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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: The Real Class War

#441

Post by kaycebasques »

antiutopian wrote: post #323
shevek_ wrote: post #262

From 2018-2019, we saw teachers protests and strikes lead to massive concessions being gained in 7/9 states they occurred in, most of which were red states. The working class has a considerable amount of power when wielded correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_education_work... Eric Blanc's Red State Revolt is another great source on this https://www.versobooks.com/books/2955-red-state-revolt

Exactly right. The working class has power because we are the ones who make society run. In the case of teachers, a strike creates a complete crisis in the city. For private sector workers, they can completely halt profit-making by their employer. Unfortunately we are largely unorganized and taking this kind of action requires a lot of organization. We also do not have a political party made up of workers and represe…

> Unfortunately we are largely unorganized and taking this kind of action requires a lot of organization. We also do not have a political party made up of workers and representing workers genuine interests.

I think this is what the author meant when saying that the working class has lost a lot of effective power over the last few decades.

Re: The Real Class War

#442

Post by tropo »

rustyboy wrote: post #100
frockington1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather live in a country where an individual can save and invest to become a billionaire. Look at America vs Canada, Scandinavia, England, and Germany the last decade. Where is the growth and innovation in those countries? Why do brilliant people flock to America to start their start up? I want to live in a country with opportunity, not one of equality. Thankfully with an American or EU passport you can choos…

That's a false dichotomy. There is no reason that you can't have the opportunity to be a billionaire, while making sure that no one goes homeless or dies from a preventable disease. People love to point to FANNG but the reality is America did this for the boomers, union membership was over 30% and we still had super wealthy people. CEO to average employee income was around 80:1, now it's closer to 250:1. When 3 peopl…

About this: "CEO to average employee income was around 80:1, now it's closer to 250:1."

I think that is nearly equivalent to saying that the average company is now 4x larger. CEO pay is strongly related to the size of the company.

If this is a problem (not saying it is or isn't) then the solution would be to make companies smaller. We could break them up. Nothing else is required, certainly not income confiscation.

Something feeding this change is that companies now operate across borders more. That makes companies bigger. A trouble with breaking up large companies is that other nations might not do likewise. Nations that don't break up companies could have an advantage over those that do, with their companies having greater economy of scale.

Re: The Real Class War

#443

Post by yifanl »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #395
excursionist wrote: post #166

> But the Valley has never been particularly fertile for the salaried professionals and “engineers” hired by these companies, who even now generally make less than their counterparts on Wall Street or in Big Law. Kindergarten playroom office spaces and other exag­gerated perks often serve to distract employees from this harsh reali­ty. lol

It's always a bit funny and sad when statements like these happen. Most people seem to have _no_ idea how much money Engineers/Product Managers can make at certain companies.

Seems like the author knows exactly how much they can make, he states that the median income is 81k/yr.

Now you could argue that that's deliberately missing the long tail nature of this, but if anything, the theme of outliers of the industry just reinforces the point.

Re: The Real Class War

#444

Post by kaycebasques »

kingkawn wrote: post #139
hnuser77 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author's take would be that the working class can radicalize all they want, but it probably won't change anything without the support of a significant part of the 10%-0.1%. I wish he had gone into detail on why he thinks the upper-middle class is required to effect political change. Is it because they have just enough capital? Or maybe they are closer to and more familiar with institutional power?

Because his class consciousness is with them so he sees their participation as pivotal to anything taking root across the whole of society because they are how he relates to the whole of society

It’s also not a coincidence that this thread has 400 comments

Re: The Real Class War

#445

Post by kaycebasques »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #77
kingkawn wrote: post #5

I disagree that the working class is not going to radicalize itself. They too are out here on the internet, talking to each other and culturally evolving at an unprecedented rate, like everyone else. For the first time they have the power to publish and think in public uncoupled from professional barrier. Better believe it’s being used, and that they will assert their awareness.

Agreed. The author is looking through slightly blue tinted glasses. The "working class" put "their guy" in a certain colored house in the US and got together to tell the EU to screw off in the UK. They might not be using their political power for things we all agree with or you could argue they're all being duped but they certainly aren't powerless. Furthermore, I think the author is over stating the homogeneity of w…

Which variables?

