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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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531–540 of 634 posts

Re: The Real Class War

#531

Post by frockington1 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #255
frockington1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning how to follow rules is exatly how to become rich. Entry level retail store now pays 15/hr. 60 hours at week equates to 48k/year. Hardly unfair

Either you're trolling or extremely naive. $48k/year ain't shit when a) you'll pay some of that back in taxes and b) in places where you can get $15/hour for retail you also need to shell out $30k/year just to have a small studio apartment.

Shell out 30k/year on a studio apartment? Get off the caosts and explore America. I spend less than 30k/year on my mortgage for a house and pushing carts at Costco will net you 15/hr

Re: The Real Class War

#532

Post by frockington1 »

i_haz_rabies wrote: post #238
frockington1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning how to follow rules is exatly how to become rich. Entry level retail store now pays 15/hr. 60 hours at week equates to 48k/year. Hardly unfair

Try working for 60 hours a week at minimum wage with kids and let me know how much time you have left to spend managing investments.

So 30 hrs/week for each parent.... ? I personally work ~50-60 hours a week and have plenty of time for investments. It takes around 10 minutes a week to manage, could probably trim that to 10 minutes per quarter

Re: The Real Class War

#533

Post by friendelschudel »

sobani wrote: post #528
friendelschudel wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actuall…

The (US) government today has a tax on investment returns. Tallying up the buys and sells seems like to be a much more complicated than keeping track of the total wealth. The way you accomplish this is by asking everyone: "What's your total wealth?" and then doing random audits.

The very wealthy don't have liquid and easily-appraised assets. Calculating the total wealth of someone who owns art, jewelry, real-estate, historical artifacts, animals, and fractions of many international businesses is impossible.

The idea that the wealthy can just print off a report from their TDAmeritrade account and turn it into the government is laughable. Even they don't have any real idea how much wealth they have.

Re: The Real Class War

#534

Post by frockington1 »

jpindar wrote: post #322
frockington1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning how to follow rules is exatly how to become rich. Entry level retail store now pays 15/hr. 60 hours at week equates to 48k/year. Hardly unfair

Nowadays people are lucky if that entry level retail job will give them 40 hours a week, never mind 60.

The Affordable Care Act was a blow to entry level workers in that regard. Now its probably more likely to have 2 jobs at 29.5 hours each then one at 40. Maybe the healthcare debates going on can address this

Re: The Real Class War

#535

Post by friendelschudel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #530
friendelschudel wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this idea from a variety of sources recently, and the idea is so absurd I don't even understand how it came to be. How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? The amount of bureaucracy and auditing and enforcement it would require would dwarf the insurance industry, and waste taxpayer dollars to the extent that it couldn't actuall…

> How, exactly, do you expect the government to tally the amount of wealth to be taxed for each person in the country? Ask and audit, the same way it does income. Of course, it's harder to get filed confirmation data for wealth and even easier to have an alternative valuation for wealth held in non-cash assets than for realized income, so it will be much easier to evade, but that's probably part of why it (which comp…

I think by "easier to evade" you actually mean "impossible to enforce". The sorts of things the wealthy store their money in aren't easy or even possible to value, especially on some yearly basis.

Re: The Real Class War

#536

Post by jrochkind1 »

analyst74 wrote: post #457
jrochkind1 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"journalists in particular no longer find themselves in the upper middle class" For most of the history of journalism in the U.S., journalists were not in the "upper middle class". Journalism was a poorly paid working class job for most of the 20th century. Maybe a couple decades at the end of it different.

That low pay serves as a gatekeeping mechanism so poor people can't survive on that career. On the other hand, journalists have a disproportionate influence over public discourse, now tightly controlled by the elite class. Or maybe it's the reverse, because the field has high prestige and impact, it attracts upper class children who don't need the salary, causing a downward pressure for journalist wages.

Eh, I don't think that's what was actually going on for most of the 20th century. Journalist was not a prestigious job, it was in fact done by working class people. I think. It's instead a new thing that journalism is dominated by "elites".

"How journalism became a middle class profession for university graduates": https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2009/jul/21/new...

"The death of the working class reporter": https://blog.usejournal.com/the-death-of-the-working-class-r...

The original claim I was challenging was "journalists in particular no longer find themselves in the upper middle class" -- I don't think they ever were, it's possible that MORE of them are now than previous -- as you say, even as salaries drop.

Re: The Real Class War

#537

Post by humanrebar »

spyckie2 wrote: post #479
helen___keller wrote: post #152

A cogent and well-written article. My only possible contributions are the following: 1. The author perhaps underestimates the bottom 90%, who are written off as politically irrelevant (in terms of real power) near the start of the article. I do think there's a good reason for this, but we are only one true crisis away from that changing. For example, suppose India and Pakistan only were to have a nuclear engagement a…

For your point 2, I think it's really interesting to think about creating value and capturing value. There's currently only 1 measure of success for capitalism, and that's capturing value. Creating value without capturing it is seen as stupid and a waste of time. I wonder if this is slowly changing due to the nature of "capturing value" having so many negative externalities that it really ruins the spirit of creating…

I think this is too cynical.

Companies routinely crow about charitable work, community involvement, social justice advocacy, cultural benefits of their work, etc. Companies pull out of states with undesirable politics, funds divest from fossil fuels, wealthy capitalists give away wealth, others speak out for higher taxes.... Almost all have some foundation or the other supporting some social good.

Re: The Real Class War

#538

Post by humanrebar »

golergka wrote: post #520
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…

> abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal And who on earth would seriously think that this would be any other than total nightmare?

It's pretty common to Christian, especially Protestant, theology and culture.

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise."

And that principle is the often (most?) quoted part of the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

A few years later, the U.S. Constitution banned titles of mobility. We are probably overdue to follow up with nixing professional titles and titles for government officials (Mr. President, Your Honor, etc.).

Re: The Real Class War

#539

Post by 127 »

helen___keller wrote: post #152

A cogent and well-written article. My only possible contributions are the following: 1. The author perhaps underestimates the bottom 90%, who are written off as politically irrelevant (in terms of real power) near the start of the article. I do think there's a good reason for this, but we are only one true crisis away from that changing. For example, suppose India and Pakistan only were to have a nuclear engagement a…

I do think we are definitely in a state of rapidly declining relevance of need for programming work. Code is an Ouroboros that eats its own tail to grow. Especially with the ethics of open source free software development and the dismantling of moats and credentialism, we might be in an accelerating state of programming jobs vanishing.

Re: The Real Class War

#540

Post by malvosenior »

helen___keller wrote: post #152

A cogent and well-written article. My only possible contributions are the following: 1. The author perhaps underestimates the bottom 90%, who are written off as politically irrelevant (in terms of real power) near the start of the article. I do think there's a good reason for this, but we are only one true crisis away from that changing. For example, suppose India and Pakistan only were to have a nuclear engagement a…

Tech has always gone through boom and bust cycles. At the end of the day though, it's really hard to write good software and we're only going to see demand go up over time. There may be some bumps in the road, but there will always be new opportunities. I think programmers are one of the only professions not at risk of automation or disruption as all of that is powered by software which maybe 5%-10% of the population has the ability to write and maintain.
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