i was reading this comment thread pretty pleased until i got to the bit where they say “in 20 years”. my friend the middle class is gone NOW. any illusion of a middle class is built entirely on credit card debt. in amerikkka you have people who are poor as fuck, slightly less poor, a bit less poor than that, and then the people earning 500k/yr+ who are wealthy yet call themselves “middle class” while being the literal statistical 1%, and then you have the obscenely wealthy. and then anyone under that 500k/yr mark is basically just buried under various amounts of debt. there is no “20 years from now”. there is no “if wages keep stagnating”. the shit they think will happen in 20yrs is the current condition and even people who almost get it still dont realize this

not posting to ‘dunk on’ or anything, its just kinda sad and frustrating really

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
    ·
    2 days ago

    The fact that they’re framing it as a “middle class” issue means they’re in denial. The middle class was always a mirage to fool the working class into thinking the class interest of the bourgeoisie is their interest.

    • godlessworm [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 days ago

      any time i've tried to explain to someone that "middle class" isn't a thing, and that there's really just people who own and people who work, they will say it's semantics or splitting hairs. when they're the ones trying to divide this very plainly observable reality into all these made up little subcategories.

      • CthulhusIntern [he/him]
        ·
        2 days ago

        The entire concept of the middle class is splitting hairs. Like "I'm not working class, even though I entirely work for my money, make no passive income, and don't own any private property. I'm MIDDLE class, because reasons."

      • barrbaric [he/him]
        ·
        2 days ago

        I'd argue that the middle class is a thing, but that it's specifically the petit bourgeois (aka small business tyrants). They own some capital but typically still have to work and are motivated much more by fear of losing what they have than the big bourgeois.

      • PKMKII [none/use name]
        ·
        2 days ago

        Middle Class doesn’t exist as a definitional category for them, it’s a comfort blanket. Just as a small child feels that their blankie will protect them from the monster under the bed, they think identifying as middle class protects them from the oppression that capitalism puts on the working class.

      • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
        ·
        4 hours ago

        AFAIK the tern originated to differentiate between peasants/serfs/slaves (lower class), nobility (upper class), and artisans/merchants/free men who don't own land/capitalists (middle class/bourgeois). When the American and French Revolutions took place, the middle class bourgeois overthrew the upper class nobility.

        So of course the term ends up being arbitrary, its definition includes both rulers and citizens living in liberal republics where nobility and feudalism have been abolished.

    • miz [any, any]
      ·
      2 days ago

      Citation Needed Episode 91: It's Time to Retire the Term "Middle Class"

      The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality.

      But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty.