Comment on Pizza Party and Casual Fridays
jerkface@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
“Middle class” refers to your social status and contrasts with “upper class” and “lower class.” It’s about how we perceive and treat each other on a social level. It does not refer to your Marxian class under capitalism. There is nothing between the ruling class and the working class.
Idk, feels like you’re desperately trying to simplify a complex situation.
Obviously there is a 10% who own half the wealth in the USA, and obviously there is a further 1% who own the majority of that, but that for the most part correlates but also runs seperate to the level of authority and influence they have.
The same amount of wealth could give them either much more or much less power in a monarchy/dictatorship depending on their lineage, for example.
You’re totally missing my point so I’ll just simplify it to: “middle class” isn’t a real thing.
the middle class are the people who lived in all those american suburbs built in the 50s and 60s; those small, 2 or 3 bedroom houses with drab siding or brick facades that are an overrepresentation of the american landscape and lifestyle, despite the fact you’ve rarely every seen one in a TV show or film. they homes were typically affordable to the average worker but now aren’t; those are the homes of the 90% of the actual hard-working american population.
this isn’t that difficult of a concept.
the reddit forum design seems to inherently encourage nerd bullshit. tell me more about the dictionary definition of this or that.
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
In common usage, the “____ class” terms refer to income/wealth levels, and the social constructs derive from that.
More importantly, the semantics of the comment are completely irrelevant to the actual message being conveyed.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
We all belong to dozens of different overlapping classes when considered through different paradigms. My point here was that talking about the “middle class” as though it had a place in political class theory is confusing categories.
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Good lord, replace the words “middle class” with whatever you want to use to describe “population group that can use one income to support buying a home, having a spouse and 2.1 children, and saving enough to retire at 65”.
The point is the massive increase in top level pay, not whatever term you are using to refer to the rest.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
Some might say you have a renting class and a home owning class. And this relates to political discourse in a very real way especially on a local level where property taxes are concerned. I don’t think it’s fair to call the home owning class the “ruling class”. I’ll agree that the middle class is being destroyed, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it never existed. Even what they used to call upper middle class is a thing. These are not CEOs making 30x per OPs 1978 figure. But they make maybe 2x to 4x the average household income. (Think doctors, lawyers, certain types of managers.) their lifestyle will be very different from the renting class.