I’d like to send a special “fuck you buddy” to all the boomers that told me “oh you’ll get more conservative as you get older, once you get some money”
I don’t know what world those people live in, but every day since probably 1989 everything I have seen in the world has only convinced me more and more that capitalism is a disease that is destroying lives and the planet.
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@cobweb @msbw I think one reason is most of us didn't, like them, get more money.
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@corbden I worked a long time for people who mostly had a whole lot of money. A whole lot of them in the younger gen X and down expressed the same sentiment, and since part of my job entailed supervising that their donations got done, I can at least attest they put some money where their mouths were.
@cobweb @msbw
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@corbden The more I think about this (apparent, from my anecdata) generational disparity, the more I think it's that the gap between haves and have-nots in the Boomer generation was largely set along demographic lines; they could effectively rely on whatever privilege they started with holding out & didn't mingle beyond it. Whereas late X-onward, post-Reagan, it became clear meritocracy was a lie as social groups mixed, & we accepted "minorities" (incl. women) "should" succeed. @cobweb @msbw
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@cwicseolfor We were literally the first post-segregationist, post-civil rights act generation in the US. Every generation after that has been exposed to more diversity. That's why they destroyed the public school system starting in our generation.
@cobweb @msbw
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@corbden THAT THAT THAT. (I'm a middle millennial, though. Talk about a K-shaped trajectory. With the bottom leg sticking wayyyyy out beyond the top one.) @cobweb @msbw
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@cwicseolfor @corbden @cobweb boomers really pulled the ladder up behind them.
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@msbw @cwicseolfor @corbden @cobweb I'm reading the post and replies and guessing you're all from the US. Can you please give some insight to a foreigner as to why these political views (& 1st hand experiences on the impact of late stage capitalism), which I've been reading with increasing frequency over what, 10, 15 years? lack a political movement where to converge and consolidate. I mean since both the US electoral system and the Democratic party are obstacles to any change (are they not?)
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@kikebenlloch My myopic best shot: yes, and yes; there's no movement to converge because there's an aggressive and multi-pronged effort to divide and conquer, inclusive of quite a lot of direct state action (e.g. COINTELPRO); trillions in ad & media $ reinforcing cultural attachment at every level to a foundational narrative of self-sufficient individualist meritocracy, persistent even among those who disavow it (e.g. see our climate/ covid response or economic populism.)
@msbw @corbden @cobweb
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@kikebenlloch Among those who have been on the upside of privilege, it is firmly believed that enough privilege will spare them consequences - heretofore it has. They think enough money will let them buy a ticket out of whatever new discomfort or crisis arises. They don't believe they live in the same factual reality, because they live in such a divergent SOCIAL reality. It's affluenza; they think they can reschedule the sea rise or cancel the storms via room service.
@msbw @corbden @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb And this has given me reason to be grateful that I've lost much of my white middle class cishet American Christian privilege over time, prior to now. Because now I feel far more prepared, emotionally at least, for what's to come. And it allows me empathy and willingness to help those with less than me
But god I wish that isn't what it takes.
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@corbden Everyone's individual blinders will vary. Part of my post was to point out: people DON'T have to experience it firsthand to care, necessarily. Some do merely witness and make a CHOICE. Knowledge's light varies, but it IS a choice to be eusocial, and also a choice not to: even if the deck seems impossibly stacked against the right decision.
More, different "cards" weigh differently to different people; what is necessary to one is quite disposable to another. @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor @corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb Just last week I realized that the wealthy are the only minority in the world who are the oppressors and not the oppressed - and they're a tiny minority.
Like any privilege, they have to work hard to see outside it. Like any privilege, they have zero motivation to do so unless they have an inherent love of justice.
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@callisto I suspect it's hardest to see beyond; it exists on a gradient; what "outsiders" they ever meet look "inside" from here.
