try talking to your fucking neighbors before you start to talk about shooting.
Everyone on the Internet seems like they’re arguing with strawmen.
Violence only in response to violence. We want to solve this without bloodshed. Only those who wish our country harm wish for a civil war.
All rights are won through violence
All rights are won through diversity of tactics. Some of the most effective campaigns for gay rights came from our moms just talking to people about what it was like to have gay kids. Add that to violently forcing the state to stop being so brutal in their oppression of us and years-decades of working with and within the medical and legal establishments to hamper homophobia in those realms.
You get similar shit elsewhere. Eco-terrorism has had less explicit gains than environmental lawyers, but without the militants the assailants to our planet just do it mid lawsuit and pay the fine later. The black American civil rights movement had pacifists and militants.
Force alone doesn’t create a movement, just a war if you’re lucky enough to get the people to support you.
This rhetoric makes me sad.
History is filled to the brim with rights won NOT through violence. What you say is objectively wrong, though it caters to anyone suspectible to populism.
What rights are you talking about taking there? Shooting rich people for the “right” to their money?
What the fuck? These days it’s like nobody understands the Golden Rule anymore. Just hate, kill, and insult whatever offends you. Surely that will lead to good results?
The fuck do you think the US revolution was? You think the starving peasants gave a fuck about taxation without representation? Or tea in a fucking harbor?
All rights are won through violence.
So what’s your political leaning? I assume you’re democrat?
I’m asking because I’m saving your comment to my list of “left wingers calling for violence” since nobody believes that exists.
But I want to confirm you’re a left winger first.
If you’re struggling financially, you’re not “middle class”.
At this point, they’d like to convince you that you’re middle class when you share a place with two roommates.
The medias are trying to redefine having a second or third job as poly employment to make it sound like it’s a choice.
The rich fucks try to define a new normal so they can keep on making more money and fuck us over in the process.
If you read the article, it’s defined purely in terms of income:
The poll, commissioned by the National True Cost of Living Coalition, found that around 65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle.
In a way, it kind of proves the point that we need to reevaluate what the actual cost of living is in the modern age. For a family of 4 to be considered middle class by this metric, they would have an income of $62,400/year or higher. For a single individual, it’s just $30,120/year. I don’t know anywhere in the US where making $15 an hour means you’re in the middle class, yet the federal government wants to keep acting like it’s the 1980s and you can live it up to an extent on such a meager income.
That being said, financial struggle doesn’t necessarily mean they’re one step away from being destitute. It could just be a struggle to maintain their current standard of life, where is used to be taken as a given that this would improve over time.
need to reevaluate
there will never be an administration that would sign off on adjusting the measurements such that millions of people would suddenly be categorized in a lower class than they are. that would make the people calling the shots look bad
Perhaps, but they could minimize the damage from that if it was paired with a comprehensive plan to improve living standards that people actually believed would get passed, and following through on that. Meanwhile, the longer they go on denying the reality voters are experiencing daily, the more they undermine their credibility. At best, they come across as out of touch or incompetent, at worst as outright malicious.
Nah it’s way easier to point the finger at minority groups and claim they are the cause of all our troubles. It’s been working great for years, why would the ruling class stop now?
Pretty sure “capitalism” is the whipping boy of the present day for people to blame for all their woes.
Believe it or not, there have been well-reasoned, aptly articulated arguments against capitalism delivered by earnest, enlightened people (and members of every class), delivered chiefly out of compassion for their fellow man, for over 200 years.
Anti-capitalism sentiment is in no way a transient sensation. It’s clear from your comments you aren’t well-read on the subject, and I don’t mean that as an insult; with some even-keeled reading of relevant works rather than knee-jerk dismissal of all criticism of capitalism as people looking for something to “blame for their woes,” you will undoubtedly have a better grasp on the world and your own position in it.
As the economy tightens and the quality of life degrades, more and more people who have ostensibly stable lives are running into the pitfalls of poverty.
I had to dig a bit, but I found out the source poll’s threshold for “middle class”: 200% or more past the poverty line.
The poverty line is about $15k for individuals. People making $30k a year are, clearly, not middle class. The current standard puts the beginning of middle class in the low $50k’s.
This is doomer clickbait bullshit.
There’s no such thing as “middle class” anyways.
