Petty bourgeoise class traitor here. I've worked all my life. Now I'm surviving as a renter in a major city on $1800/mo gross and no health insurance. Probably not the poorest here, but certainly closer to homelessness than to home ownership. Class is about your relationship to capital, not your wealth or income.
does anyone just sit on the money and not become a landlord/ invest in stocks/ take a stake in owning the means?
It is possible to be very wealthy but own no capital, and to be very poor but own some capital. Likewise with income.
the class disparity on this website is fucking huge
It really fucking is lol, shits wild doe (I hope I used that right)
My first corporate job right out of college turned me from an apolitical nihilist to a communist.
I need a good long stint of loafing
I have this recurring dream where I suplex a customer
Same, been in damn near every industry too. Factory, airport, food service, advertising, transportation, gig, retail, gas stations. Only had one year off since I was 18 and even then still had temp work.
Know a kid who worked at a grill in the gas station I was at who had been working as an indentured servant to the owner since he was 12. His mom left him and the landlord said he could stay in the home only if he worked for free at his restaurant.
Yeah, he was rough. Poor kid got hooked on uppers when he was like 14.
It's almost beyond comprehension. Some kids are forced to become men and burn out before they even hit 18. I will never be able to relate. It just fills me with existential horror to fathom
Some of the older guys there used him as essentially a drug mule for a while. He was under 18 so the idea was if he got caught he wouldn't do hard time. Got a gun pulled on him once and almost got shot. I felt so bad for the kid and tried to help him as much as I could, but he was just kinda at that point where he was too far gone, and there wasn't much I could do as a nearly homeless gas station attendant.
I think he's in his 20s now, haven't seen him in a while.
Crippling social anxiety, combined with a Scandinavian student grant system made it possible for me to avoid getting a job until I was in my late 20's. It's not something that I'm happy about though. I feel ashamed about it and I'm sure I would have been better off if I had had an income that matched that of my peers. Instead I felt sad and worthless for not being able to do what they did, which made me even more avoidant regarding wage labour.
I have a "real" job now and it's quite good compared to what capitalism normally offers. The pay is below average though and my finances are irreperably fucked. I haven't been to a dentist since I was 17.
I was about to get my degree but fear about having to face the labour market made me have a nervous breakdown and drop out.
About dental care here you can be lucky to get the municipality to pay to have a sick tooth pulled out if you beg for it. People here in Denmark are disgustingly smug about how amazing the healthcare system is but it still considers teeth to be luxury bones poor people doesn't really need.
I feel like that's much more prevalent in the USA. I'm always surprised when I hear about teens having jobs in the USA. I don't think I know anyone who had a job in high school.
A lot of my friends didn't even have a job in college. We were all working class but it's easier for families to support their kids when college and healthcare are free, student dorms are cheap and the food in the student cafeteria is mostly subsidized.
I never had a job in high school, but I've been working continuously since the minute I graduated. It's considered shameful not to work unless your family is filthy rich.
I mean I've worked a bit but you can't do most jobs if you're physically disabled and in chronic pain. So yeah. Also late on a critical health appointment because no money
Dying of preventable health conditions gang (all of this post applies to me as well).
Really? Are there that many champagne socialists on this site?
That's actually kinda disappointing to me because I've been working since i was 16 as well. Grew up lower/middle class (lol "class")
I don't really think there are. The jobs data for most countries says a lot of the poorest are among the millions who fall out of the workforce entirely for long periods of time due to whatever reason. A lot of them are still workers by the marxist definition, fulfilling different functions to subsist in a sort of grey area outside the normal jobs market. The people in this category are usually worse off than the people who've had regular employment since they were teens. Think Brace or Christman if the pod never took off.
Brace unionized his brewery though, man's a hero. First craft brewers union in America and news of it reached all the way out East to the brewery I was at before the pandemic. Sucks they laid everyone off before we could get it going here.
Yeah, this is also basically Bernie's story and the employment gaps are pretty common if you look through the histories of leftist figures. I guess I just don't want people here to feel bad if this is them or like they aren't really part of the left.
Growing up in middle/upper middle class doesn't make you a "champagne socialist". You can be a socialist from a well-off family. You aren't a "champagne socialist" until you're an upper middle class that only gets into socialism for the aesthetic.
Champagne socialism is when you make more than minimum wage, and the closer to minimum wage the more champagney you are
This is me, but I've had to go to the doctor because I'm kinda sickly.
The upside is not too long from now I'll be withering away my 30's instead of my 20's. :)
I choose the path of NEETdom. Doomed to forever alone, no gf, and boredom, but at least I don't have to slave away in a wage-cage.