Also, one can choose to shed that privilege (or the majority of it - they still know people.) But imo, since the system is built to hoover whatever's not nailed down directly upstream to the worst people alive, better it used for public benefit than disavowed. With community guidance on usage. Even a state collection system…
@corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor Your first ℙ lines up with a thought I've been trying to construct: that there IS still a middle class, but it's been sucked so far up into the income scale that nobody really recognizes it. Because they're wealthy by any sensible measure - but not so wealthy as to purchase legislators, Justices or presidents. [cont'd]
@corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor People who have enough that they don't have to worry, financially anyway, about a major blow like a significant health issue, or a disaster short of losing their every material possession. Who are set for child care, housing, healthcare. That's an income in the nbd of $300K per person in the USA, I'd say, which the 9-to-5s justifiably don't consider "middle class." @corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor But that kind of income and wealth are dwarfed by the billionaires', who they rightly consider to be in a completely different economic class. "Wealthy" doesn't make the distinction, and it's an important one. @corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@callisto Personally that's where I distinguish "wealthy" from "rich" - though the sticky wicket is that most people can be "wealthy" - resources in excess of need - on a fairly average salary (after all, nothing about earning more causes a human to have greater resource needs than the poorest, and many do live well on just 2-3x the poverty line in the US.) I would posit two things have changed wrt whether a lofty income achieves "middle class": @corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor According to these two charts, the average salary in the USA only covers the bare necessities with zero left over for savings or discretionary spending. And it posits insurance to cover unexpected losses, which we all know is difficult at best.
https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/business/hr-payroll/average-salary-us/
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/16/salary-a-single-person-needs-to-live-comfortably-in-every-state.html @corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@callisto Aside from them mixing up "average" and "median," this is where consumer habits in the US have been designed to detach from the cost of goods. Medicine, housing, transport - the most critical, non-negotiable needs of life - are cripplingly expensive here.
But so much else in life is costly as consumed, rather wrt cost. Poor people know that; median income people forget. My next toot addressed it; eg foodbox subscription vs. local grocer prices.
@corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@callisto I live in flyover land. If I do what coworkers do to save time - use grocery delivery services - they pay their local, coastal prices, with local, coastal wages, FAR ABOVE MEDIAN WAGE (but are average US wages.) I otoh would be paying coastal prices for kale with flyover wages.
Yet - these very delivery services have taken off here among my "middle class" community. Ditto streaming, phone bills, all online shopping. That mismatch drowns people.
@corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@callisto Thus a "middle class" lifestyle ratchets ever upward; flight from those expensive communities for arbitrage on expensive necessities like housing distorts smaller markets as resource demand rises long before the local wages do (if they ever do.) But at the same time, as ever, the expectations of a "decent life" are predicated on the upper third. Do less for your children and you're deemed unfit; so people do, afford it or no. Inequality locks in. @corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@cwicseolfor Also expectations on time ratchet those costs upward as conveniences become necessities. Who has time to go grocery shopping on the work and commute hours required for a middle class income? Much less the added time spent on products breaking down, technology becoming more frustrating, corporate bureaucracies bogging down everywhere.
@callisto @kikebenlloch
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@corbden Time poverty is the final anvil on which the paycheck to paycheck get hammered - no matter their actual income. But since expectations of a "decent life" are as ridiculous and classist as they are people are herded continuously into that paycheck to paycheck precarity where time can hammer them.
ESPECIALLY if they have kids, in which case the state has a pretty significant threat at hand: removing your children if you fail to consume enough on their behalf.
@callisto @kikebenlloch
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@callisto First, inequality within the US has taken off like a rocket; the economies of the coasts are incomprehensible from flyover country; as companies nationalize, so too do prices, which means you can have a pretty comparable middle class experience on $60k or $600k of expenditures without even moving between economies, and without apparent "overconsumption." (Imo, it's still overconsumption, but it looks like what the Joneses are doing, from outside!)
@corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@callisto
Second, partly related to #1, a significant health issue CAN blow up even the very fortunate overnight. All it takes is insurance refusing to cover a condition with significant urgent intervention, or refusing to cover ongoing necessary pharmaceutical intervention (which appears to be what led to one Luigi Mangione.) You can't buy reliably "good" insurance anymore.
So even the 9.9% are near as terrorized as the rest of us. Deliberately.
@corbden @kikebenlloch @msbw @cobweb
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@kikebenlloch I think a lot of it is because the rentier class has been exceptionally skilled at giving the opposition just enough to buy them off. The 13th Amendment's allowance of continued slavery, to start with. The National Labor Relations Act. The Affordable Care Act. The true middle class has dwindled to a privileged few, while the majority of working people don't have the luxury to look beyond their daily grind.
@msbw @cwicseolfor @corbden @cobweb
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