Occupy

[Bruno]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

[Elder Iptuous]

perhaps it is the terminology's implications?
you have 'middle class' which would imply the existence of an 'upper class' or a 'high class'.  people are always looking up, so they certainly acknowledge that there is a class above them.
then there is the implication of a.... "what did you call it? 'working class'?  well. i certainly work, but i'm not lower class so, i must be middle."
without a formal definition of the classes based on income or whatnot, then who wouldn't want to avoid calling themselves 'lower class' if you're not destitute?

hmm....
republican view of classes: red team middle class v. blue team welfare mooches and the unscrupulous rich that pander to them.
democrat view of classes: blue team middle class v. red team redneck trash and the unscrupulous rich that pander to them.
politically beneficial to propagate the notion of a middle class in the execution of the two man con?

[Bruno]

God punishes bad people by making them poor.


And that's the story of where poor people come from. Goodnight everybody.

[LMNO]

There's also the implication that if "working class" =/= "middle class", then obviously, the middle class doesn't work.

And, considering the bullshit I have to do to earn a paycheck, it sure as FUCK isn't working.  It's making work for others.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I find it very interesting that, in America, populism is defined almost entirely in terms of the middle class.  This makes the USA an aberration among modern democracies, where usually the working class is the focus of populist rhetoric, whether leftwing or right.

Probably because a) in the US, using the words "working class" marks you out as a Communist, or some kind of fancy social sciences intellectual (aka, a Communist), b) everyone in the US except for those firmly on the bottom rungs of society are conditioned to think of themselves as "middle class", either through self-deception and aspiration, or through a misunderstanding of power and wealth disparities within the US, and c) just because.

It really bugs me when I see people banging on about "tEh mIdDlE class", because it kinda gives me the impression they haven't really thought through any of the above, or that their posturing is a desperate attempt to seperate themselves from the dreaded working class as an act of Will.

Incidentally, as far as I'm concerned, as long as you don't own a means of production, you're working class.  But I'm old fashioned like that.

Essentially the U.S. uses these terms colloquially in an entirely different way from the way they have historically been used in Europe. As we lack a formal aristocracy, we sort of invented our own class terms and even the way we use them is really muddy. A huge part of the reason for that is because historically the U.S. has had an enormous middle class, and most of the working class were economically considered middle class so working class was often used synonymously with middle class. It's only been recently that working class has been split out as a euphemism to describe the working poor.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And, considering the bullshit I have to do to earn a paycheck, it sure as FUCK isn't working.  It's making work for others.

Not everyone works with their hands.  This ain't 1200 CE.

What's really funny about the modern world is that we CAN'T FUNCTION without that weird bullshit.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

But they are, in the sense that they're in the same herd of prey.

Their actual mistake is thinking that - somehow - the doors to the upper class will one day be open to them.  So they don't want any legislation that will fuck it up for them later.  "Pre-rich" is the term used to describe these low-functioning retards, last I heard.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That's a really interesting point. I rarely hear the phrase "working class" in that modern populist rhetoric. And until a few months ago, populism (in mainstream discussion) was mostly of a rawr government=bad libertarian thing.

It's something that has bugged me for the last two years.  A lot of talk of Dem blogs etc about "restoring the middle class" or "saving the middle class".  I used to ask "so that does that mean you're cutting your losses and considering the working class expendable?  Oh, of course you are, you're Democratic partisans on the internet", but I got banned a lot for that line of mockery.

Functionally speaking, it means narrowing the currently widening gap between productivity and wages. The reason our middle class (upon whom our economy largely depends, with their free time and disposable income) is disappearing is because around 1970 productivity continued to increase, but wages did not. Increased profits pooled money in banks, and personal loans started to become a hugely profitable of the banking industry. Manufacturers saw that lending was profitable and got into the business of it, in some cases (GMAC) to the degree that it became the cornerstone of their business. The wage disparity continued to increase along with debt as increasingly pinched workers made purchases on credit in order to keep up with the consumeristic ideals instilled into them by the pervasive idea of American exceptionalism. The money surplus (at the top) led to some pretty baseless speculative investing, which led to the dot.com bubble and subsequent crash, after which the government decided to recover by encouraging spending not by raising worker wages, but by providing lender incentives so that workers would go into even more debt in order to BUY STUFF. That "stuff" is the American Dream, in this case houses.

