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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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351–360 of 634 posts

Re: The Real Class War

#351

Post by analyst74 »

kazagistar wrote: post #333
tc wrote: post #321

George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any…

So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "hi…

You absolutely shouldn't trust the revolutionists who tell you to die for their causes. Revolutions and chaos in general make most people's lives worse off, hence why they tend to happen when peoples' lives are so bad that they can't possibly get worse than status quo.

That doesn't mean revolutions are bad from a system point of view, they serve as reboots for a system plagued with memory leaks.

Re: The Real Class War

#352

Post by kmonsen »

simonh wrote: post #105

This is all driven by globalisation, and don't get me wrong I'm a globalist, but this is just a fact. First manual labour in manufacturing was outsourced abroad, then higher tier tech jobs in software and product engineering. Now big firms from former third world countries are muscling in on markets at every level of the economy, creating competition at every level of business. You can't add hundreds of millions of C…

The pause in growth (or rather the growth in inequality we got instead) have almost killed of our democracies stopping any real fight for a better future.

Was it worth it? I would say no. We all had a feast of our seedcorn and now we will reap what we didn't sow.

Re: The Real Class War

#353

Post by maxerickson »

triceratops wrote: post #227
maxerickson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the typical adjunct faculty is more or less 'educated' than someone with a masters in engineering from MIT.

Don't you have to have a PhD to teach at most universities in the US? Not to mention someone with a masters in engineering from MIT could very well be an adjunct faculty themselves.

It turns out that both of the Koch brothers that people are talking about when they say that have masters degrees from MIT.

Re: The Real Class War

#354

Post by MithrilTuxedo »

tc wrote: post #321

George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any…

One would assume that with advances in technology such cycles will eventually be broken.

Re: The Real Class War

#355

Post by dang »

kazagistar wrote: post #333
tc wrote: post #321

George Orwell covered this basic point in `1984` (published in 1949): > The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any…

So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "hi…

Orwell's biography is so famous that we can guess the basics of how he would answer this: revolutionaries don't necessarily have your interests in mind; it's not hopeless; oppose the status quo; don't be blinded by ideology; be honest before being political.

Re: The Real Class War

#356

Post by fspeech »

Draiken wrote: post #342
kazagistar wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the idea behind this is what? That you shouldn't trust the revolutionaries because they dont have your interests in mind? That its hopeless? This model of the world is just run of the mill statusquoism trying to make people too despondent to tear down hierarchy, not some deep truth. To be honest I dont know if Orwell agreed with the position of the high or not, but the fact people repeat this propaganda of the "hi…

On the large scale, I think Orwell's view is correct. The pattern always repeats itself. However on the individual level, you can reap the benefits of the revolutions and will die before the next cycle, so there's always at least some incentive to challenge the status quo. It doesn't change the fact that it's hopeless on the large scale.

Technology has the potential of flattening the social hierarchy somewhat. Or more likely it gives some an out even if they can't get the social status they want -- like making it easier for one to live a life cut off from immediate social circles (and status competition). Anonymous online association is an example that comes to mind.

Re: The Real Class War

#357

Post by theohofpleasure »

_carl_jung wrote: post #169
theohofpleasure wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a company which makes the profit. If you started a company and sold the tool for $500 and the company paid you $500 then there is no more profit for the company. If the company paid you $250, only then can they claim to have made $250 profit. Hence, profits are nothing more than unpaid wages.

You make a philosophical leap about rightful ownership when you say "unpaid wages". I don't agree with that leap. Further, your definition doesn't include situations in which there is no employee (such as the one I gave). It is more correct to say that the profit is the gains made to some agent in a market transaction.

I don't entirely agree either. I was just expanding on the idea. However, when there is no employee, such as in the example you gave, there is also no profit. What you have called profit is actually your wage. Do I make a profit when I go to work for a company? No, I earn a wage.

Re: The Real Class War

#358

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tristram_shandy wrote: post #51
neonate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there something patronizing, even patrician, about saying "the propaganda machine has so effectively manipulated the working class"? Why aren't their views as legit as yours or mine? There seems to me a great assumption in saying that they are "manipulated". Who isn't? This is the idea of false consciousness ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness ), and it has always seemed questionable to me. Who…

I think you might be having a completely valid emotional response to your consciousness being called false. False Consciousness, like Dictatorship of the Proletariat, are specific terms within Marxist thought that are popularly misinterpreted, and often used by more cynical capitalists to misdirect. False consciousness has to be understood as false as it relates to 'class consciousness', the true consciousness of the…

The definitions may be as you say. But you seem to be assuming that the Marxist definitions are correct; that is, that they correspond to reality.

Here's what I mean: By your definition, I'm a prole. I should have "class consciousness" that I'm a prole, and since I don't, I have "false consciousness". But try and expand your mind to the point where you can consider the alternative: People like me might actually see our condition reasonably clearly. When Marxist theory puts us in the same bucket as a ditch-digger, that could be because Marxist theory doesn't correspond to reality, and it's not reality's fault. And telling us that our understanding is false could betray the weakness of your analytic framework rather than the weakness of our understanding of our own position in society. If this alternate position is correct, then we really don't need to care very much about what bucket Marxist theory puts us in, or about what it says we ought to think.

You've got your position, which you think is correct. But at least consider the possibility that it could be mistaken.

Re: The Real Class War

#359

Post by turk73 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #125
danaris wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The result has been a pause in income growth in the western world. We've benefited from cheap imported goods, but lost out in domestic growth. Except that's not true. There's been growth; it's just all gone to the very wealthy in the West.

Sure, but "growth" isn't some physical thing that the very wealthy might have stolen. "All the income growth has gone to the very wealthy" means the same thing as "Income growth has paused, with an exception among the very wealthy".

My Cato Institute friend used to make the argument that wealth creation is not a zero sum game but for the life of me I can't understand what he meant because it is very clear in the last 20 years that it most certainly has been. It could not be any clearer to me how the game is played.

Re: The Real Class War

#360

Post by danans »

dcolkitt wrote: post #348
danans wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the cost of housing, as measured by the median inflation-adjusted cost per square foot of a new house has actually fallen by 8% since 1992. That's a relatively meaningless statistic given that new houses don't account for a significant subset of the housing supply. A better measure of true housing costs is BLS's annual Consumer Expenditure Survey [1], which shows that just from 2013-2018, average annual housing…

Using that same source shows that after tax incomes increased from $56k to $67k over the exact same period. So housing expenditures actually grew at a slightly slower rate than income (17% vs. 19%). That proves the opposite: housing is actually become more affordable. Moreover, according to the source shelter only made up about half the increase in expenditures in the category. Expenditures on shelter grew even slowe…

> So housing expenditures actually grew at a slightly slower rate than income

The point was that new home construction cost (the stat you used) isn't of significant magnitude to be relevant to overall housing price trends. I wasn't addressing price to income ratio.

But regarding that, averages can hide growing divergences between incomes and home prices. Instead consider the median home price to income ratios over time:

https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/price-to-income-ratios-are...

It is also correct to observe that the divergence is most strongly correlated to large metropolitan areas, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem, since that's where most people live, and where most people are moving.

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