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

  • 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.