United States Politics Thread 47

[Travis B.]

If one must sell one's labor in order to survive and does not own capital with which one can extract profit from anyone else, one is working class.

Namely, small proprietors are predictably desperate because their position is unstable under a capitalist economic structure.

These are deeply weird statements about people making $450,000 a year. No, they're not small proprietors, or desperate, or in a position where they must do wage labor or die. When you are in the top 5%, you are one of the rulers of the country, and your interests are mostly against those of the actual working class.

Now, it's true that if that person quit their job they might not be able to keep their vacation home and grueling world tourism schedule and private schools for all the kids, but that isn't a matter of survival, or even what we call "First World problems", it's maintaining an upper-class lifestyle.

Once that person making $450,000 USD a year starts using it to buy stock or property to the extent that they can survive off of profit extracted through the ownership thereof then they are bourgeoisie. (If they can extract non-negligible profit from it but not enough to survive on it alone then they are petit bourgeoisie.)

Torco's point about the medium-income wealthy is also relevant, not because wealth and income are independent, but because high income allows you to accumulate wealth. Mostly likely these people could quit their jobs and become rentiers. But they don't have to bother. They are not oppressed workers and as I said, even the plutocrats are not stupid enough to stomp on the 10% as they stomp on everyone else.

Do laid-off software engineers who had been previously well-paid not count as being stomped on by the plutocrats?

[rotting bones]

I don't understand the point of analyzing the world with 177-year-old political doctrines, especially if you use them to conclude that rich people are poor. Marx was right about a lot of things, but he could not see that far in the future (and I doubt he claimed to).

I have no idea which combination of words will make you acknowledge what I'm trying to say. It's like you're just saying words to see what will stick. It's not just you. This is respectable behavior in the 21st century. That's why I'm forced to reject everything everyone has said in my lifetime and rely on 177 year old theory.

I don't know what all the Jan. 6 rioters did for a living-- if you have a source that they were all millionaires, show it. I just looked one of the leaders, who was a disbarred lawyer. And even if he wasn't disbarred, the median lawyer doesn't even make enough to be in the top 10%.

If small proprietors corresponded exactly to the 10%, they would be interchangeable terms. Jan 6 rioters were 26% small business owners, and an additional 28% white collar workers, representing a marriage of fringe goons with mainstream petty elites. Classic fascism.

[zompist]

Torco's point about the medium-income wealthy is also relevant, not because wealth and income are independent, but because high income allows you to accumulate wealth. Mostly likely these people could quit their jobs and become rentiers. But they don't have to bother. They are not oppressed workers and as I said, even the plutocrats are not stupid enough to stomp on the 10% as they stomp on everyone else.

Do laid-off software engineers who had been previously well-paid not count as being stomped on by the plutocrats?

What's kind of annoying here is that you guys don't seem to understand the size of numbers. You want to turn rich people into oppressed workers, and to do that you just pretend big numbers are small numbers.

If you look for average salaries for software engineers in the US you get... well, a disturbing range of confidently asserted values. But they're somewhere between $90,000 and $150,000. This is not even in the top 10%, much less the top 5%. $150K is nice but it is one third of $450K.

[malloc]

Meanwhile it looks like Trump has all but declared martial law in Los Angeles with thousands of national guards and marines sent to the city in response to protests against ICE. He has successfully manufactured the crisis he needs to turn the general public in his favor.

The "general public" of what country?

also, he's not doing this to make people like him - he's doing it because Musk broke up with him.

The general public of the US obviously. Clearly his plan is convincing Americans that the Mexicans are invading and spreading terror so he can justify his autocratic policies. This is his Reichstag fire.

[zompist]

I don't understand the point of analyzing the world with 177-year-old political doctrines, especially if you use them to conclude that rich people are poor. Marx was right about a lot of things, but he could not see that far in the future (and I doubt he claimed to).

I have no idea which combination of words will make you acknowledge what I'm trying to say. It's like you're just saying words to see what will stick.

No, I'm saying words that have meanings and can be checked with statistics. "Top 5%" is something you can find numbers on, and then compare with political behavior. "Petty bourgeois" or whatever is not.

An analysis that predicts precisely the wrong things is terrible analysis. Because you insist on pretending that rich people are poor people, you get their behavior wrong.

