Submitted 16 hours ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to workreform@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/4ec6ffb1-7a18-4d2a-9009-d46b0b1f5696.jpeg
This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America’s economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
Capitalism is just feudalism with more math.
As a top 1 percenter, I feel seriously offended by the suggestion that I’d sit anywhere close peasants, let alone at the same table.
/s obviously, because I wouldn’t be on lemmy if I was anywhere close the top 1%
Actually the top 1% in the US is ~600k per year. It’s a lot of cash but not entirely outside the realm of possibility for some extremely senior software architect/manager combo at some VC startup, which is also within the lemmy target audience.
~600k per year
Why are you using income? It’s wealth that matters and that’s a ~$16M cutoff.
To reach that you’d need to be earning ~600k per year for 2-3 decades, to invest the majority of it, and to get absurd stock returns on top of that.
Yeah but they would never admit to being a 1%er here if they know what’s good for them
I gather this is roughly true wrt income (other estimates place this closer to 750k per household), but not wealth (which i believe is ~14 million to be in the top 1% in the US). Note that this income estimate does not include unrealized capital gains and that a 10% return on a 14 million portfolio is 1.4 million per year in passive income.
why a ban?
Mod log just says “Ban evasion, repeated violations of ToS” across a few dozen coms. I guess mods got sick of them.
Yes and the middle class who think they have money keep voting for this.
In my experience the difference in voting is really between the educated class and the uneducated class. Educated people are tend to be left wing. Uneducated people tend to be right wing. I’m pretty sure the data bears that out.
This is well studied in “capital and ideology”. Over the last 40 years in usa, euorpe educated tend to vote left, wealth votes right, which is a switch from how it used to be.
However it seems like at least in usa there isn’t that much difference between left and right when it comes to taxing wealth. Hence the steep rise in inequity since regan
During the Reagan era, lobbyists were allowed back into Washington, and officials on both sides (or non-partisan) were quickly captured.
Paul Krugman has a great comment about it. Paraphrased, politicians tend to listen more to well-dressed, well spoken lobbyists than they do nerdy economists.
Americans let children die in schools to gun violence for decades just so they can uphold the 2nd amendment which by definition doesn’t even guarantee access to guns to common civilians, but hide in the corner when their way of life is being taken away from them day by day because “They have guns too and I’m a pussy”.
The USA is 350 million fucking cowards, and they deserve what is happening.
Nice job homogenizing 350 million people. Every single one the same and deserving of ridicule. Sure.
Yep. It’s is the (nearly) end game of pure capitalism.
Which is why you see lately the attack on anything that is given or provided by government.
Because they want more of the pizza. They want it ALL.
And yet they are meat sacks like the rest of humanity. With all the strengths and weaknesses everyone called a human has.
Why are they special? Why are they allowed to hog ALL the wealth?
Because we let them.
Old but still true. “But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that! You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you…. they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you. They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. IT’S CALLED THE AMERICAN DREAM, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO BE ASLEEP TO BELIEVE IT.” George Carlin
That graph makes me sick
And Americans still refuse to do anything about it.
I don’t think 1% share a piece, more like crumbs for anyone else than a piece. While the lesser get image or just vague idea of a crumb.
Yes looks bad, but lets export this system, the “liberal international order” all around the world. It’s a good thing. Lets support the liberation of any other system and welcome them into our blossom on inequality based on wealth.
The irony is that most leftists will agree with OP, but then be happy to support sanctions and attacks on countries like Venezuela. Were happy to support anti Maduro propaganda.
They STILL something think that this US system of liberalism is better than what the enemies of the US empire do. Like Socialism in Libya - Wikipedia under Ghaddafi and nobody gives a shit when NATO bombs it.
So I’ve started to hate these memes not because I don’t think they are not illustrative, but because they somehow do not translate into anything resembling a rational world view on policies or foreign policy based on solidarity. I hate it because like 90% of the people upvoting this are liberal sand secretly US imperialists.
They’ve exported unimaginable horror and trauma and then blame the people lashing out against it for being not morally pure.
Libya is not a good example of socialism. unless you like autocracy with massive violations of civil liberties which neuter any benefits of welfare.
Better off bombed^tm^
How do group liberalism in with imperialism and indiscriminate bombing? The two are unrelated. Gaining capital at the expense of all else is not “liberal” it is capitalist
So you can understand me as talking about classical liberalism - Wikipedia or what you would call neoliberalism. But MOST people on the “left” are fine with many aspects of capitalism, including the moral belief in inequality based on class / wealth. If I make more money, I deserve better healthcare, my kids better food and education. Most “leftists” are classic liberals.
The other view on this is that “liberal values” or “the liberal international order” means that there ARE no ideological values that are inherently better or worse. It’s all just a question of voting for them or not. A personal choice. Except it’s not.
