Preach it!
The choir, after all, might learn something.
And I look forward to it.
bout damm time this stuff is posted
Hello All,
jwe, this sounds very interesting. Folks, things don't have to be the way they are.
I was visiting the the city of Perth in Western Australia and I took the tourist boat ride up the Swan river which goes through the city. A few minutes after pointing out the million dollar homes, the tour announcer then asks how much we thought the rent would be for an apartment in rather nice looking block of low-rises with great scenic views. The lowest estimate anyone suggested was $500 dollar a week.
The announcer smiled and said, we were all wrong, the rent was $50 dollars a week for the apartment block was all public housing. He then said most australians did not think it unusual for the less-well off having a decent flat (apartment) in an area that was considered prime real estate.
Finally, someone is getting to the heart of the matter!
Thank you in advance for the schooling to come.
Please be open to the possibility that where we're going to take you for on this ride...
I call shotgun!
Sorry.
Playing The Middle Against The Poor...'Cause Everyone Hopes To Be Rich Someday.
Suckers.
Thank you thank you thank you!
Not only are they gonna’ be rich someday, they’re gonna’ do it by hitting the lotto. What about hard work, you say? That’s so last century! Now America is home of the ‘For Your Shopping Convenience’ consumer.
Someday I’m gonna’ be rich. Someday. I’m putting my dream on the installment plan with the lotto machine at the convenience store. It can’t miss; all my friends are doing it.
"Hey, man, got any uppers?"
"No, comrade! There're no classes in our society!"
To my mind, the most revealing words that ever dribbled out of Little Boots' perpetually-smirking pie hole emerged when he referred to a gaggle of hyper-rich donors as his "base". It explains everything you need to know about his "Fuck You!" style of governance, and the class that supports it.
Good idea, Jesse. I'll be interested to see how you guys develop it.
Nice start.
The only thing that strikes me is that lumping the top 20% together kinda muddies the message of the excellent graph. I'd suggest that the top single digits (1% (approx. $300+k/yr and higher household income)? 5% (approx. $175+k/yr)?) is what really demarcates the "Capitalist class", not a married pair of NYC schoolteachers knocking down $100k/yr (total, not each).
I'd expand the "middle class" from the 40-60 percentiles to, say 35-65 or 70 percentile.
(Oh, and for more interesting statistics, here's a link to the US Census Bureau's stats on income.)
Just my $.02!
bartcopfan and everyone -
As I said, I think the percentages associated with the names, may well change. As may the names. The key is the distinctions themselves.
(Or if I didn't say it, I thought it really really hard. What -- you didn't hear me? Slacker.)
We have not said yet distinguished these distinctions (drawn them out, brought them forth, presenced them, made them clear inside an existing body of distinctions.)
Five distinctions.
We have only give five names, said this has to do with power, specifically about economic power, and given a range of percentages.
We have not even said for certain what these percentages are, although probably most have you have made inferences. Perhaps it is percentages of education graduation, of college graduates, of people with income over x, of people with at least one month's savings, of ... we haven't said what these percentages are.
What you want to start doing as you begin to engage with the material, is to challenge both it and yourself, not to make assumptions, and to challenge both your and our assumptions.
I like bartcopfan's questioning if the top range or two ranges is in fact, the top 20-40%. I answer, top 20-40% of what. As I said, I haven't said. But how many of you assumed I was talking about money?
And how many of you who assumed I was talking about money, assumed I was talking about money from a job? ...just look and see. You have GOT to tell the truth, if this is going to work. The one prerequisite to getting deeply into Classism together, is we tell the truth with each other.
So I ask you again...
A) How many of y'all assumed with the percentages I was talking about money?
B) That the money was from working?
The language of distinctions for this domain, the domain of Classism, is still being invented. I am certainly not an authority on the specifics of Classism, although some of my friends are. I am an expert on some of the supporting distinctions which underlie Classism.
We're going to peal this fruit like a big old bad delicious onion. Mmmmmm. Tasty.
Jesse,
The thing is that rather than the last 30 years being an anomaly, they've been a reversion to the mean tendencies of capitalism over most of its history in most of the world. It's the post WW2 era up until 1973 that is the anomaly.
The Black Underclass by Douglas Glasgow was required reading for my Afr-Am History class in college. The book did a good job of showing the synthesis between racism and classism.
You're right. Classism doesn't get the attention it deserves.
The classic story about our lack of comprehension of class is from back when McGovern was running for President in 1972.
At that time, one of his proposals was a specific, additional tax on people making over $1 Million per year.
He went to a gathering on his behalf in NYC's garment district and apparently took a lot of heat from the workers assembled to see him over that tax.
When he asked them why, the general consensus was that, if their kids ever became millionaires, they wouldn't want them to have to pay that tax.
And so it goes....
You might want to keep the quintiles in line with 'established' metrics. Not because they are 'fair' or 'representative' but rather because then folks can compare what you are doing with what 'Traditional Economics' sez about these issues.
Two resources you might want to check out the blog Angry Bear which has lots of good stuff. For example: Using Standard Regression Analysis their poster Cactus demonstrates that if every President since Ike had been a Democrat the median income of Americans would be twice what it is now.
Also read The Origin of Wealth by Eric Beinhocker. Eyepopping stuff about 'Complexity Economics' the new, new paradigm.
