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Ron Jeremy posted:It's an artificial construct to make white workers feel better about themselves. Do you work for a living? You're working class. Do you support yourself through investment income or income derived from other property owned? You're in the capitalist class. Upper/middle/lower are imaginary. But now you've grouped people who make mid-six figures a year as working class. Most Americans--I think, could be wrong here--would rather identify class status based on earnings and lifestyle rather than how you get money.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:10
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Aesop Poprock posted:Factory probably not, but construction's usually like 40k a year isn't it? At least it is for my friends who are in it. If you can land a union job and keep it long enough to get some decent seniority, then you're doing pretty well in construction. Otherwise, you'd need to be an owner of a construction company to be clearing any kind of decent middle-class wage.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:10
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Chantilly Say posted:But now you've grouped people who make mid-six figures a year as working class. Most Americans--I think, could be wrong here--would rather identify class status based on earnings and lifestyle rather than how you get money. Okay, so we'll say working class, "working class (lol)" and investor class.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:12
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Aesop Poprock posted:Factory probably not, but construction's usually like 40k a year isn't it? At least it is for my friends who are in it. construction used to pay more, relatively, but it's an industry undercut by undocumented labor
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Aug 18, 2016 17:12
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Aesop Poprock posted:Factory probably not, but construction's usually like 40k a year isn't it? At least it is for my friends who are in it. So the factory job was less than a buck over minimum wage at the time, and the $40k a year figure for construction requires being in an area that has continuous construction work available. It's quite easy to end up having to work part time or not at all for extended periods in construction. So you add those two together and it's really not middle class.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:14
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fishmech posted:So the factory job was less than a buck over minimum wage at the time, and the $40k a year figure for construction requires being in an area that has continuous construction work available. It's quite easy to end up having to work part time or not at all for extended periods in construction. True nuff
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Aug 18, 2016 17:17
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fishmech posted:Upper/middle/lower are no ore imaginary than your definitions of working and capitalist class. It's a functional definition based on the source of income. Dunno what more you want.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:17
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Popular Thug Drink posted:every gun nerd is afraid of being exposed as a psycho I swear this is what it's starting to look like
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Aug 18, 2016 17:20
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Chilichimp posted:As of the 90's, neither of those were middle class jobs. A family of 5 with 2 working parents who are barely scraping by is basically as working-poor as it gets. In the post WWII era, 2 working parents would basically make a family rich. In the 90's and beyond, 2 working parents is becoming the standard for raising economic status to approach middle class. If neither one has a college education and have jobs that can be filled an undocumented worker, you're tripping all kinds of red flags. Which is why it's a show about the decline of the middle class. They would have been middle class a generation ago but now they are barely scraping by. That's how the middle class became the working class. It's important. Chilichimp posted:A middle-class family in America today is probably closer to making 100k/year in combined income. LOL. US Household Median Income: $51,939 If the "middle class" is making twice the median income they aren't really "middle class" are they?