First people do no or can not accept how much of mass opinion is manufactured (e.g. “manufacturing consent” is in hyperdrive today). If you invest in private media and PR campaigns and fund the right groups you can completely manipulate and interfere in the affairs of other countries. This is the playbook for the color revolutions, what is done today overtly by the NED which used to be done covertly by the CIA. It’s the same thing though.
Second is that because there is no “definite ideology of the state” except “anything goes and greed is good” (e.g. commercial property enshrined in fundamental law) there is no counterweight. This does not have to be spelled out, it is an inevitable outcome of the starting conditions. The power to influence ideology does not rest with the state and it does not rest with the people: It rests with those who have the most power outside of the state.. Those who have the most money and influence. The plutocrats and institutions and corporations. THEY are what have power in a “liberal democracy”. Because there is nothing to oppose these powers because the state is liberal, permissive of all ideology. What remains is powers like Koch brothers, Musks, Murdochs, Think Tanks, bla bla institutes, churches. In a bygone era there used to be unions, but even in social democratic countries they are at least partially captured.
So the idea of “liberal values” as being different from classic or neoliberalism is shaky at best. It’s one of the “big lies” of western democracies. There is only power (Sith axiom). And all political power derives from economic power (homebrew axiom / headcanon)
Or maybe like this: If you could run a computer simulation of a western liberal democratic country based on initial law and wealth and power distribution, you would always get capitalism.
At least this is my latest hypothesis to explain the complete collapse of the pluralistic western civilization.
Most of the population is in the lower 20%/10% range of wealth.
This doesn’t show the severity of it.
A better pie chart would show:
~ The top 0.001%
~ Everyone else in the top 0.01%
~ Everyone else in the top 0.1%
You’re likely already guessing how the pie looks with those groups figured in.
Note that absolutely everything above $30 million is pure capital. Its only purpose is to make more money.
Note that people this rich can do a lot of incompetent and heinous stuff and still fail upwards.
Note that a considerable number of the ultra-wealthy think of working class humans as NPCs and would rather replace us all with machines that cost twice as much to maintain.
remember - there is no such thing as stratification within the working class. there is no “upper middle class” - it’s all just propaganda to get us distracted by a better house, greener lawn, culdesac, suit wearing folks…
There is an “upper middle class.”
If you point to the average doctor or lawyer, and tell poor people “those guys are working class, same as you,” half of them are going to tell you to get bent. Cause when they see them with their mcmansions that somebody else cleans, and their giant lawns that somebody else mows, and driving their mercedes and corvettes, the average poor person is not going to believe you when you tell them they’re the same class.
Maybe if everyone was educated and enlightened you could pull that off, but expecting all or even most people to be like that is idealistic and naïve at best. Perhaps even callous and out-of-touch.
The grain of truth is that we are indeed all “working class,” and that class conflict is should be about working class versus owner class; and that the owner class actively pits upper-middle class against middle- and lower-class, and middle-class against lower class.
But telling everyone “there’s no such thing as/no distinction between upper-middle, middle, and lower classes” is not the remedy. You need to remind them that even though there is stratification within the working class, we’re all on the same team and need to work together.
Telling them otherwise comes off as gaslighting and is not going to convince the majority of working class people, because it directly contradicts the evidence of their eyes and ears.
And besides, upper-middle class people will hear that and think “so you want to reduce me to poverty just to level the playing field!”, middle-class people will think “so you want to eliminate the middle class and make us all poor?,” and lower-class people will think “so you’re erasing my struggles and pretending I have it just as easy as the middle- and upper-middle classes?”
Denying the reality isn’t helpful. That’s like using “colorblindness” as an argument against racism. We need to acknowledge our differences in order to accept them. Pretending there’s no difference will never work, and only advantages the owner-class attempting to maintain the status quo.
could not agree with you more.
I am one of those people that has had circumstances improve. I grew up in a trailer that honestly should have been condemned rather than allowed to have someone live in it. I’ve gotten used to sleep for dinner when I was younger having my only good food be the fact that one of my friends mom’s was our lunch lady and she took pity on me pretty regularly.
over the last 15 or 20 years I’ve somehow worked my way into a good paying job and when I read your first paragraph it was a little bit of a wake up for me since a lot of those things apply now.
I would say the main difference that I have between now and then is that I have more control over my life personally, if I were to lose my job I could probably find another one and even if I couldn’t I could sell my house and be okay for a while. homelessness is not right around the corner like it was when I was a kid and we got evicted three or four times.
The real difference between classes though is not that I can afford my electricity bill every month or make sure that my kids have probably too many toys, as far as I’m concerned the primary difference is whether you have control of how other people live their lives.