Re: The Real Class War

#446

Post by PeterisP »

0x445442 wrote: post #229
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 problem is the imbalance between the mobility of capital and the mobility of labor. If it were as easy for Joe Iowa to move some place with a lower cost of living to compete for labor as it is for Joe CEO to setup manufacturing there then I'd be all for Globalization.

Thing is, Joe Iowa generally can move to cheap third world countries and work in manufacturing there, the work visa rules usually restrict only the opposite movement of labor - it's just that it would be a really bad deal for him because despite the the much lower cost of living, his working conditions and purchasing parity adjusted income will be much worse than in Iowa.

A USA blue-collar worker can't possibly expect to compete for labor in the global market and keep their current lifestyle - for an illustrative example, many such workers can afford cars and houses, which is a relative luxury if they would have to compete with workers who live in dormitories next to the factory. Someone who's earning $35000/year is in global top 1% in income; and adjusting for purchasing power doesn't change it that much, they'd still be in top 10% globally, and they can stay so relatively wealthy only because (and until!) they don't have to directly compete with all the much poorer laborers of other countries. Any increase in global labor mobility will only make it much worse for Joe Iowa.

Re: The Real Class War

#447

Post by WilliamEdward »

Daishiman wrote: post #412
arkh wrote: post #98

> Indeed the conspicuous embrace of “elite values” by journalists and academics is often little more than an aspi­rational attempt to remain connected to an economically distant elite—just as educated millennials’ conspicuous consumption of “ex­periences” often serves as a necessary distraction from the grim reality that most will never be able to own a home. > An entire “creative class” ideology was constructed to e…

It's refreshing really.

Agreed. Although, on a website made by a company that funds the bourgeoisie, i'd imagine most people here are frustrated.

Re: The Real Class War

#448

Post by kaycebasques »

goatinaboat wrote: post #81
_bxg1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of radicalism that raises my taxes to keep our country from falling apart is the kind I'm fully on-board with. Or, better yet, taxes the massive, useless dragon-hoards of the 0.1%. But I'm a team player; I don't mind if mine go up too.

The kind of radicalism that raises my taxes to keep our country from falling apart How is that “radicalism”? It’s a common mainstream opinion that people do often vote for. In fact I would say that radicalism starts with options that aren’t even represented in mainstream politics.

You make an interesting point that I found easy to overlook. “Radical” is thrown around a lot but when you ground it in its definition a lot of “radical” things aren’t radical by virtue of being a mainstream political topic.

Another definition of “radical” that might be helpful here is “the root of something” so when you propose a radical idea you’re proposing to fundamentally change basic policy.

Re: The Real Class War

#449

Post by porknubbins »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #434
TomMckenny wrote: post #52

It makes sense that the top 10% to 2% become more active as blame and anger are re-routed toward them. For example, many people think the "elite" are the educated but not necessarily the wealthy. So for many, adjunct faculty are called "elites" while the Koch brothers are not. Likewise, discussions of wealth inequality are becoming conflated with income inequality. Yet the professional class has only marginal voting…

I've often suggested this to the chagrin of relatively equally wealthy people (people earning 0.5-2x what I earn) . We're all living the same life, just with different levels of shiny. One drives a used corolla, the other a new one, the 3rd a lexus (made by toyota still). Each has a house with varying levels of pretty etc. The 0.01% is living in an existence far removed from us. They dont play games of wondering whic…

Different levels of shiny perfectly captures how I feel after taking a 66% paycut. Now I mostly buy food at Costco instead of Whole Foods and wear uniqlo. But I’m much happier having more time and less stress. I couldn’t buy a decent 2br house/apt in my big city before, still can’t. Unless you are trying to pay for kids college or something making an extra 100K in a major metro area mostly just raises your taxes.

Re: The Real Class War

#450

Post by throwawaytoday5 »

bad-joke wrote: post #331
pas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising encourages people to spend, even in some times to do it by going into debt. This in turn leads to more economic activity, more widgets ordered, which in theory should mean we can reap benefits of economies of scale, we can better amortize costs, etc. Which leads to R&D and innovation, which helps technological change, which leads to a more efficient economy, which leads to more surplus, which means more w…

> which helps technological change, which leads to a more efficient economy You made a leap of logic here. The technological innovations in finance directly contributed to a more volatile economy that crashed and inflicted massive losses on huge swaths of the global population, many of whom never recovered.

Not too mention, at least in America, the vast majority of American lives are far worst off than they were in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. Making smart phones and personal computers just made rich people richer.
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