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.
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.
As if Americans have any control over the change. Even if they/we did want it our capitalist overlords would never allow it to happen. They only want the illusion of freedom.
I’m certainly not suggesting that wanting change is all that’s required for change to happen, but it is a very necessary first step.
If we’re not expecting anything to ever get better, there’s a solution to that too; rather the opposite of “business as usual.”
There are many more ways to make things worse than ways to make things better
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.
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?
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.
Fucked.
If you are struggling and you are not living above your means then you are not middle class you are lower class.
You’re lower class. (No offense)
No offense taken, certainly… that’s even true if I’m in the 97th percentile of earners (by age range) nationally?
Well, it’s hard to put you in a class without knowing your income. But if you don’t have a good chunk at the end of the month, you’re not in that stable middle area.
That’s extremely fair, I guess my point is less a question of what precisely am I and more about the fact that as someone in the top 3% of earners if I’m not in the middle class who the fuck is - is it the .3%-1.5% slice? I know I personally have some awful extenuating circumstances, but the past half a decade have felt like a game you can’t win no matter how lucky you get. (I also might clarify that I am Canadian and our CoL is really high atm).
Oh for sure. It feels impossible. We had a retirement savings person come into my office and they were doing math based on today. Saying that by the time I’m ready I would have “This much” Money. But if we adjust for inflation in the future, based on inflation in the past, that amount would actually be worth about a third of what it is today. I can’t survive on that at all. With the prices of everything going up across the board, it feels like most of the people I know have a lot less spending power than they did when they were making even less than today. I guess I just missed that sweet-spot for retirement (the boomer).
My retirement plan is a bullet. 🤷♂️
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.
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.
"65 percent of Americans who are considered “middle class,” earning above 200 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), are in a financial struggle. "
That sounds more like a problem with the definition of the federal poverty level than it is a problem with the middle class.
If you’re struggling, you aren’t middle class.
Federal Poverty Level for 2024 is dependent on household size:
https://www.medicaidplanningassistance.org/federal-poverty-guidelines/
Oh, man, now I have to see if Lemmy can do tables… Hmmm nope!
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $15,060 - $30,120
2 - $20,440 - $40,880
3 - $25,820 - $51,640
4 - $31,200 - $62,400
5 - $36,580 - $73,160
6 - $41,960 - $83,920
7 - $47,340 - $94,680
8 - $52,720 - $105,440
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760So let’s take the prototypical nuclear family, 2 parents, 2 kids.
$62,400 is 200% poverty. I could see that being a struggle. I think maybe what we need is to re-define the poverty level.
Size - 100% - 200%
1 - $31,200 - $62,400
2 - $36,580 - $73,160
3 - $41,960 - $83,920
4 - $47,340 - $94,680
5 - $52,720 - $105,440
6 - $58,100 - $116,200
7 - $63,480 - $126,960
8 - $68,860 - $137,720
Each person over 8, add $5,380 - $10,760Yeah, and consider how bad it is for the class below the middle class. We’re literally fucking drowning in debt.
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.
But debt is good! Inflation has encouraged everyone to take out loans where they previously couldn’t. Hooray!
/s
A small amount (obviously less than we’ve had recently) of inflation is actually ideal. Deflation incentivizes literal hoarding of cash, instead of spending it on things, which is a very reliable way to bring an economy to a screeching halt.
No offense but this is exactly the belief I was being sarcastic about. The economy wasn’t halted before Nixon introduced inflation as we know it today. And “the economy” at this point is practically a euphemism for rich people getting nearly the entire surplus while destroying the environment.
Please stop spreading this dangerous misconception.
A feature, not a bug of an oligarchy and an economy run by effective monopolies.
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.
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.
Speaking of class only contributed to class warfare only insofar as you see class warfare as the inevitable outcome of class distinctions.
the working class is the middle class.
unless you mean people who are in poverty.
It’s not a “who is suffering more” contest. Bad things are bad things because they’re bad.
You will own nothing and be happy.
Have they tried investing in GME? and Hodling?
