Americas Middle Class Massacre *sobs*

[clearspira]

Huh. The 1980s was the era in which one of its most successful film characters was Gordon Gecko.

''That's just a film character though, you can't judge an era's societal whims just by that.''

I disagree. The man is based on Carl Icahn. You may have heard his name before: he's worth 16.7 billion, is good friends with Donald Trump, and has a stake in pretty much every industry you can name. You've probably given money to him a dozen times in the last month and don't even realise it.

There's also a nice bit of Michael Milken in there - a man imprisoned for insider trading and is worth 3.7 billion. And good friends with Trump. And was pardoned by Trump.

The idea that the three classes were ever equal is laughable.

[TulipQulqu]

First, this idea of bracketing "the classes" by income is some deep American brain rot. I do not know how else to put it. There two primary classes, those who own for their income and those who work for it. Europeans have fancy words for these, but owners and workers are the real basic distinction.

There is some discussion about if the professionalized workers are a distinct class from the rest of workers, and thus occupy a middle space. These are people like nurses, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other fields which require capital in the form of credentials. Even the most brilliant and capable person could not work one of these jobs legally without making the down payment of time and money to get the credentials for the job. This is not the "middle class" in terms of income though, since there are oil rig workers and coal miners who make more money than some flavors of nurse. It is just a distinct type of job.

Regardless of what one thinks about the Professionalized Managerial Class, true power in the USA has always been in the hands of the owning class. The history of this extends into the pre-revolution era, since most of the framers of the constitution and early presidents literally owned slaves. We see the power of the owning class when they continue to accumulate wealth during a pandemic and economic depression.

Why did America go bad for the normal person since the 70s and 80s? Because the owning class was no longer even remotely antagonistic with institutions controlled by the electoral process. Once democracy stopped opposing the oligarchy of owners, workers were doomed.

[GreyICE]

First, this idea of bracketing "the classes" by income is some deep American brain rot. I do not know how else to put it. There two primary classes, those who own for their income and those who work for it. Europeans have fancy words for these, but owners and workers are the real basic distinction.

There is some discussion about if the professionalized workers are a distinct class from the rest of workers, and thus occupy a middle space. These are people like nurses, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other fields which require capital in the form of credentials. Even the most brilliant and capable person could not work one of these jobs legally without making the down payment of time and money to get the credentials for the job. This is not the "middle class" in terms of income though, since there are oil rig workers and coal miners who make more money than some flavors of nurse. It is just a distinct type of job.

Eh, I understand the sentiment, but it doesn't match the real world. If you want, you can think of it as tiers of wealth accumulation - wealth as in persistent goods and things of value (the economic definition).

At the bottom tier you have neutral to negative wealth accumulation. The person exists, but does not gain wealth. Each year is similar to the last year in terms of possessions and material goods.

At the middle tier you have wealth accumulation as a fraction of the median income. You can buy moderate goods, and save up for expensive purchases. Own a home, increase its value, etc.

At the high tier your wealth accumulates at a rate above the median income to many times the median income. At such a tier you simply accumulate. Purchases that others consider expensive are no real object for you, such as buying your children cars for their birthday present.

There's a fourth tier, where your wealth accumulation dwarfs that of entire neighborhoods worth of people, and that's the tier that's truly eating the middle class. They require the resources of thousands to grow, and they are parasites. That tier simply cannot exist without draining wealth, because no one individual can result in a wealth increase anything proportionate to what they are receiving.

The elimination of both the upper and lower tier is a good goal.

[McAvoy]

First, this idea of bracketing "the classes" by income is some deep American brain rot. I do not know how else to put it. There two primary classes, those who own for their income and those who work for it. Europeans have fancy words for these, but owners and workers are the real basic distinction.

There is some discussion about if the professionalized workers are a distinct class from the rest of workers, and thus occupy a middle space. These are people like nurses, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other fields which require capital in the form of credentials. Even the most brilliant and capable person could not work one of these jobs legally without making the down payment of time and money to get the credentials for the job. This is not the "middle class" in terms of income though, since there are oil rig workers and coal miners who make more money than some flavors of nurse. It is just a distinct type of job.

Eh, I understand the sentiment, but it doesn't match the real world. If you want, you can think of it as tiers of wealth accumulation - wealth as in persistent goods and things of value (the economic definition).

At the bottom tier you have neutral to negative wealth accumulation. The person exists, but does not gain wealth. Each year is similar to the last year in terms of possessions and material goods.

At the middle tier you have wealth accumulation as a fraction of the median income. You can buy moderate goods, and save up for expensive purchases. Own a home, increase its value, etc.