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Aug 18, 2016 17:21
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Ron Jeremy posted:It's a functional definition based on the source of income. Dunno what more you want. Any categorization we come up with is going to be arbitrary, and working-v-investor is fine when it comes to deciding who'll be first up against the wall wall when the revolution comes, but it seems like if we're looking to track how well the current economy is treating people there might be better metrics. I'm fond of resource security myself; if you stopped earning income today, how long could you sustain Keeshhound fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 17:25
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Reminder that Middle Class is considered 90k+ by most Companies.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:27
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whaley posted:I swear this is what it's starting to look like Well I mean this is the exact kind of thing they're afraid of. They're deathly afraid of the world in which they're considered the psychos, because that means everyone else around them - the ones who are casting judgement upon them - have gone complacent and become subordinate to the ruling elite. They think themselves to be the last bastion of hope for [insert democratic country here], and them getting called psychoes sort of confirms that in a really eerie way. unpleasantly turgid fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 18, 2016 |
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Aug 18, 2016 17:28
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Ron Jeremy posted:It's a functional definition based on the source of income. Dunno what more you want. Denoting classes by color of the buildings they work in is about as relevant. Keeshhound posted:
There are a lot of very high earning people who'd be hosed within weeks or months, because they're spendy as gently caress even when they don't need to be, while a lot of poor people can maintain their current lifestyle way longer due to already barely having money.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:28
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fishmech posted:There are a lot of very high earning people who'd be hosed within weeks or months, because they're spendy as gently caress even when they don't need to be, while a lot of poor people can maintain their current lifestyle way longer due to already barely having money. Yeah, "lifestyle" was the wrong word to use; I meant just how long could you support yourself in between jobs. Obviously some people are going to be wasteful idiots, but I still think "how long could you ration out your assets" is a decent metric of practical wealth.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:34
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Shbobdb posted:Which is why it's a show about the decline of the middle class. They would have been middle class a generation ago but now they are barely scraping by. That's how the middle class became the working class. It's important. Based on the original post talking about the erosion of the middle class, you have a point. But the argument is whether or not they were middle-class enough in the first place for the show to count as a tale of class erosion. As portrayed, they were never really middle class to begin with, and probably actually moved up as the show went on because Roseanne started her own business. Shbobdb posted:LOL. "Middle-class" is a lifestyle and wealth label, not an average of national incomes. It's called middle class, because it's a sandwiched between basically poor and rich, and those 3 bands aren't separated into 3 neat, evenly divided categories of 33%. Or are you going to tell me that someone making 100k/year is upper class along side the guy making 15 billion/year?
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Aug 18, 2016 17:36
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Keeshhound posted:Yeah, "lifestyle" was the wrong word to use; I meant just how long could you support yourself in between jobs. Obviously some people are going to be wasteful idiots, but I still think "how long could you ration out your assets" is a decent metric of practical wealth. I think I would like to see this acted out on that guy who made soylent to see how long he'd go insane without his newly imported clothes anytime his current ones get dirty
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Aug 18, 2016 17:40
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we're probably going to have to do something about the disparity between locations in the country eventually. 50k is not an overwhelmingly low income in a lot of the country, but it's not healthy to live on that if your rent is 3k/mo and you have kids. There're 200k folks living in NY on their $9/hr minimum wage, less than 20k/yr or 40k for 2 workers. That's not really livable with a family up there.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:44
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Chilichimp posted:Based on the original post talking about the erosion of the middle class, you have a point. But the argument is whether or not they were middle-class enough in the first place for the show to count as a tale of class erosion. As portrayed, they were never really middle class to begin with, and probably actually moved up as the show went on because Roseanne started her own business.  Once you start getting into the top 5% (much less top 1% and top 0.1%) it gets really distorted but since there aren't many of those, this should give a reasonable guideline. Defining it by something nebulous like "lifestyle" is what advertisers do to drive consumption. If "keeping up with the Joneses" is what it means to be middle class then why have the concept at all? Edit: In keeping with Roseanne, I think it is reasonable to expect a factory and construction worker dual income to be between 27K/yr and 40K/yr in 1988. Solidly in the "middle to upper middle" range.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:50
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I consider lower class or impoverished to be the type of people who would be in public housing or the Appalachians. People who would be on public assistance, and are just dirt poor. The Connors would be people who would be "middle class" in the post-ww II, pre-reagan sense. union jobs, home owners, etc, etc. There's a good PBS special that aired discussing how families from this background have seen things get progressively worse and worse because of the poo poo policies that are mentioned in the clip I posted. I highly recommend it. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/two-american-families/
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Aug 18, 2016 17:54
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Right, if we remove rich people from the measurement altogether, then we're left with much more manageable breakdowns.
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Aug 18, 2016 17:55
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Chilichimp posted:Right, if we remove rich people from the measurement altogether, then we're left with YES...now we're talking... 
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Aug 18, 2016 17:59
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Ron Jeremy posted:YES...now we're talking... 
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Aug 18, 2016 18:00
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Yeah, it's important to note that the REALLY rich people have a vested interest of promoting and maintaining class struggles between the lower and middle bands of incomes. It's really easy when you're on either side of the $50k line to punch up or down; however, you're both a rounding error when compared to the folks who have millions or billions.
