You’ll see people on anti-work posting stories about their bosses taking advantage of them and the responses are almost always, ‘quit your, get a new one and double your wage/salary’.

‘Bro your job and your boss suck, just quit and get a new one with 2x pay’

Or ‘I hate my line of work, what should I do’

A:‘Just get a job at a fortune 500 and transition into a different role’

Or ‘just go back to school bro’

I’m studyied engineering and this theme hits even closer to home to people like me.

‘Oh you earn 50k as an engineer? Weird, the entry level pay of people in my company and everyone I know ever is 120 Million’

The general sentiment on reddit and places like antiwork is one of anger, frustration with our economic system, or general despair. But the frustrations always seem to be ‘I am living paycheck to pay check in a big city earning 200k’ and not ‘I have a PHD and I’m struggling to find a job that pays above minimum wage’, which is more of I’ve encountered. Why does everyone seem so fucking comfortable?

  • Lussy [any]
    ·
    10 months ago

    But, like, I come from the middle class (I think?) and things seem absolutely dire for people like me.

    • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
      ·
      10 months ago

      you american?
      i know "middle class" there is weirdly broad

      here the main markers of the "middle class" are:

      1. your parents went to university - this one is becoming less relevant as the years go by and a higher percentage of people have degrees, it used to be that there would not be much competition for degree-requiring jobs, so a degree meant almost certain financial comfort, that comfort would lead to a more financially comfortable childhood for their kids
      2. your parents own their own home - yes, home ownership is a good thing, but you can't ignore that under a western housing market, a house is a financial asset more than anything else, it's collateral for loans, a relatively safe investment, and a place to live in
      3. you definitely own a car (unless you live in a city centre) and it is relatively new - newer car (usually) means less that needs repairing/replacing
      4. you work a profession - you have a job that requires a degree, those almost always pay more than those that don't, another thing that is becoming more blurry as the middle class are increasingly becoming downwardly mobile

      there are more but you get the idea

        • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          It's true though, we made it up so that everyone can convince themselves they're not one of The Poors and accidentally develop solidarity

        • UlyssesT [he/him]
          ·
          10 months ago

          As ideology, that has some legs. I've known desperately poor people that nothing but a part time shift at minimum wage that called themselves "middle class" and even "capitalist" while I've also had distant relatives call themselves "middle class" that were landlords with properties all across the state.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        10 months ago

        you work a profession - you have a job that requires a degree

        Tangent: In the most technical sense, a profession requires a specialized body of knowledge and training, a self-regulating and self-licensing body, and a professional code of ethics. Very few occupations are actually professions in this sense.

        I like keeping this fact in the back pocket for dunking on tech bros and bankers who are too far up their own asses about their "professions". Especially funny if you're a nurse or some other profession they look down on and you get to gatekeep them.

    • radiofreeval [any]
      ·
      10 months ago

      "Middle Class" is full-on vibes based class analysis. It doesn't exist, at all.

      • pillow
        ·
        7 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • Dolores [love/loves]
          ·
          10 months ago

          this sentiment speaks to

          the sentiment of the middle class not being real? it's simply not a category under capitalist relations, you own capital or don't, it's a binary. you can talk about & further define edge-cases but there is no unified middle area that complies with any marxian analysis of class. what the middle class is depends on the speaker, is it a function of income? a self-identification? this is why it's "vibes" because there isn't a coherent and dominant definition, it's just a word anybody gets to use to mean almost anything.

          the middle class was real in the society from which capitalism emerged, and important to early capitalist identity, but it's not a meaningful way to understand capitalism as it functions as an economic system

    • FanonFan [comrade/them, any]
      ·
      10 months ago

      Do you get bank holidays off and actual benefits (not the bullshit insurance most employers ship with)? Or are you in a trade?

      In the US at least I think the broader working class could be divided into a few subclasses of maybe service industry, trades, and white collar/management jobs. I think their class experience is distinct enough to justify that division. So one could argue that the non service subclasses are "middle class".