while we are fighting over gender and race gaps, we fail to notice the gap between tech salaries and salaries of marketing and sales executives, C level roles, lawyers and so on.
And I totally think it’s true that people don’t realize how much they’re spending on modern conveniences that could be easily cut out if they wanted to live more cheaply.
So I really do think it's missing the point to say that the middle class isn't actually shrinking because we've got all these great new gadgets and services instead of traditional middle class trappings like housing. Compared to prior years, the difference in housing affordability relative to median income is equal to hundreds of maxed-out iPhones. [1],[2] Avoiding a new iPhone purchase or canceling a Blue Apron subscription won't make up the difference. These things aren't priced equivalently, and frugality doesn't work if one is completely priced out of the market.
[1] https://quotewizard.com/news/posts/americas-unaffordable-hou...
[2] https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...
Not saying youre wrong per se, but the problem with these sorts of loose definitions is that one can bend the definition to make whichever point one wishes to.
But if someone wants to stand in front of a slide deck and explain why people who think the middle class is shrinking for the worse are wrong, I think they should either explain why that definition of the middle class is wrong, or explain why that particular definition of the middle class is not shrinking for the worse. Otherwise they're just talking past each other.
Second it does not matter where you place the income bands, the fact of the matter is people are making more money today then they did in the 1970's out pacing inflation which factors in things like housing prices. People today can afford MORE than people in 1970's did
In some ways the cost of netflix is what people are complaining about, it is sad you discounted everything said simply because you misunderstood the point he was making.
As to education people should be upset not with the cost of education but with the evaporation of good paying jobs that do not need an education. No society can last if the education system can not produce employable workers in 12 years of schooling. The fact that employers are requiring an additional 4 years for the vast majority of good paying jobs shows a clear problem with our government run educational system, so simply adding on 4 more years to the government paid system is likely not going to resolve that problem. However the only thing people are demanded today is free college not fixing the K-12 system so employers will recognize a high school diploma as enough education for the majority of their positions
To close I bet you can find a region, like silicon valley, where this data does not apply, but for the US on the whole people are better off, and if Silicon valley is where people are worse off then maybe it time to move away from the poop ridden streets and come to middle America where things are much better...
And notice I said "if he were to be incorrect or ignorant", I have not tried to fact check or anything what he's saying in the talk, and so I'm making no claim to the accuracy and veracity of it.
Low <---------------> High
P1 p2 p3
Low <---------------> High
P1 p2 p3
Lawyers I can see the case against, but remember that they are paying off a ton of debt, and missed a couple years of earnings in law school.
The relevant quote I've heard is that "Sales managers have no trouble firing people."
Ignoring class divisions and real-world material conditions while we get rich and kibbitz about trivialities is the whole point, you can't run out of trivialities.
Right now the US is so divided and there's no strong left coalition to make demands. I feel we are in a nascent rebuilding phase where we have to knit together groups and build groups from unorganized elements. My current thinking is that these are issues people care about, so we should help them and explicitly link them into economic class struggle so that the nascent coalitions build towards something.
People that engage in the movements in any capacity AND talk with class conscious activists become more radical over time. Participation in solely liberal movements can do it too, but mostly to the point where the people participate feel something is missing as the liberal demands always undershoot the problem. They need to read and talk to socialists, and socialists need to listen more than they talk in those conversations.
My ire is for the tech 'activists' who spend their time deciding which innocent turns of phrase should be banned or which marvel movies needed more representation.
I've been slacking recently because of my fear of COVID-19, but previously I'd been doing community and workplace organizing. The real world is the only place that will actually improve things. The pandemic is a real bummer.
Spot on. I'd add... you can't run out of irrelevant trivialities.
Often though today, the things mentioned are not only trivial (not having any meaningful effect) but also irrelevant (in that the causal relationship hypothesized is extremely strained if not non-existent).
The condition of the capitalist system is declining and more people are feeling it. By removing things the elites can point to, we narrow their ability to navigate.
The right wing is turning to conspiracy and nationalism as they usually do. However, they are the minority of the country (the friends and family of the ownership class is necessarily smaller than the prolaterians), they just have the ability to do a LOT of damage.
The key is for the working class right wing, these ideas are often against their material interest in either the short or long term and so they are a softer core that can be peeled away. Probably not with direct appeals, but by substantive action.
Only about 30-40% of the country are convicted right wingers, somewhere between a minority and a super-minority of the population, and a reasonable fraction (guessing 5-10%) of them would be peeled away by a positive material change in their circumstances by a re-distributive economic policy.
I spent just a few seconds looking at photos of 1960’s police brutality photos on Google and see white people in most of them.
https://www.google.com/search?q=1960%27s+police+brutality+pr...
Good time to also point out that conservative voters make up something like 24-25% of the population and liberal voters roughly the same. Half the population doesn’t vote in general though the numbers are higher for presidential elections than your average election.
EDIT: Looking at some side-by-sides with the George Floyd protests, it seems apparent to me that while there were some non-black participants in the 1960s, the proportion of them significantly increased.
https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+protests&tbm=is...
Sales people will always be close to the money, by definition, and C-suite will always have the most equity (because they carry the most risk by dint of them being the face of the company).
The markets were white hot during COVID, and while lots of businesses suffered, lots went to the god damn moon