Comment on where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues?
scarabic@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’ll add one extra thing here: that no one in America identifies themselves as “a worker” or “working class.”
Perhaps Europe, with its historic class strata, is better prepared for this. Maybe people there know that they are working class and always will be. With that identity firmly held, they can find each other and agitate for their rights.
In America, if you are working class, first of all you’d never admit it. Everyone is “middle class,” here, don’t you know. And even if in your heart you know you are working class, your aim is to get out of the working class, not make its life better.
No justifications here, just a description of American psychology on this topic.
madcaesar@lemmy.world 5 days ago
You’re right. I’ll just add I don’t even know what the difference is between middle class and working class. We’re all having to work like animals to live.
I’m technically middle class I guess? But I call myself working class and I stand with labor 100% of the time, because the only foe any of us have is the billionaire class.
foggy@lemmy.world 4 days ago
There’s no black and white to these terms.
Suffice it to say, when a working class person, say, gets a DUI, it will literally ruin their life.
When a middle class person gets a DUI, it will ruin their year.
When you’re upper middle class, that DUI fucking sucks. But you got it. Family is still going on vacation. Christmas isn’t cancelled.
When an upper class person gets a DUI, it will inconvenience their evening, and maybe, just maybe, their public image. (gasp)
scarabic@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yes I think “having to work” is definitely the boundary of upper class. We’re talking inheritances, investments, landlording, whatever.
I earn a great deal of money at my job - top 1%. But I live in a HCOL area and am raising two kids. We have no aspirations but to own our house someday and send our kids to college. If we go on a vacation once a year we are happy. I would lose absolutely everything were I to get laid off from my job. We still look for sales at Costco and cook at home instead of eating out, like everyone else. This still feels like “middle class” to me, whatever my wage is.
However I am seeing that even the basic components of the American Dream, a house and a family, are more than most can attain. I think that says that our working class is growing and perhaps getting pretty large. Certainly if you are living hand to mouth that’s working class. If you have no prospect of owning your home or sending your kids to college, that’s working class.
“Working class” has associations from when we were an industrial and manufacturing economy. People who work in an office don’t think “I’m working class” because they don’t wear coveralls and operate power tools. But we’ve transitioned to a services-based economy now for many years, so I think a LOT of people are working class without even realizing it.
And if you don’t even know you’re working class, how are you going to get fired up about a workers rights rally?