Kudos for starting this. I'm gonna be working on how the tools of 'Complexity Economics' might be used in the blogosphere to effect progressive change but this project you are starting could not be more timely nor needed.
.
Orwell provided us with a three very easily defined classes in 1984- The Inner Party, The Outer Party, and The Proles. The only real freedom to decide anything existed within the Inner Party while the people in the Outer Party carried out all the functions of the state apparatus.
Money is a means to power and power is a means to control. It isn't surprising that a generation of sycophants raised suckling the government and corporate teet have come in control in DC and to a large extent control the entire policy base of this country. The Tim Russerts, the Chris Matthews, the anchorpersons that helm the nightly news, have come into influence by firmly attaching themselves to the boot of their bosses and a non-questioning obedience to what issues may be discussed (gay marriage, abortion rights) and what may not (foreign policy, class issues).
The simple fact is that almost every single person with a megaphone in this society is necessarily in one of the top classes of income and so will only talk about topics of interest to people at that class level. How the Republicans ever made their cultural base think that the estate tax is something that is a crucial national issue is beyond me. Every single action they have taken is to preserve and expand the wealth of the people at the very top and then cry "class-warfare" or "communism" at the top of their lungs to anyone that says otherwise.
People don't like to believe that they can't "have it all" someday like some sort of Scarface gangster. But even as the economy for the most important part of this country recesses, it seems that magical thinking is catching on like wildfire stoked by lotto dreams and television profiles of how the rich and famous live.
There is a law of diminishing returns at work eventually though. As the top classes will have to start paying down this massive debt, they will automatically expect the poor to pay it for them. As anyone who has dealt with rich people know, they sure as hell never want to pay for anything themselves. This will be the flash point. Our forebears were able to enact legislation to constrain the rich in the early part of the last century. Let's hope that we still have that power today.
Analysis of any sorts requires a lens.
The lens you use defines the perspective you analyze from.
It took me a long time to come to my geebus.
MY geebus is that MY lens is ground to focus on access to wealth . . . that would be classism, as those who have, strive to keep.
And those who have, strive MIGHGILY to keep others from acquiring . . .
And it IS indeed an eternal struggle.
Until the species breaks from this mold, we continue to doom ourselves in a cycle of have, have not.
Sooner or later, the have not's bring down the have's . . by intent, or by happenstance, cuz all that having, it just don't last for eternity . . .
Like Frankie Lee And Judas Priest, it's not a house, it's a home.
No one owns our homes . . . not the one's in our hearts.
OWNING the results of the masses labors is doomed to failure, if the masses don't get their fair share.
History has proven it.
Classism is doomed to fail, over and over again.
And perhaps, so is our species doomed, to fail over and over again.
But we are close to the point, where we fail and it dooms the entire planet . . . we are only one false flag Cheney/Blackwater Unit away from utter failure.
In. Our. Lifetime.
Go figger.
Doc, you should spend more time on fighting back for our present, as the future is pretty well writ without some fuckin action NOW.
Nice dreams, though, hoss . . . one's I share.
But we live in the present . . . and the present is quite demanding, at this point, methinks.
Now is NOT the time to dream, it's the time to act. Hoss. How will you act? What will you give? Do? Besides, dream.
Waiting with abated breath . . . you lead, now.
I teach this content (or similar content) in my social justice class - its great to find it being addressed here. It is always good to remember that privilege is invisible to those who have it. You should see my students' response to my statement that they are ALL privileged. They are social work students who think that they are part of the poor, working class communities that they want to help. Pointing out the privilege that they enjoy is seldom a comfortable process.
It is seldom as simple as money.
bartcopfan: The only thing that strikes me is that lumping the top 20% together kinda muddies the message of the excellent graph. I'd suggest that the top single digits (1% (approx. $300+k/yr and higher household income)? 5% (approx. $175+k/yr)?) is what really demarcates the "Capitalist class", not a married pair of NYC schoolteachers knocking down $100k/yr (total, not each).
Have to agree with Bartcopfan. I make over $100K and that does NOT put me in the same league as the top 1% (let alone the top 0.1%). I got peanuts from Dear Leader's tax cuts, that was aimed at the Big Boys.
I am here with bells on.
Two thoughts/answers:
I didn't assume the divisions were about income earned (or unearned), but rather about attitudes and what kind of connection each group has to a particular community.
I personally think the working class is about 50% of the whole, and I'd identify them as folks who generally live from paycheck to paycheck AND who have a solid sense of what their labor creates in the world. Both items in place. But almost all families are mixed class to some extent.
Second thought: Anne Wilson Schaef, who writes a lot about recovery and anger, also makes the point that the U.S. is an owning class country, and every one of us in it (even those of us who are poor) have that second identity as belonging to an owning class nation.
I stay away from the term privilege because every human being has areas where they are target for oppression and areas where they are non-target (what some folks call privilege). The complexity of our identities is worth maintaining, instead of reducing any of us to "privileged". I say this even though most non-target groups have enormous economic advantage, often adding years to their lives. But if we claim our real, complicated identities, I think we have a better chance at leveraging our advantages into power that works for the greater good.
I believe our impulse toward altruism and longing to be part of community is far, far stronger than competition.
I don't think identity politics is dead, per se, because it's a necessary stage for a lot of folks. But it's a stage, not where you set up house -- if you have enough resource to keep moving, that is.
Jesse,
I hope you are going to include the demise of the labor movement in your analysis.
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