this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 131 points 9 months ago (9 children)

The moment enough of us decide this has to change, it will.

Relink productivity and wages! 90% tax rate on all the cash you earn in a year after the first $10M Close corporate tax loopholes

We can solve this, we just need to decide.

Maybe a general strike is out and we should just start a quiet friday strike, and just start extending that back through the week. Productivity just keeps falling until the wealthy decide they don't want to suffer with the rest of us and take the fucking haircut.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (10 children)

After the first $1MM. Ten million dollars in a single year would set me, and likely just about anyone else, up comfortably for life twice over.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Take your current yearly salary, multiply it by however many years you expect to live after retirement + let's say... 10% on top for inflation, + another 10 for medical expenses. Is that number above, or below, $10M? Retirement is fucking expensive and only going up in cost.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

I've modeled it a bit more precisely considering actual expenditures as well as social security income, projected inflation and investment returns, etc. $5MM in my pocket right now should set me up just fine.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 9 months ago (7 children)

If you're struggling financially, you're not "middle class".

[–] [email protected] 65 points 9 months ago (2 children)

If you read the article, it's defined purely in terms of income:

The poll, commissioned by the National True Cost of Living Coalition, found that around 65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle.

In a way, it kind of proves the point that we need to reevaluate what the actual cost of living is in the modern age. For a family of 4 to be considered middle class by this metric, they would have an income of $62,400/year or higher. For a single individual, it's just $30,120/year. I don't know anywhere in the US where making $15 an hour means you're in the middle class, yet the federal government wants to keep acting like it's the 1980s and you can live it up to an extent on such a meager income.

That being said, financial struggle doesn't necessarily mean they're one step away from being destitute. It could just be a struggle to maintain their current standard of life, where is used to be taken as a given that this would improve over time.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

Think of it this way.

For decades, 'middle class' was defined as one income that could pay for a family of four. Up until the Nixon inflation of the 1970s anyone with a halfway decent job was 'middle class.' Back then $1 million was a giant fortune

Then Reagan came in with his tax cuts for the rich. By 1992, middle class was defined as two incomes and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (6 children)

need to reevaluate

there will never be an administration that would sign off on adjusting the measurements such that millions of people would suddenly be categorized in a lower class than they are. that would make the people calling the shots look bad

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Then you reclassify it day one and make a point of doing it retroactively, showing how the previous (Republican) administrations are to blame

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

This is why the presidential administration should not be the source of these definitions.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

Not necessarily. You can live outside your means at any income level.

Also, children are fucking expensive.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 61 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

I certainly don't expect things to turn around in my lifetime. The future I want would require radical, systemic changes, but most Americans don't want anything to radically change. That doesn't mean a majority of Americans are happy with things the way they are, not at all, but they don't want to radically change anything, despite their unhappiness. The majority of Americans want things to get better without anything fundamentally changing. I believe that's one of the definitions of insanity.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Not wanting to fight a civil war =/= not wanting radical change

I guarantee we’d have a very different nation if individual issues and policies were put to a vote, as they are in some European nations.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Given how your party system works in America I’m wondering what you think a realistic non violent alternative would be?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

I’m simply saying the desire is there for most, just not enough to take up arms.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

1/3 of humanity would kill another 1/3, while a 1/3 watches.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

If we're not expecting anything to ever get better, there's a solution to that too; rather the opposite of "business as usual."

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (3 children)

That's not middle class...

I don't know if it has its own name, but it's like the Overton window in politics.

Average people assume that they're average and middle class means average, so they're "middle class" despite having three figures in saving, no home equity, and a retirement account that will never be enough to retire.

Prior generations at least built up home equity over a lifetime.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (8 children)

As one of these middle class fucks I don't know how to refer to myself. I'm supporting myself and a dependent adult on barely six figures a year (plus some disability money).

I know I have it way fucking better than folks working in a warehouse or migrant agricultural workers so I don't want to falsely describe myself as lower class when I've clearly got it better... but I'm also being fucking squeezed and each month I eat into my savings. I will say that I am not carrying debt because I aggressively saved early in my career but I am slowly whittling down what should be my retirement savings.

So, what the fuck am I?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So, what the fuck am I?

Scrapping by

People focus on income, income ain't the whole picture, it's wealth that's important.

It used to be owning a home built wealth passively, as you lived and paid your mortgage, you gained equity.

If people cant afford to buy a home, it's almost impossible to build wealth. You just flush more money away on rent as you earn more money.

It's what happens when they charge as much as people can pay for something we all need.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The "middle class" is currently defined by arbitrary income levels, not purchasing power. Considering the cost of living disparity across the US it's an absolutely useless measure.

To be in the middle class 50 years ago, you were able to buy a reasonable family house on one income. To do that today if you're in an area where the cost of living isn't absolutely bottom of the barrel you've got to make what is currently considered "upper middle class" income or slightly above.

Middle class living is relegated to upper middle class incomes while middle and lower middle class have to rent that lifestyle.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

upper middle class incomes

The middle class died the day they had to make the "upper middle class" a thing...

That's the wealth distribution middle class was supposed to be. But it shrank down so much they had to make new class distinctions up.

In pre-revolution France, the bourgeois were the middle class.

99% in poverty.

O.99% bourgeois

0.01%, the aristocrats!

That distribution wasn't sustainable back then, it's not sustainable now.

As wealth concentrates at the top, there's less for everyone else, and we're all poor.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, and consider how bad it is for the class below the middle class. We're literally fucking drowning in debt.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I had to dig a bit, but I found out the source poll's threshold for "middle class": 200% or more past the poverty line.

The poverty line is about $15k for individuals. People making $30k a year are, clearly, not middle class. The current standard puts the beginning of middle class in the low $50k's.

This is doomer clickbait bullshit.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (4 children)

To hell with the middle class, what about the working class? You know, the ones that get all the physical labor done so you can get your next day Amazon order before hitting the Starbucks.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

We've really bastardized the terms middle class and working class. It's feeding into the class warfare that is being used against us.

If you have to physically work for a living, you are working class. Let's point our ire at the correct people here.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

If your income is primarily from your labor (physical or not) and not from the capital that you own, you are working class.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

the working class is the middle class.

unless you mean people who are in poverty.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

The middle class doesn't exist. Everyone thinks they're middle class.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

A feature, not a bug of an oligarchy and an economy run by effective monopolies.

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