I’m not saying people vote in their economic self interest. It’s always been clear for at least 270 years the middle class and petit bourgoise can be convinced to do otherwise. Which is why the img that started this derail rings true.
Again it’s just impossible to do this on a forum.
Yeah, lots of people aspiring to have an Audi are voting like they have a warehouse of supercars. But, as a class, the top 10% are going to be turned off more by your talk about everyone sharing everything.
The other point is very different and there aren’t enough supercars to go around. Mean real wealth is not that high and the $16T in the derivatives market ($quadrillions literally traded) and everything like that is a bit of a fantasy.
Seems like you’re alternating being defensive and self-flagelating. Sure, all income categories suck and are part of a system that is destructive and probably unsustainable. Sure, the super wealthy have ridiculous power and wealth. On the one hand you post about how bad they are, but on the other hand I think you realize that if we took everything from every billionaire it wouldn’t solve all our problems.
And btw I fully intend to and expect to have money in the future, including making $150k+. I’ve been slowly working my way out of debt for the last 5 or 6 years and my income has been ok - mostly around $80k. I’ve just gotten so dejected from being in debt that I refuse to consider myself anything other than broke until I’m out of it. It took a while to transition from “I’m out of capital, but making an investment in the future and everything is fine” to “fuck, I’m broke, what’s on the dollar menu?”
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Dollar menu sounds fantastic to me right about now. I’m getting bored with having to prepare every single meal for myself and I could really go for a couple chicken mini quesadillas from the Bell.
But the point was about classes of people generally and their attitudes. Anyone who took that as my saying they are a reactionary was as defensive as any of us having a problem with someone saying white males elected Trump.
Fast food drive through is still open in my state, I think.
Dude, it’s Ohio. They’ll close hospitals before Taco Bell.
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Drive through is open here and I understand CA is one of the most strictly locked down states. Zz may just be locking down harder on his own.
Definitely still open but it feels like it might be irresponsible to be getting takeout? idk, I don’t have a clear answer there. On the one hand it seems clearly better to not go out and minimize the potential for community spread. On the other, I feel like I should be doing what I can to support local businesses during this and still buy their food (maybe not FF so much). On the third hand, it seems kinda shitty to be making all those low wage restaurant workers expose themselves to so much risk instead of being able to sit home with the rest of us.
“Rap critics that say he’s “Money Cash Hoes”
I’m from the hood, stupid, what type of facts are those?
If you grew up with holes in your zapatos
You’d celebrate the minute you was having dough” - Jay Z 99 problems
I have zero issues with being called well off. Then again I used to be poor so I know how far I’ve come.
At the same time I totally get where a bunch of posters are coming from when they talk about how being able to fail is the big break point, and I get how a bunch of other people are defining it as ‘have to work for a living’.
The reality is that our society is super super unfair, the meritocracy is a lie, and it doesn’t stop being wildly unfair until you get to the very top of the pyramid where all of the accumulated unfairness heaped on the lower people congeals. It becomes less unfair against you as you climb the pyramid, and eventually it starts to be unfair in your favor… but it’s still pretty unfair against you at 150k. They’ve just decided that you’re important enough to making the pyramid function that they are going to give you enough nice shit that you’ll be terrified of doing anything but striving to stay where you are (or continue to rise) and won’t be willing to do anything serious about the structural issues.
TLDR: You guys are talking past each other and right in your own ways. Obviously my life has very little in common with the people at the very bottom of the pyramid, but I probably have more in common with them than I do with the people at the top… and like most people I’m going to keep trying to get to the top of the pyramid until someone finally flattens it some. I’d even be happy to join the movement that flattens it (I suspect many of us would, and at least partially because it would give us a non zero chance of being part of the new ruling class)… but I’m definitely not joining that movement before it has a significant chance to win. Right now it has zero shot. Zero.
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Ok.
And I agree with that.
“The upper middle class will be resistant to your commie ideas” is not me saying that hating Trump (and what he represents) while acting like Kevin’s parents in Time Bandits will save us.
I feel like people who constantly harp on the median forget that not everything is a normal distribution. 5’7 is above the median height in the US, but nobody would call a 25 year old 5’7 male tall.
Median adult male height in the US is 5’9" and it’s probably 5’11" for 25 year olds.
Are you including women in median height and then just men in what is considered tall?
If you want to make analogies (always risky) try to do better.
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I was including women, in the median that’s why I made the point about normal distributions. I wasn’t including anything in what is considered tall other than that I’m a 5’8 male and nobody ever calls me tall.
Well, maybe he has 7 in 2020 where we live, but what about in 1997 where Joe Bidens remaining brain cells live?
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Yeah, that’s pretty reasonable. I worked in oil fields and offshore rigs most of my life, before I got sick. My peak year was back when oil was 150 a barrel and I got close to 150k with a no degree required, hourly job. Standard year was closer to 70k. Don’t think anybody at my level ever cracked 200k, though some probably got close. And it’s definetely not the lifestyle and work people associate with being wealthy. Like I got sick and am 100% dependent on social security disability and Obamacare, which I imagine would happen to even people who averaged 150k over a decent clip if they became disabled. Around 250-300 is where that changes I imagine.
You’re doing it again.
I mean, I said I was going to alienate everybody by describing my life and indirectly imposing irrational purity tests but I didn’t even start and people are already indignant and offended behind the blandness in this thread (i leaned towards it by mentioning how owning stocks, full stop, even a piddly 401k, is obscene; that’s not an exaggeration but i fully realize the irrational parts).
The part about alienating people is an exaggeration though because I don’t want to upset people; the purity test game is a stupid game even when done inadvertently but it seems like those already offended want to play the game.
I went to my local Chinese takeout place a few times just to support local businesses, think the risk is pretty minimal. Unfortunately they closed up shop, so I’m making curry chicken from home. Haven’t tried FF yet; I don’t normally eat a lot of FF and I’m not sure how much that really supports the people working there.
Of course no one considers you tall. You’re male. Not female or unsexed. If you were a woman, people would consider you tall.
How does this work in the analogy for wealth?