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The Two Middle Classes

quillette.com

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Re: The Two Middle Classes

#21

Post by modwest »

ska wrote: post #13

This is a publication with a long history of presenting both interesting and sloppy thinking, sometimes in the same article. It tends to value libertarian (or -ish) takes relatively uncritically, and have some bizarre obsessions (by which I mean, topics taken up with a frequency all out of proportion to any impact). That isn't to say they aren't worth reading, but that this article is flawed in a characteristic way.

Yeah this essay is a mess. Smacks of sociopolitical myth-making, not credible analysis. The thing it seems most like is a vehicle to lump scientists into the same category as religious figures. Bare tribalism wearing the clothes of public intellectualism

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#23

Post by Waterluvian »

kortilla wrote: post #9

This distinction is pointless for the people it purports to classify. An HVAC engineer working for a university is no different than an HVAC engineer working for a market driven company. Pretending that they are in two different middle classes is bullshit. This article is a big struggle to fit people into bad classifications and suffers readability (and a point in general) because of it. An article grouping middle cl…

The only correct orientation for toilet paper is to keep it off the holder. Then you can hold the roll and "dual spool" to accumulate a nice fibrous lather with haste.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#24

Post by n4r9 »

spamizbad wrote: post #10

I think the modern term for the clerisy is the Professional Managerial Class or “PMC” — and the definition of the working class has been expanded to include “service industry” workers.

Not sure that's accurate. The article suggests the "clerisy" operates largely outside the market system, e.g. doctors, lawyers, with the exception possibly being consultants. The PMC is very much a class in the market system.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#25

Post by walshemj »

tic_tac wrote: post #18
martythemaniak wrote: post #8

It's an interesting and somewhat useful take on things, but like a dog wearing pants, things just don't seem to fit very well. First, I do think it's ridiculous that he takes it as a given that Oligarchs favour climate policy. Yes, I can see how someone can point to Musk and .... I dunno Al Gore? and try to make the point, but for every Musk-a-like, there are many dozens of rich people very deeply vested in the fossi…

You are assuming the "yeomanry" mainly consists of the old, but I think that's an overly narrow and basically false assumption. The participants in the yellow vest protests in France - largely members of "yeomanry" I would think - are as much Gen X and Millenial as they are Baby Boomers. As for the oligarchs, there are certainly wealthy individuals entrenched in the traditional fossil fuel industries, but the number…

But the yellow vests are overwhelmingly lower class - and in France you might even say peasantry.

Weather or not some rich people are using these people by manipulating them is another question

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#26

Post by [deleted] »

tic_tac wrote: post #18
martythemaniak wrote: post #8

It's an interesting and somewhat useful take on things, but like a dog wearing pants, things just don't seem to fit very well. First, I do think it's ridiculous that he takes it as a given that Oligarchs favour climate policy. Yes, I can see how someone can point to Musk and .... I dunno Al Gore? and try to make the point, but for every Musk-a-like, there are many dozens of rich people very deeply vested in the fossi…

You are assuming the "yeomanry" mainly consists of the old, but I think that's an overly narrow and basically false assumption. The participants in the yellow vest protests in France - largely members of "yeomanry" I would think - are as much Gen X and Millenial as they are Baby Boomers. As for the oligarchs, there are certainly wealthy individuals entrenched in the traditional fossil fuel industries, but the number…

[deleted]

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#27

Post by walshemj »

foundart wrote: post #4

It describes a part of the middle class that gets its income from the market and another part that gets its income from non-market sources such as universities and the government and I found it a useful lens through which to view current events.

Um middle class university jobs are badly paid compared to professionals working at say a FANG

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#28

Post by tic_tac »

scythe wrote: post #19

The "class of public intellectuals" that Quillete likens to the Second Estate largely parallels the formation of the nomenklatura in the Soviet Union: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura A more cynical, but illuminating, depiction of the way this class came to be recognized and criticized was given in an old New Yorker article about why Americans don't like Hillary Clinton -- from 1996 : https://www.newyorker.c…

While I have not read the Hayek work you mention, it is probably drawn from the same philosophical waters as a work that I recommend to anyone with an interest in this sort of thinking: "The Opium of the Intellectuals" by Raymond Aron. Aron was a French philosopher who contemplated the Intellectuals' fascination and infatuation with socialism and, at the time and place of writing (1950's France), Communism.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#29

Post by AnimalMuppet »

kortilla wrote: post #9

This distinction is pointless for the people it purports to classify. An HVAC engineer working for a university is no different than an HVAC engineer working for a market driven company. Pretending that they are in two different middle classes is bullshit. This article is a big struggle to fit people into bad classifications and suffers readability (and a point in general) because of it. An article grouping middle cl…

> An HVAC engineer working for a university is no different than an HVAC engineer working for a market driven company.

Mostly true, but not completely. The private company has to serve customers at least as well as the competition; the university's outfit has to do not too much worse than what they could get from an outside supplier.

Compare the university administrator to the HVAC company manager, and the difference widens. Compare the university president to the HVAC company owner, and it widens a lot further.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#30

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tic_tac wrote: post #18
martythemaniak wrote: post #8

It's an interesting and somewhat useful take on things, but like a dog wearing pants, things just don't seem to fit very well. First, I do think it's ridiculous that he takes it as a given that Oligarchs favour climate policy. Yes, I can see how someone can point to Musk and .... I dunno Al Gore? and try to make the point, but for every Musk-a-like, there are many dozens of rich people very deeply vested in the fossi…

You are assuming the "yeomanry" mainly consists of the old, but I think that's an overly narrow and basically false assumption. The participants in the yellow vest protests in France - largely members of "yeomanry" I would think - are as much Gen X and Millenial as they are Baby Boomers. As for the oligarchs, there are certainly wealthy individuals entrenched in the traditional fossil fuel industries, but the number…

If you draw lines in society, you'll always be able to find scenarios where people on one side have a conflict with people on the other side. The question is whether the lines are drawn to reflect real differences, or to stuff all the author's political opponents in the same bucket.
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