And you see where that got us.

The glorious awful truth at the core of it all is that this whole mess was started by women entering the workforce en masse, combined with our idiotic laissez-faire government deciding that capitalism would just work it all out, no need for laws that reduce the work week to compensate for the glut of workers so the labor market could adjust or anything... but that law that requires corporations to make profit their highest priority at the expense of all else is just dandy and can stay.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

This is, interestingly, not quite true, but it IS what the media machine wants you to think. So that we all sit tight in our little homes thinking that everyone else in America is a fucking idiot and there's no possibility of changing anything because the Majority Sides With Them, not us.

It's a huge manipulation game, along with Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Gay marriage!

This is how it works: "I'm tired and hungry and I kinda blew off voting because most of the morons in this fucking state are opposed to gay marriage and there's no way that bill is gonna pass."

Bill doesn't pass, belief is reinforced.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not saying that Tea Party morons don't exist, BTW. I'm saying that the widespread belief that they represent "most Americans" is completely false, and that the worst fear of "Them" (by which I mean the megacorporations that control our government and most of our information flow) is that somehow, we'll figure this out and stop responding to the "ZOMG ABORTION AND COMMUNISM" divisionary tactics and the general efforts to keep us divided and hopeless.

[Elder Iptuous]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

This is, interestingly, not quite true, but it IS what the media machine wants you to think. So that we all sit tight in our little homes thinking that everyone else in America is a fucking idiot and there's no possibility of changing anything because the Majority Sides With Them, not us.

It's a huge manipulation game, along with Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Gay marriage!

This is how it works: "I'm tired and hungry and I kinda blew off voting because most of the morons in this fucking state are opposed to gay marriage and there's no way that bill is gonna pass."

Bill doesn't pass, belief is reinforced.

i'm kind of confused by this response to Emo's statement...
the media wants us to think that the working class thinks they are middle class, but they don't?

[Bruno]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

But they are, in the sense that they're in the same herd of prey.

Their actual mistake is thinking that - somehow - the doors to the upper class will one day be open to them.  So they don't want any legislation that will fuck it up for them later.  "Pre-rich" is the term used to describe these low-functioning retards, last I heard.

That's an almost understandable level of stupidity for a younger person, But I know elderly people with the same attitude. Some of them have adult children (and their young children) who receive government assistance who are just like them. They seem to patch the holes in their logic with the belief that they are trying, but most of the other people on food stamps, welfare, etc are just scamming the system. They're not even pre-rich. They-re pre lower middle class (pre-working class to you eurospags)

[Bruno]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

This is, interestingly, not quite true, but it IS what the media machine wants you to think. So that we all sit tight in our little homes thinking that everyone else in America is a fucking idiot and there's no possibility of changing anything because the Majority Sides With Them, not us.

It's a huge manipulation game, along with Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Gay marriage!

This is how it works: "I'm tired and hungry and I kinda blew off voting because most of the morons in this fucking state are opposed to gay marriage and there's no way that bill is gonna pass."

Bill doesn't pass, belief is reinforced.

It was an overstatement to say the working class think they are middle class. That mostly only applies to the Fox News Watching segment of the working class.

[Bruno]

The working class in America think they are middle class.

Which explains a lot about how the tea party happened.

This is, interestingly, not quite true, but it IS what the media machine wants you to think. So that we all sit tight in our little homes thinking that everyone else in America is a fucking idiot and there's no possibility of changing anything because the Majority Sides With Them, not us.

It's a huge manipulation game, along with Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Gay marriage!

This is how it works: "I'm tired and hungry and I kinda blew off voting because most of the morons in this fucking state are opposed to gay marriage and there's no way that bill is gonna pass."

Bill doesn't pass, belief is reinforced.

i'm kind of confused by this response to Emo's statement...
the media wants us to think that the working class thinks they are middle class, but they don't?

I think she means that the media wants us to think that there are more stupid people than there really are, so we stop trying.

[Elder Iptuous]

oh yeah.
i can totally agree with that.
most people i meet are about average intelligence.
....


(eta:and i don't consider myself to be significantly down the tail on the upper side, either. don't want to come across as haughty.)