The owner class has propaganda machines, owns government officials, can collaborate with each other to ensure that wages are suppressed and to ensure that the right people make the right business calls and make a bunch of money at the rest of our expense.
it’s insane to me that the life that I have used to be common in America and I feel so lucky and grateful that I have it at all today. all I have is a house a job two cars and two kids and a cat I guess.
that should not be too much to ask for for the regular person. everyone should get to have that kind of stability in their life.
I vote and believe the way I do not because I think it will drastically change my own life but because I think that others deserve what I have, it should not be extraordinary for people to be able to survive on one job and build a family if that’s what they want to do.
The average lawyer makes less than $160k, the average physician makes $275k.
At least make a modicum of effort to base your commentary in reality.
half of them are going to tell you to get bent.
I don’t disagree, I just think that this response is a function of a lack of class consciousness and is really an exercise for you, to teach your audience, that “sells labor and limited lifespan” means working class. (eliding the details here…)
In short: it’s audience specific. My reply here was meant for the audience here. I might not say it the same way to my neighbor, or a friend, etc.
i guess i don’t disagree that in the interest of time and energy we do consider there to be multiple middle classes, etc, but i consider it harmful to our unification as one working class.
Except for cops. Remember: they’re not working class, just trash class.
Ah, yes, this us only an issue in the US… And also, nothing other than the US matters or exists.
Missed opportunity to have the lower %50 portrayed as extremely obese. That is how we are taught I feel, that the poor are actually lazy moochers taking instead of contributing.
Which isn’t true to be clear
There is in fact a problem with the lower income families having food deserts, having not enough money for fresh produce, and having to rely on mostly hyper processed foods which fuck with your insulin levels, have tons of sugar, fats and salts to make them tasty, and that leads to irregular fat storage even when you’re taking a normal or sub normal level of calories. It’s one of the reasons the “fat American” body type is showing up in other nations, particularly in Europe, where they’re also becoming more reliant on ultra processed foods. Being poor is more expensive in many ways, and one is that you can’t afford a good diet and it makes you sicker faster while you lack the healthcare to manage it or find education on the matter via a primary care provider.
There has to be more to it than that. I was watching something about an area near me being one of the fattest in the country. Its moderately deprived which I am sure is a contributing factor, but then less than 100 miles away another town which is far more deprived is around 10% lower for obesity.
They interviewed people too, asking them where they get food from. So many said the same answer, a shop which is entirely stocked with processed crap. Yes, if you go shopping there you are coming home with crap. But next door there were 2 other shops which sell fresh vegetables and for less than the ultra processed crap. It takes less than 10 seconds to walk between the doors of each shop.
Its not a food desert, fresh food is available here and cheaper than processed food. I spend less on food for the week than many people do on a single takeaway, of which they have several a week.
I’m sorry but this is a wildly inaccurate way to portray the data. This image is portraying not the cut that every group gets, but the wealth that the average individual in that group gets. These individual averages per group are then added up to 100% and then everybody gets a slice out of that 100%.
To show you how this is inaccurate say we did this with 10 people. We have 2 groups. Group 1 has 9 people who average 1 dollar and then group 2 has 1 person who owns 2 dollars. In that example group 1 has 2 dollars combined and group 2 has 9 dollars combined. This would mean the groups own 18% and 82% of the wealth respectively. But according to how this comic portrays it, as per Capita, the pizza slice of group 1 would be ⅔ of the pizza and group 2 gets ⅓ of the pizza, which is not accurate at all to how the wealth is actually distributed.
Using this per capita metric is highly misleading if we are to use it in that way. The top 1% in the USA in actuality holds 32,5% of the wealth in the USA which would create a totally different pizza than the one in the comic.
This image is portraying not the cut that every group gets, but the wealth that the average individual in that group gets.
I think that’s the whole point. It’s not trying to paint an overview of the economy, but rather to show what portion a typical member of each class gets to live off of.
Images like you describe that show the breakdown for each entire class? Those are not hard to find.
I just don’t think it’s an honest way to show the data. You could use the exact same method but put the richest individual as one group and the entire rest of humanity as another group and show that the top 1 person gets the entire pizza except for one microscopic crumb but of course that would be extremely misleading. I’m fine with per Capita wealth per wealth group as a metric but it doesn’t lend itself to be used in circular graphs. A bar graph would be less misleading. But of course that wouldn’t be good in a comic. I’m also against extreme wealth inequality but we are not going to solve it by misrepresenting the data. The non misrepresented data is already telling enough.