At the high tier your wealth accumulates at a rate above the median income to many times the median income. At such a tier you simply accumulate. Purchases that others consider expensive are no real object for you, such as buying your children cars for their birthday present.

There's a fourth tier, where your wealth accumulation dwarfs that of entire neighborhoods worth of people, and that's the tier that's truly eating the middle class. They require the resources of thousands to grow, and they are parasites. That tier simply cannot exist without draining wealth, because no one individual can result in a wealth increase anything proportionate to what they are receiving.

The elimination of both the upper and lower tier is a good goal.

Certainly true. The fourth tier as you give it, gets to a point where they themselves have so much money they are the ones buying 'art' that looks like a kid painted it. They are figuring out how to spend the immense wealth they have. Or they are one of those rich people who dont even spend it, and live frugally as they can. To them their wealth is like a high score they want to keep going with. Just a number.

Whereas the lowest tier, their wealth is also a number too. But that number is the difference between starving or going homeless at any given moment. That car they are driving to work? That car has more rust then metal in it, has 300k Miles on it and any given moment something could fail in it. Fixing it is out of question because they can't afford it. Getting another car? Can't afford it. Lose that car then they could lose their job.

[TulipQulqu]

First, this idea of bracketing "the classes" by income is some deep American brain rot. I do not know how else to put it. There two primary classes, those who own for their income and those who work for it. Europeans have fancy words for these, but owners and workers are the real basic distinction.

There is some discussion about if the professionalized workers are a distinct class from the rest of workers, and thus occupy a middle space. These are people like nurses, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other fields which require capital in the form of credentials. Even the most brilliant and capable person could not work one of these jobs legally without making the down payment of time and money to get the credentials for the job. This is not the "middle class" in terms of income though, since there are oil rig workers and coal miners who make more money than some flavors of nurse. It is just a distinct type of job.

Eh, I understand the sentiment, but it doesn't match the real world. If you want, you can think of it as tiers of wealth accumulation - wealth as in persistent goods and things of value (the economic definition).

At the bottom tier you have neutral to negative wealth accumulation. The person exists, but does not gain wealth. Each year is similar to the last year in terms of possessions and material goods.

At the middle tier you have wealth accumulation as a fraction of the median income. You can buy moderate goods, and save up for expensive purchases. Own a home, increase its value, etc.

At the high tier your wealth accumulates at a rate above the median income to many times the median income. At such a tier you simply accumulate. Purchases that others consider expensive are no real object for you, such as buying your children cars for their birthday present.

There's a fourth tier, where your wealth accumulation dwarfs that of entire neighborhoods worth of people, and that's the tier that's truly eating the middle class. They require the resources of thousands to grow, and they are parasites. That tier simply cannot exist without draining wealth, because no one individual can result in a wealth increase anything proportionate to what they are receiving.

The elimination of both the upper and lower tier is a good goal.

Class as I was describing it relates to how someone is involved in the production of commodities and services. If we are going to have a society, we need to make commodities--food, cloths, houses, etc.-- and we need people to do services--cleaning public areas, medical work, repair on high value commodities like cars.

A surgeon who is in your high tier is still providing services. A member of the board of directors who is paid the same amount but is simply there because they own a sufficient share has a different relationship to the production of the hospital services.

I agree that poverty eradication is a great goal and the resources hoarded by the parasitic owning class, which you are right to say are the only people who can that absurdly wealthy, seem like a place to go into to get a hold of the means to do so. However it is not the only thing going on.

The enlargement of the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) is also a problem. As long as the "good jobs" are gated behind already having the money and time to attend a certification process, there is going to be a sort of trapping effect. If some outside event--fire, illness, etc.-- knocks someone's family out of the bracket for sending their children to join the PMC, those children will in turn be unable to offer their offspring the entry as well. Some rare cases of people might manage to have a two income house hold where both parents work multiple non-PMC jobs and thus can send their children to get into the PMC sometimes, but that is also going to mean hoping the kids turn out okay without solid parenting.

[GreyICE]

Class as I was describing it relates to how someone is involved in the production of commodities and services. If we are going to have a society, we need to make commodities--food, cloths, houses, etc.-- and we need people to do services--cleaning public areas, medical work, repair on high value commodities like cars.

A surgeon who is in your high tier is still providing services. A member of the board of directors who is paid the same amount but is simply there because they own a sufficient share has a different relationship to the production of the hospital services.

I agree that poverty eradication is a great goal and the resources hoarded by the parasitic owning class, which you are right to say are the only people who can that absurdly wealthy, seem like a place to go into to get a hold of the means to do so. However it is not the only thing going on.

