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The Real Class War

americanaffairsjournal.org

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621–630 of 634 posts

Re: The Real Class War

#621

Post by nwah1 »

vanusa wrote: post #413
buboard wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gilettes jaunes are on the streets, nobody cares to make them cultural icons. Gays had very visible and generally disproportionate (compared to population) media coverage of their rights. Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or very influential but high profile gay people who helped build one of the few successful rights movements of our times?

Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or [high-profile insiders] Okay, 90 percent activists on the street, 10 percent insiders (who generally only stepped in after the 90 percent had already laid their bodies on the tracks, and accomplished the hard part).

Since we're all spouting bare assertions, I assert that it was 90% Frasier and Ellen DeGeneres and 10% activists.

Re: The Real Class War

#622

Post by adultSwim »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #159

I've spent my career working in public policy circles, and this rings true to me. > At most, working-class voters can cast their ballots for an “un­acceptable” candidate, but they can exercise no influence on policy formation or agency personnel, much less on governance areas that have been transferred to technocratic bodies. > Unlike the work­ing class, the professional managerial class is still capable of, and re­q…

How about the end of apartheid in South Africa?

Re: The Real Class War

#623

Post by pyuser583 »

katet wrote: post #619
pyuser583 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously believe that upper class gays/lesbians and lower class gays/lesbians was the same? In order for Alan Turing to be charged with “gross indecency”, he had to go the police himself, inform them he was gay (without being asked or prompted), and affirm it in a statement signed under penalty of perjury. The only reason he did that was because he was so accustomed to people not caring, he didn’t think he wa…

I just had to look up that claim, and it seems that Turing admitted a homosexual relationship during a police investigation about his house being burgled, seeing as that relationship was with the accused burglar. That's slightly different to the implication that he walked into a police station of his own free will and promptly signed his own castration order. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for…

My description of his conviction was incomplete. I wasn’t trying to give a comprehensive account. I was simply trying to explain the level of protection his privilege afforded him.

He was comfortable reporting one of his lovers to the police because he was used to people looking the other way.

Obviously, one of the many downsides to criminalizing harmless behavior is that it places people outside the protection of the law.

Re: The Real Class War

#624

Post by codingslave »

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

How many SWEs make more than 350k? Probably less then 30k

Re: The Real Class War

#625

Post by Invictus0 »

monkeydreams wrote: post #469

I would like to further understand the societal, political and economic forces in the context of the political outcomes described in this article. Has anyone got a couple of recommendations on where to start?

I was discussing this article with a friend and he recommended Paul Tucker's book Unelected Power.

Re: The Real Class War

#626

Post by kortilla »

blfr wrote: post #80
kortilla wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most billionaires the answer seems to be that you buy a moderately upgraded version of all the stuff you had when you were middle class, I don’t think you know what billionaires live like. Either that or the middle class you refer to is something very different from the one in the states. A 150ft yacht that you fly to with your helicopter from an airport you landed at with your private plane isn’t really relata…

A 150ft yacht is exactly the upgraded version of a fishing boat from a 1950s driveway in a newly minted middle class neighbourhood.

No it’s not. You can live on a yatch and traverse the open ocean for months at a time.

Re: The Real Class War

#627

Post by kortilla »

jacobush wrote: post #149
chii wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of confounding issues here in relation to the insulin problem: the fact that medical patents are poorly structured - insulin is hard to make, and making it via a biological mechanism means the "molecule" is slightly different, and so the FDA needs time and money to assess it. This creates a defacto monopoly, and thus, said monopoly can raise their prices. The fix isn't to force billionaires to give out…

This close to the money, there's no distinction between what you are proposing (fixing the monopoly laws) and force billionaires to do something. Currently, the companies write the laws. You want to force them to stop writing the laws.

> there's no distinction between what you are proposing (fixing the monopoly laws) and force billionaires to do something

Of course there is. One is punitive and accomplishes no long term positive effects. The other encourages competition and subsequently innovation.

Re: The Real Class War

#628

Post by kortilla »

pjc50 wrote: post #68
kortilla wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The service and/or product provided by their business is providing significant value to society (lest they wouldn’t be collecting profit). Is the reward for creating a successful business really more responsibility to just give back instead of using it to create more business?

> The service and/or product provided by their business is providing significant value to society (lest they wouldn’t be collecting profit). This is assuming the conclusion. They could just be collecting a monopoly rent or a land-rent or an IP rent; for example, when Martin Shkreli raised the price of insulin dramatically he wasn't "providing more value to society", he was extracting that value, potentially at the co…

You’re joking, right? You do know that when people pay rent for land or for a property they get something in return?

I get immense value out of my apartment that I pay rent for.

Re: The Real Class War

#629

Post by vanusa »

nwah1 wrote: post #621
vanusa wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it really 100% due to activists on the street, or [high-profile insiders] Okay, 90 percent activists on the street, 10 percent insiders (who generally only stepped in after the 90 percent had already laid their bodies on the tracks, and accomplished the hard part).

Since we're all spouting bare assertions, I assert that it was 90% Frasier and Ellen DeGeneres and 10% activists.

I assert that it was 90% Frasier and Ellen DeGeneres

Who got into a Tardis and went back and organized the Stonewall riots, ACT UP and the Mattachine Society. Yeah, OK.

Re: The Real Class War

#630

Post by tathougies »

BuckRogers wrote: post #491
tathougies wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily think of your wage minus your yearly expenditures as your profit, which, if you're doing things right, should be positive.

It's never positive as your life is worth far more than those wages in all cases. That's why no one can be considered overpaid, or we would limit payment to CEOs. Thus wages can only be considered at best, a trade. That's why I asserted that profits are nothing more than unpaid wages. Since it's objectively a trade of your life for wages, paying others less than the value you produced is simply not valuing human life…

> That's why I asserted that profits are nothing more than unpaid wages. Since it's objectively a trade of your life for wages, paying others less than the value you produced is simply not valuing human life. The worst sort of theft.

This is ridiculous. As someone who has, in the past, run their own business, and now works for a living, the fact of the matter is that my employer does a lot of work I am unwilling / uninterested in doing, such as making sure there is money to pay me and advertising the product to others, as well as figuring out how to accept payments, get the requisite insurance etc.

The profit retained by the company is the share agreed upon in advance paid to those who, through their own labor, at some point made the company possible, whether it be by direct action, or by stored labor output from a previous position (i.e. capital).

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