The cartoon would then have to show the relative sizes of the groups as well (about 6 to 1), so 1 person gets 2/3 while 6 people get to share 1/3. Or, each person in the 1% gets 2/3 of the pizza, and each person in the 50% gets 1/18 of the pizza. Or, the 1% get 12 times more. The real figures are a lot worse, with the bottom 50% holding about 1/50 of the total household wealth, while the 1% hold 1/3 and the rest being distributed among the other 49%. The reality therefore is that those 6 people have to split 1/50th of a pizza, for 1/300th of a pizza each. What would 1/300th of a pizza look like? Crumbs I reckon.
Anyway, it’s a cartoon.
www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/…/chart/#range…
The point of the bottom 50% enjoying 2 pepperonis is the accurate part
You make a compelling argument. One word for you though, per capita.
One word for you though, per capita.
That’s two words.
Top 1% … holds 32,5% of the wealth
And people over 55 own 73% (most of the top 1% that isn’t tech billionaires, are also old people after all). Start taxing corporations more and they won’t be able to retire the way they have, so they’re naturally against that. Good luck figuring it out without magically increasing birth rates to have more workers per retiree, or having your old people live in squalor so young people can have better lives (potentially driving up birth rates if they feel they can afford children)
This is quite literally the stuff that results in revolutions. People can tolerate in l inequality only up to a certain level. Even some ultra rich can see the situation can’t remain stable.
Which is why they put so much effort into manipulating all of us
It just takes one person to start a revolution. Too bad the lot of you are waiting for someone else to start it.
People who own capital on an international scale vs. People who own a small amount vs. People who own none.
Aside from the imagery of the share of the pizza, I appreciate the detail of the lower 50% not even having “a seat at the table” :/
MAGA think they’re “merely wealthy” because they got a new (to them) pickup three years ago. So this will fall on dumb ears.
As infuriating and dangerous as MAGA is, just remember who the true enemy is. There is no war but class war.
Oh trust me. I know
this will fall on dumb ears.
In fairness, you did say “MAGA” after all. ;-)
Reminded me of this little sketch.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL_I6_0FcTg
However, it ain’t just MAGA unfortunately, there are many liberal people also confuse debt and wealth too. Taking vacations, buying tech, and then complaining about living paycheck to paycheck.
I have one of these stupid fucks trying to weasel his way into buying a truck from the recent widow I’m fixing/selling it for. This fucker thinks he can swing in and buy it for an IOU. My only other interaction with him is brandishing a gun because his ex wouldn’t fuck him.
More accurately, the lower 50% is forced to fight over some cheese stuck to the lid and the grease- soaked bottom of the cardboard box.
My thoughts and prayers go out to lower 50%.
Not shown on this chart: the rest of the world exploited by American imperialism
.1%
It really do be like that.
upper middle class is a black woman?
Sometimes.
so much so that they represent the majority of the upper middle class?
Banned
Yes, but, my neighbors just bought a bigger car than me, so I had to buy a new one as well - on a loan. If I skip my sons birthday and instead make overtime, maybe my boss will notice and give me a raise (so I don’t have to subtract the loan interest from my sons college fund). Anyways if immigrants actually payed their taxes this would all not be problem… What was I doing again? Ah I was on my way to vote split ticket again; devided government keeps both sides in check.
Refusing to consume is one of the greatest acts of resistance that pretty much everyone is actually able to do, and would even benefit from doing.
Are the merely wealthy the other top 9%?
don’t touch Jeff’s pizza leave those premises
HasturInYellow@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I cannot stop seeing this idea overlaid on every thing that I see or do or hear about. Every action is filtered through the lens of it being extractive and manipulative.
I feel extremely stressed because I see the bars of the cage and no one else around me wants to acknowledge them.
I do not like this. I would like it to stop please.
HerbGrower@slrpnk.net 14 hours ago
Reject consumerism, make things instead.
We have friends coming over, instead of ordering food from a mega corporation I am going to make pizza and potato wedges.
Steve@communick.news 12 hours ago
Where do the ingredients come from? Are you growing your own grain and milling it into your own flower? Do you have your own cows or goats to make your own cheese? Did you built your own oven? Fired with wood you cut down yourself?
Not buying the very last link in the chain doesn’t matter. It only makes you feel like you’re doing something.
gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Take back power anyway you can.
Tenant unions, worker unions, worker cooperatives, community land trusts, tool libraries.
Work towards owning your business and your home and your community WITH your coworkers and your neighborhood and your community.
We can overcome the tyrants if we work together. Federal elections are only one small piece of the puzzle and no one will save us but ourselves.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Then do something. Why does someone else need to rattle the cage for you to break free? Why are Americans, who masturbate to the 2nd amendment, so afraid of taking back their country? There’s 350 million of you, trillions of guns, and merely a few hundred of them. Start turning the streets red.
DickCaramel@piefed.social 6 hours ago
“All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustimed.”