If small proprietors corresponded exactly to the 10%, they would be interchangeable terms. Jan 6 rioters were 26% small business owners, and an additional 28% white collar workers, representing a marriage of fringe goons with mainstream petty elites. Classic fascism.

If you want to talk about small business, go ahead, just don't pretend it's the same thing as the top 10%.

If you wanted to say that "small business owners" are likely to be conservative and susceptible to fascism, I agree. It's not the successful that want to upend the system. Being in the 60th percentile rankles people who want to be elite but aren't.

(There are some techbro fascist CEOs... I don't know what which combination of words will make you acknowledge that I'm saying plutocracy is bad mmkay, but one of the problems of plutocracy is that plutocracy does not produce smart plutocrats. Fascism is self-destructive.)

[Travis B.]

Torco's point about the medium-income wealthy is also relevant, not because wealth and income are independent, but because high income allows you to accumulate wealth. Mostly likely these people could quit their jobs and become rentiers. But they don't have to bother. They are not oppressed workers and as I said, even the plutocrats are not stupid enough to stomp on the 10% as they stomp on everyone else.

Do laid-off software engineers who had been previously well-paid not count as being stomped on by the plutocrats?

What's kind of annoying here is that you guys don't seem to understand the size of numbers. You want to turn rich people into oppressed workers, and to do that you just pretend big numbers are small numbers.

If you look for average salaries for software engineers in the US you get... well, a disturbing range of confidently asserted values. But they're somewhere between $90,000 and $150,000. This is not even in the top 10%, much less the top 5%. $150K is nice but it is one third of $450K.

Just from a cursory google, I got the following:

A 2022 study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that the top 10% of earners nationally received an average income of $167,639 in 2021.

However, there is a difference between those in the top half and the bottom half of the top 10% of earners.

Those in the top half earned around $223,000, while those in the bottom section earned approximately $133,500, nearly $90,000 less.

I am not sure where you got $450K from, as the figure I quoted above is nowhere near that.

[zompist]

I am not sure where you got $450K from, as the figure I quoted above is nowhere near that.

Umm, I said where I got it when I gave the figure. You and Torco were talking about 30 times the minimum wage. That's $450K.

And that's top 5% (or even better), not top 10%.

[Travis B.]

I am not sure where you got $450K from, as the figure I quoted above is nowhere near that.

Umm, I said where I got it when I gave the figure. You and Torco were talking about 30 times the minimum wage. That's $450K.

And that's top 5% (or even better), not top 10%.

To me "30" was a very approximate number ─ I didn't realize that it was as high as it is. What I really meant was the 10%.

[MacAnDàil]

And frankly, the very idea of a 'middle class' can go to hell. Rather, the actual classes are the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat, and the artisans. The idea of a 'middle class' only serves to divide the proletariat against itself and align better-off portions of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie and against other portions of the proletariat.

The poor work and don't own; the rich own and don't work; the middle class do both.

Alice is a technical writer ($85k/yr, 40 hrs/wk) with an asset portfolio including part-ownership of McDonald's and Nike. What class is Alice?
Bob is an Amazon warehouse manager ($80k/yr, 40+ hrs/wk) who lives frugally in order to maximize the amount of money he puts in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. What class is Bob?
Charlie is an experienced welder ($36.00/hr) who does the same thing as Bob. What class is Charlie?
Dan is an experienced welder ($37.50/hr) who's not so good with financial instruments and doesn't really know what stock markets are. Most of his net worth is in his house. What class is Dan?

What about Ewan who has one fo those jobs but neither house nor stock?

[Raphael]

And frankly, the very idea of a 'middle class' can go to hell. Rather, the actual classes are the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat, and the artisans. The idea of a 'middle class' only serves to divide the proletariat against itself and align better-off portions of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie and against other portions of the proletariat.

The poor work and don't own; the rich own and don't work; the middle class do both.

Alice is a technical writer ($85k/yr, 40 hrs/wk) with an asset portfolio including part-ownership of McDonald's and Nike. What class is Alice?
Bob is an Amazon warehouse manager ($80k/yr, 40+ hrs/wk) who lives frugally in order to maximize the amount of money he puts in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. What class is Bob?
Charlie is an experienced welder ($36.00/hr) who does the same thing as Bob. What class is Charlie?
Dan is an experienced welder ($37.50/hr) who's not so good with financial instruments and doesn't really know what stock markets are. Most of his net worth is in his house. What class is Dan?