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Aug 18, 2016 18:05
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Chilichimp posted:Right, if we remove rich people from the measurement altogether, then we're left with much more manageable breakdowns. Does anyone have that graph that breaks down Americans by what percentage of the nation's wealth they control and you think "ok, it's lower has about 10%, middle, 20%, upper, 70%,right? That's pretty hosed up." But then you read the x-axis and realize that it's divided into 20th percentiles and the bottom 40% just don't show up compared to the top 60.
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Aug 18, 2016 18:50
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God this thread has the weirdest derails. Allow me to further it along. Roseanne was the epitome a middle to lower middle class family. It was the whole loving point of the show and a big reason for its popularity. Or are people arguing they were "poor" and not "middle class"? Someone post some poo poo that Hannity or Rush said today.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:27
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BiggerBoat posted:Or are people arguing they were "poor" and not "middle class"? This. Also, they were poor. Middle class people can afford to send their kids to college (even the dumb ones).
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Aug 18, 2016 19:30
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They owned a house, they couldn't have been that poor. I didn't really watch the show, were things like bills a reoccurring problem for them or was money not really talked about outside of "One of the kids wants a new toy but we can't afford it" type plots?
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Aug 18, 2016 19:33
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WampaLord posted:They owned a house, they couldn't have been that poor. Like yeah from the point of view from Hellscape 2016 in which normal people without tech degrees live with their parents into their 30s and have no hope of buying a house before the US economy finally heaves it's last disgusting breaths they probably seem like they've got it pretty good but at the time the show was on they were firmly lower middle class/poor. Owning a house was the default state of being for pretty much any white person for quite some time.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:38
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WampaLord posted:They owned a house, they couldn't have been that poor. House?!?  They had a drat fridge. Doesn't look poor to me. (Yes - bills were a more or less constant theme. Their employment situations varied over the seasons.) Top of my head, I would probably call them middle class or lower middle class (whatever that is), but whatever.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:38
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Malcolm in the Middle was pretty good about showing a middle class family imo.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:42
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WampaLord posted:They owned a house, they couldn't have been that poor. Bills and money were basically the driving plot point of the show.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:46
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BiggerBoat posted:God this thread has the weirdest derails. Allow me to further it along. Techies who grew up in wealthy suburbs think they grew up middle class and the actual middle class are poors. Film at 11.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:46
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Simpsons were good at showing middle class life for about three seasons.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:46
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Shbobdb posted:Techies who grew up in wealthy suburbs think they grew up middle class and the actual middle class are poors. Film at 11. "Middle class" in the Bay Area is like >$250K a year, so it's the perfect place for their self oppressed mindset
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Aug 18, 2016 19:49
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Look at Roseanne's contemporaries - shows like Family Matters or Full House. Those shows were supposed to depict the middle class. You never saw them worrying about bills or expenses. Shows like Roseanne, Married With Children and The Simpsons were all meant to depict the lower class and the struggles they faced. Lots of poo poo has changed since then though.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:51
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Full House was no way middle class since property value, even back then, in San Francisco was insanely expensive.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:53
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Shbobdb posted:Techies who grew up in wealthy suburbs think they grew up middle class and the actual middle class are poors. Film at 11. Ah yes, the idealization of the 1950/60's middle class who was constantly struggling to make ends meet. If only we could get back to those salad days.  Dead Cosmonaut posted:Full House was no way middle class since property value, even back then, in San Francisco was insanely expensive. They were probably more like lower-upper, since wasn't Bob Sagat's character a local TV personality?
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Aug 18, 2016 19:55
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 It's a lady yelling racisms in a bikini so link just to be safe Florida mom launches vile racist rant at black neighbors — ‘You should have stayed in Africa!’
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Aug 18, 2016 19:57
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RareAcumen posted:
Of course she's from Florida. You didn't even have to mention anything.
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Aug 18, 2016 19:59
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https://m.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpS...ct&compact=true Apparently milo/Nero is a crook. Who knew?!
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Aug 18, 2016 20:11
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