The enlargement of the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) is also a problem. As long as the "good jobs" are gated behind already having the money and time to attend a certification process, there is going to be a sort of trapping effect. If some outside event--fire, illness, etc.-- knocks someone's family out of the bracket for sending their children to join the PMC, those children will in turn be unable to offer their offspring the entry as well. Some rare cases of people might manage to have a two income house hold where both parents work multiple non-PMC jobs and thus can send their children to get into the PMC sometimes, but that is also going to mean hoping the kids turn out okay without solid parenting.

I do understand the Marxist idea of Class, but Karl Marx was writing and thinking in a very different time from the present. I don't believe that idea has stood the test of time particularly well. When Karl Marx was writing, mass labor was required for the production of goods. The vast majority of the population was tied up in creating material goods of some form - food and other goods - and Marx's division was based on the notion that the economy was structured that way.

This simply isn't the case anymore. An Engineering firm I worked for once designed a factory for repairing rail car wheels (something that was done for those sorts of rail cars once every three days). The staff required to design that factory was over 20 people. The number of people required to man that factory? Four. And that was because they required two human inspectors for cracks. Improvements in computer image recognition technology (this was a while ago) might have lowered this to two.

The Marxist idea of class simply doesn't function in a world where there's 25 people designing a factory staffed by two people. In truth those two people are no longer unskilled labor - they are immensely skilled individuals. Many "factory laborers" require skills and training that rival a professionals. An electrician wiring your home may look and dress like "the working class", but they have training and certifications that exceed most service workers you interact with.

It's far better to expand education and opportunities to offer everyone access to skilled labor, rather than try to stick to a model of class that's two centuries old and as outdated as gas-powered lamps and coal furnaces.

[TulipQulqu]

I do understand the Marxist idea of Class, but Karl Marx was writing and thinking in a very different time from the present. I don't believe that idea has stood the test of time particularly well. When Karl Marx was writing, mass labor was required for the production of goods. The vast majority of the population was tied up in creating material goods of some form - food and other goods - and Marx's division was based on the notion that the economy was structured that way.

This simply isn't the case anymore. An Engineering firm I worked for once designed a factory for repairing rail car wheels (something that was done for those sorts of rail cars once every three days). The staff required to design that factory was over 20 people. The number of people required to man that factory? Four. And that was because they required two human inspectors for cracks. Improvements in computer image recognition technology (this was a while ago) might have lowered this to two.

The Marxist idea of class simply doesn't function in a world where there's 25 people designing a factory staffed by two people. In truth those two people are no longer unskilled labor - they are immensely skilled individuals. Many "factory laborers" require skills and training that rival a professionals. An electrician wiring your home may look and dress like "the working class", but they have training and certifications that exceed most service workers you interact with.

It's far better to expand education and opportunities to offer everyone access to skilled labor, rather than try to stick to a model of class that's two centuries old and as outdated as gas-powered lamps and coal furnaces.

This is why the PMC is an addition to the Marxist view. Karl Marx himself did not talk about professions much, since the world of his time was as you described, mass labor. What we see now is this creation of a highly disciplined and regulated working class, the likes of which no 19th century thinker expected.

However, the owner class remains. Jeff Bezos did not do billions of dollars worth of work. He just owned things and we let him gain wealth from it. We could just not let people do that.

Opening up education is a good thing in any economic system. Improving worker productivity should enable people to live better lives and have more time for self-improvement.

[GreyICE]

This is why the PMC is an addition to the Marxist view. Karl Marx himself did not talk about professions much, since the world of his time was as you described, mass labor. What we see now is this creation of a highly disciplined and regulated working class, the likes of which no 19th century thinker expected.

However, the owner class remains. Jeff Bezos did not do billions of dollars worth of work. He just owned things and we let him gain wealth from it. We could just not let people do that.

Opening up education is a good thing in any economic system. Improving worker productivity should enable people to live better lives and have more time for self-improvement.

Of course it does, and I absolutely agree.

The issue I have with your model is this idea of skilled labor that requires education pushing you into a different class. Because we're quickly moving towards the point where almost all forms of unskilled labor can be automated. Once the average labor becomes skilled labor, which it is very close to being (if not actually is) then you have to simply accommodate education into the model, rather than engaging in a hostile worldview that all jobs that require education push you "into the PMC class".

It's a worldview that's antiquated and becoming more antiquated as time goes on. Even in the 1980s it was showing its age, but at this point it's so dated it's like looking around for a telephone booth. Trying to create a class that lumps together Jeff Bezos and an entry level computer programmer is ridiculous.