What about Ewan who has one fo those jobs but neither house nor stock?

I'd say Ewan fits clearly into Nort's "poor" category, in the "work and don't own" sense. Nort's whole point there seems to be that for the people who "work and don't own" or "own and don't work", you can clearly tell their class, while for those who both work and own, it's more difficult.

[MacAnDàil]

They all seem rich to me who has lived most of my life under the minimum wage. It is absolutely astounding and unjust that anyone could be living on a thousand times that, let alone a million times that.

[Travis B.]

My dispute here is with the idea that these people are somehow bourgeoisie-adjacent simply for having some investments when they obviously do not live off extracting wealth through what they own.

[Raphael]

My dispute here is with the idea that these people are somehow bourgeoisie-adjacent simply for having some investments when they obviously do not live off extracting wealth through what they own.

The point is that the fact that they have investments is likely to influence their opinions about political issues that might have an impact on their investments. The whole thing might lead them to think of themselves as bourgeoisie-adjacent.

[Travis B.]

My dispute here is with the idea that these people are somehow bourgeoisie-adjacent simply for having some investments when they obviously do not live off extracting wealth through what they own.

The point is that the fact that they have investments is likely to influence their opinions about political issues that might have an impact on their investments. The whole thing might lead them to think of themselves as bourgeoisie-adjacent.

I would say though that that is still an example of false consciousness, though, because at the end of the day their lot is with the other workers and not with the bourgeoisie. They still need to sell their labor in order to survive and are liable to be let go at a moment's notice regardless of their investments.

[Torco]

Torco's point about the medium-income wealthy is also relevant, not because wealth and income are independent, but because high income allows you to accumulate wealth. Mostly likely these people could quit their jobs and become rentiers. But they don't have to bother. They are not oppressed workers and as I said, even the plutocrats are not stupid enough to stomp on the 10% as they stomp on everyone else.

Do laid-off software engineers who had been previously well-paid not count as being stomped on by the plutocrats?

that's the point though: if they managed to accrue, say, twenty seven million bucks in assets during their tenure as head of development at uber then it's fair to say they've escaped the boot. .if they managed to put up downpayment for ten apartments each of which are rented out at 1.3 times what it costs the owner to pay the bank, then not only that, but they now *are* the plutocrat doing the stomping. that's, as zomp points out, not the reality of most software engineers of course, but it is of some.

My dispute here is with the idea that these people are somehow bourgeoisie-adjacent simply for having some investments when they obviously do not live off extracting wealth through what they own.

But investment is what makes you burgeois. i have some investments, i make like 33 bucks a month out of something called a deposito a plazo. that makes me, whatever, maybe 0.5% burgeois? so not very. but if your 'some investments' are, again, ten apartments you rent out for 2k and that you pay the bank 1.6k each, then you are pretty much the definition of petitburgeois no? I guess another way to put it saying "but some of them do live off extracting wealth through what they own, making them burgeoisie-adjacent"

of course, this means you can have two people, Alice and Bob, who make, say, 550k a year for ten years and then get fired, which end up having distinct class positions: Alice got a big fancy lexus, traveled around, got plastic surgery, and had extravagant parties, and when she was laid off she became, well, an unemployed person. she looked for a job, found one, blabla. Bob, on the other hand, lived frugally during that time -only going on half as many vacations and hosting just two extravagant parties- and saved up a bunch of money. when Bob was laid off, he became a full-time businessman, or a full-time investor, or a landlord. that's the point of Max Weber's spirit of capitalism and protestant ethics after all. you could, in principle, be immensely wealthy at one point and lose all of it. then you become, well, a prole like the rest of us.

[Travis B.]

Torco's point about the medium-income wealthy is also relevant, not because wealth and income are independent, but because high income allows you to accumulate wealth. Mostly likely these people could quit their jobs and become rentiers. But they don't have to bother. They are not oppressed workers and as I said, even the plutocrats are not stupid enough to stomp on the 10% as they stomp on everyone else.

Do laid-off software engineers who had been previously well-paid not count as being stomped on by the plutocrats?

that's the point though: if they managed to accrue, say, twenty seven million bucks in assets during their tenure as head of development at uber then it's fair to say they've escaped the boot. .if they managed to put up downpayment for ten apartments each of which are rented out at 1.3 times what it costs the owner to pay the bank, then not only that, but they now *are* the plutocrat doing the stomping. that's, as zomp points out, not the reality of most software engineers of course, but it is of some.

