Sure you can argue that your financial situation is a bit better, but the power dynamics between yourself and owners is still the same regardless if you make a lot or a little and more importantly, salaries change. When your job isn’t considered competitive anymore you’ll be in the same boat or if you get laid off or you get sick, etc.
Comment on Make no mistake, the owning class is actively working against your interests
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
This is kind of silly.
I’m definitely working class, like I couldn’t stop working and coast the rest of my life on what I have saved now without really cutting everything to the bone.
However, I max out my 401k and iras every year. We also put enough money aside that our two kids will probably need to take out little to no money for their college educations. We are contemplating how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we can afford for a house renovation, and we can still take two comfortable vacations per year.
I’m very comfortable and know I am very lucky.
Which is why it’s absurd to put me in the same category as the people who literally have cut everything to the bone and still worry about making ends meet at the end of the month. While we should still team up against the owning class, our financial situations are drastically different and shouldn’t be treated as the same because that would do a huge disservice to their actual relative situation.
gataloca@lemmy.world 9 months ago
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Sure, which is why I think we should still team up. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we are in such ridiculously different positions that it’s nonsense to try and pretend these are “made up” just to keep people down. Like my tax rate is higher, and it should be. There are very obvious reason these have different terms, and “it’s just conspiracy by the man to keep us down!” without a shred of evidence to back it up is just, well, mindless conspiracy shit.
m0darn@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I’m not so you were previously engaged with, and am fortunate enough to be in a similar boat to you.
I would just like to point out that in the context of having a conversation with a 13 year old, starting with working class solidarity is a good idea. I think the next step in that conversation is (for people in situations like ours) to acknowledge the factors that have led to our success, and agree that our privileges don’t mean we should abandon our less fortunate peers to exploitation. We should still seek an equitable world.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I’m not opposed to the “working class” idea, I’m opposed to the attempt to make it into some kind of conspiracy to keep everyone down.
FraidyBear@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I think what they are trying to get at is, it’s important to instill in the younger generation that the big picture is that there are owners and there are workers. All the rest are just manufactured microcosms of the bigger picture that we can’t even begin to tackle without understanding why these microcosms exist in the first place and dismantalling the structure that keeps them in place.
This helps them understand our current class structure for what it is, fake. This can help kids feel not so alone in the daily struggle, they have lots of allies! This may even drive this youngster to start an ethical charity or run for office to help enact change. This bigger picture is often whats missing when kids learn these things in school or life and why so so many kids grow up thinking they can make it big only to burn out young when they are struggling to just get by even though they played by the rules, here we are teaching to not blame yourself you did your best! It’s not about dismissing the vast wealth differences we have as the working class so much as teaching that those differences are subject to change at the whim of the ownership class, teaching solidarity and empathy along the way. Imo it’s a good teaching moment and it’s the same one I got as a kid, I like to think I turned out okay if not a tad jaded a bit too young haha.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I absolutely agree. I just like to be honest with my kids and if I start feeding them stuff like “we’re basically in the same position as that homeless guy and the whole idea that we’re in different situations is just a conspiracy by the ultra wealthy to keep us down”… Well, they’re bright kids and will realize that I’m full of shit soon enough.
Also I think teaching them that we’re lucky to have what we have and to give (both monetarily and our time) helping out those less fortunate than us is going to do a whole lot more to create solidarity with the rest of the working class than feeding them be conspiracy theories.
makyo@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sure there are differences - but it’s absolutely not a mindless conspiracy. They may have not invented the terms but the right uses them in a very effective divide and conquor strategy.
Just turn on conservative news for your evidence. Every single day they use ‘news’ about how the lower class is lazy, they don’t want to work, just want handouts, etc. etc. And it’s aimed at people like you who do have more in common with the lower class than the rich so you’ll vote for their tax cut. Even in this thread you’ll find people repeating these right-wing talking points.
I’ll add that it’s admirable that it hasn’t worked on you and you still have the empathy to see eye to eye with lower classes. Sadly though, it works on a lot of people.
lledrtx@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What line of work are you and your spouse in, if you don’t mind me asking?
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Tech and health care
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
You must have heard of “None of us is free, until we’re all free!” before, right?
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I’ll use the example used a lot during COVID: we’re all in the same storm, but we’re not all in the same boat.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
I don’t follow.
Ainiriand@lemmy.world 9 months ago
While there is a lot of sense on what you say, I prefer the class distinctions made by Karl Marx because it does not factor economic differences between workers. He defined classes in 3 groups, independently of their money. It only depends on their relation to the means of production. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxian_class_theory
Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
You’re an idiot to think that money defines you. You might think you’re not a narcissistic asshole but you are. Regardless if that’s all projection from the “rich” class. You’re their narcissistic pet boy.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
You might think you’re not a narcissistic asshole
I don’t know you well enough to make an actual determination, but I’d be willing to bet that this is quite the projection.
Chakravanti@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
You’d lose. Just like you will when the investment into the printed worthless “paper” gets slammed like 9/11 as described in 3:71 & 3:73. Turns out it wasn’t a prediction but rather a plan to rob the working class. At keast, those like yoy who were suckers to consider wealth to be valid when it was printed in paper of no true value but painted with the entirety of theft.
I’m of an entirely other direction oath. Your blatant narcissist being conduct on behalf of the paper printers, the billionaires, is so blatantly obvious that only you can’t see it.
You think your stupid plans have value. Stupid not because you are but because you swallowed the whole bit of money wholly and have zero track now lodgment when the theft is conducted right in front of your vision.
That theft is being done right now. But sure, it’s not theft the way your work isn’t slavery. That because you made the choice to work for result of their being rich because you’re not lower class…
…yet…
…sucker.
EatATaco@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Maybe not narcissistic, maybe just delusional.
marcos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yep. It’s almost like different words with different meanings are useful to express different thoughts on different contexts.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
ouch