In truth, the entire model has just proven faulty. Marx saw education as a part of wealth, because in his time information was gated behind wealth. To get even a fraction of the knowledge a person acquires for free nowadays you'd have to spend exorbitant sums. Moving that over to an actual form of class indicator is just perpetuating errors in the model. Class is not based on function in economy, it's based on income. Money truly is the root of all evil, and to obtain a certain amount of it, you have to construct systems to take the wealth of others.

[TulipQulqu]

Of course it does, and I absolutely agree.

The issue I have with your model is this idea of skilled labor that requires education pushing you into a different class. Because we're quickly moving towards the point where almost all forms of unskilled labor can be automated. Once the average labor becomes skilled labor, which it is very close to being (if not actually is) then you have to simply accommodate education into the model, rather than engaging in a hostile worldview that all jobs that require education push you "into the PMC class".

It's a worldview that's antiquated and becoming more antiquated as time goes on. Even in the 1980s it was showing its age, but at this point it's so dated it's like looking around for a telephone booth. Trying to create a class that lumps together Jeff Bezos and an entry level computer programmer is ridiculous.

In truth, the entire model has just proven faulty. Marx saw education as a part of wealth, because in his time information was gated behind wealth. To get even a fraction of the knowledge a person acquires for free nowadays you'd have to spend exorbitant sums. Moving that over to an actual form of class indicator is just perpetuating errors in the model. Class is not based on function in economy, it's based on income. Money truly is the root of all evil, and to obtain a certain amount of it, you have to construct systems to take the wealth of others.

All labor requires some skill.

The distinction of the PMC is not their knowledge but their credential. An artist, chef, or musician might have a greater volume of knowledge about their field than someone with a certification in auto repair or web design, but the certification is what is changing their relationship to production, not the knowledge. This means institutions of certification control entry into the PMC, not the flow of information.

Bezos, an owner, is in the same class as a programmer, a worker.

I am pointing you to the surgeon and the hospital owner example. They both could make the same income, but while the owner merely possess; the doctor produces. We need workers, we do not need owners.

[Draco Dracul]

Class as I was describing it relates to how someone is involved in the production of commodities and services. If we are going to have a society, we need to make commodities--food, cloths, houses, etc.-- and we need people to do services--cleaning public areas, medical work, repair on high value commodities like cars.

A surgeon who is in your high tier is still providing services. A member of the board of directors who is paid the same amount but is simply there because they own a sufficient share has a different relationship to the production of the hospital services.

I agree that poverty eradication is a great goal and the resources hoarded by the parasitic owning class, which you are right to say are the only people who can that absurdly wealthy, seem like a place to go into to get a hold of the means to do so. However it is not the only thing going on.

The enlargement of the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) is also a problem. As long as the "good jobs" are gated behind already having the money and time to attend a certification process, there is going to be a sort of trapping effect. If some outside event--fire, illness, etc.-- knocks someone's family out of the bracket for sending their children to join the PMC, those children will in turn be unable to offer their offspring the entry as well. Some rare cases of people might manage to have a two income house hold where both parents work multiple non-PMC jobs and thus can send their children to get into the PMC sometimes, but that is also going to mean hoping the kids turn out okay without solid parenting.

I do understand the Marxist idea of Class, but Karl Marx was writing and thinking in a very different time from the present. I don't believe that idea has stood the test of time particularly well. When Karl Marx was writing, mass labor was required for the production of goods. The vast majority of the population was tied up in creating material goods of some form - food and other goods - and Marx's division was based on the notion that the economy was structured that way.

This simply isn't the case anymore. An Engineering firm I worked for once designed a factory for repairing rail car wheels (something that was done for those sorts of rail cars once every three days). The staff required to design that factory was over 20 people. The number of people required to man that factory? Four. And that was because they required two human inspectors for cracks. Improvements in computer image recognition technology (this was a while ago) might have lowered this to two.

The Marxist idea of class simply doesn't function in a world where there's 25 people designing a factory staffed by two people. In truth those two people are no longer unskilled labor - they are immensely skilled individuals. Many "factory laborers" require skills and training that rival a professionals. An electrician wiring your home may look and dress like "the working class", but they have training and certifications that exceed most service workers you interact with.

It's far better to expand education and opportunities to offer everyone access to skilled labor, rather than try to stick to a model of class that's two centuries old and as outdated as gas-powered lamps and coal furnaces.

The 25 people that are designing the factory are still providing labor in a way that say a land lord is not.