I was not thinking of the 'head of development at uber'. I was thinking of people like myself, who are decently paid, yet who at the end of the day have the same lot as any other workers.

My dispute here is with the idea that these people are somehow bourgeoisie-adjacent simply for having some investments when they obviously do not live off extracting wealth through what they own.

But investment is what makes you burgeois. i have some investments, i make like 33 bucks a month out of something called a deposito a plazo. that makes me, whatever, maybe 0.5% burgeois? so not very. but if your 'some investments' are, again, ten apartments you rent out for 2k and that you pay the bank 1.6k each, then you are pretty much the definition of petitburgeois no? I guess another way to put it saying "but some of them do live off extracting wealth through what they own, making them burgeoisie-adjacent"

If you are busy renting out apartments to others, then you are either petit bourgeois, or if you own a property management company where you can profit solely off of other people's work, then you are just plain bourgeois.

of course, this means you can have two people, Alice and Bob, who make, say, 550k a year for ten years and then get fired, which end up having distinct class positions: Alice got a big fancy lexus, traveled around, got plastic surgery, and had extravagant parties, and when she was laid off she became, well, an unemployed person. she looked for a job, found one, blabla. Bob, on the other hand, lived frugally during that time -only going on half as many vacations and hosting just two extravagant parties- and saved up a bunch of money. when Bob was laid off, he became a full-time businessman, or a full-time investor, or a landlord. that's the point of Max Weber's spirit of capitalism and protestant ethics after all. you could, in principle, be immensely wealthy at one point and lose all of it. then you become, well, a prole like the rest of us.

Then Bob has become bourgeois or at least petty bourgeois, while Alice falls in the category of labor aristocracy.

[Torco]

Yup, that's what i'm saying: these categories are porous, and so some well paid working class can and do become, you know, not working class.

[Nortaneous]

Also, if your retirement is predicated on infinite growth, maybe you ought to question what experts told you about what you can expect from your retirement plan.

No one's retirement is predicated on infinite growth, and no one's retirement will be until the age of immortals.

As a talking point, "infinite growth" falls entirely flat - when growth ends or substantially slows, which has been predicted as many times as the end of the world and is about as inevitable, there will be no routes for the ambitious, for those who want to better their lot in life, that aren't zero-sum. Degrowth is a flawed idea not only because growth is a necessary input to the military power to resist foreign conquest but also because, if everyone agreed to do it, the only way to get ahead in life (which people who grew up with reliably potable tap water and three fresh meals a day take as reflecting poor character, because they are fools) would be through violence.

They may be shareholders, but they cannot live off of simply owning capital, hence they are still workers and not bourgeoisie.

They reasonably expect to live off of simply owning capital in the future, i.e. retiring - or at least being able to take a part-time job, etc.

These are deeply weird statements about people making $450,000 a year. No, they're not small proprietors, or desperate, or in a position where they must do wage labor or die. When you are in the top 5%, you are one of the rulers of the country, and your interests are mostly against those of the actual working class.

$450k a year is about what a product manager at Jane Street makes. Hardly a ruler.

Software engineering salary bands are hard to estimate because startups and established companies typically have different pay structures (and standard financial planning advice is to round startup equity to zero), and because there are several job markets with minimal intersection (think WordPress), but in general, $200k is reasonable, $100k is low, and $400k is probably doable.

(As a person who lives and makes life decisions in a country, I definitely have some objections to the strength of the incentive gradient that the US's wide range of incomes represents; as a person who lives in an economy that produces goods and services, I not infrequently encounter the downsides of concentrating the talented and conscientious in a handful of fields mostly engaged in the supply of professional services to businesses; but as a person who is able to participate in financial markets, I appreciate that my country has given me an opportunity to work toward discounting the government's opinion on whether and when I should retire.)

And frankly, the very idea of a 'middle class' can go to hell. Rather, the actual classes are the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the lumpenproletariat, and the artisans. The idea of a 'middle class' only serves to divide the proletariat against itself and align better-off portions of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie and against other portions of the proletariat.

The poor work and don't own; the rich own and don't work; the middle class do both.

Alice is a technical writer ($85k/yr, 40 hrs/wk) with an asset portfolio including part-ownership of McDonald's and Nike. What class is Alice?
Bob is an Amazon warehouse manager ($80k/yr, 40+ hrs/wk) who lives frugally in order to maximize the amount of money he puts in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. What class is Bob?
Charlie is an experienced welder ($36.00/hr) who does the same thing as Bob. What class is Charlie?
Dan is an experienced welder ($37.50/hr) who's not so good with financial instruments and doesn't really know what stock markets are. Most of his net worth is in his house. What class is Dan?

What about Ewan who has one fo those jobs but neither house nor stock?

Depends on local cost of living but likely poor financial planning. $36/hr full-time is $72k/yr. Median personal income for full-time employed US workers is about $62k/yr.

[rotting bones]

No one's retirement is predicated on infinite growth, and no one's retirement will be until the age of immortals.

I'm not a proponent of degrowth at all. My criticism of capitalism is that markets are 1. unstable and 2. dictatorial:

1. Instability. When a capitalist economy doesn't grow, it keeps shrinking. No stable state is possible. If you think your retirement fund will be proportional to the calculations you were shown, you have assumed unlimited growth during your lifetime. So far, capitalist growth has been fueled by incorporating new markets like new technology and populations who are willing to work more cheaply.

Of course, after a market shrinks for a while, it starts growing again. But consider the factors that affect the expectations of buyers. We are pretty much out of new large population centers to incorporate into the global market, so what's left? You must think we will keep building more sophisticated tech that people are willing and able to pay for (meaning AI job losses won't be serious), and also that any environmental factors that might become relevant in the coming decades won't be serious enough to affect funds tied to the market (see the projected losses from that source).

2. Dictatorial. Because capitalists manufacture products they think they can bring in more board game counters with than they spend to produce them, the products are skewed towards the interests of the wealthy. This leads to an artificial scarcity of basic necessities, because it's not as profitable to produce goods for people who have been assigned fewer counters by the rules of the board game.

...

This is why we should flip the table and play a better game, one that asks people what they need, and produces those goods. Notice how this position is not about opposing growth. It's about redirecting growth from what people can pay for (with all the weirdness around the ability to pay and what the market demands we pay for) to what people ask for.

As a talking point, "infinite growth" falls entirely flat - when growth ends or substantially slows, which has been predicted as many times as the end of the world and is about as inevitable, there will be no routes for the ambitious, for those who want to better their lot in life, that aren't zero-sum. Degrowth is a flawed idea not only because growth is a necessary input to the military power to resist foreign conquest but also because, if everyone agreed to do it, the only way to get ahead in life (which people who grew up with reliably potable tap water and three fresh meals a day take as reflecting poor character, because they are fools) would be through violence.

Lobotomize all the geniuses. Problem solved.

[keenir]

1. Instability. When a capitalist economy doesn't grow, it keeps shrinking. No stable state is possible. If you think your retirement fund will be proportional to the calculations you were shown, you have assumed unlimited growth during your lifetime. So far, capitalist growth has been fueled by incorporating new markets like new technology and populations who are willing to work more cheaply.

Of course, after a market shrinks for a while, it starts growing again. But consider the factors that affect the expectations of buyers. We are pretty much out of new large population centers to incorporate into the global market, so what's left?

at risk of stating something that is obvious at least to me: pay a better wager to the "populations who are willing to work more cheaply" and hey presto, you have a new market of buyers.

2. Dictatorial. Because capitalists manufacture products they think they can bring in more board game counters with than they spend to produce them, the products are skewed towards the interests of the wealthy. This leads to an artificial scarcity of basic necessities, because it's not as profitable to produce goods for people who have been assigned fewer counters by the rules of the board game.

and yet capitalist societies produce nonprofit aid agencies to help those who have fewer counters, as well as producing for-profit companies that do pro bono work in those fewer-counter countries (whether giving free laptops, building wells for villages, etc)

This is why we should flip the table and play a better game, one that asks people what they need, and produces those goods. Notice how this position is not about opposing growth. It's about redirecting growth from what people can pay for (with all the weirdness around the ability to pay and what the market demands we pay for) to what people ask for.

Except what do we do about the things that we can pay for, but don't yet know what we want to ask for?

An example: I am not the biggest fan of root veggies - potatoes and carrots, sure; rutabagas(sp) and turnips, no; until I went to a grocery store that had jicamas on sale & and I bought one to try, I didn't know I'd like it -- but I ended up finding it delicious. I wouldn't have known to ask for jicamas until after I found it.