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The Two Middle Classes

quillette.com

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Re: The Two Middle Classes

#51

Post by jonstewart »

sorenn111 wrote: post #39
jonstewart wrote: post #37

I know I will get downvoted but I don’t care: I come to Hacker News because sometimes it links to great pieces about computer science and technology. If I stop coming to HN, it will because I will have grown tired of its penchant for the intellectual dark web/phrenology.

May I ask what your contentions are with the intellectual dark web? It is my understanding that membership in the IDW is largely based on embracing open conversation and potentially controversial facts

I mean, the embrace of phrenology is sort of endearing in a bless-your-heart way. The outright racism, not so much.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#52

Post by jonstewart »

scythe wrote: post #42
ra1n85 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great addition to the discussion, thanks for the links to the additional papers.

Of course the motivation for your comment is easy to deduce. It's okay, WalterBright gets downvoted sometimes too. I assume I am being downvoted because I didn't read far enough to hear the author pivot into a tangent about green energy (which was apparently wrong, and which seems to be everyone else's focus). While Quillette's mission to highlight well-formed ideas that are unpopular may seem admirable, it cannot es…

I didn’t downvote you. I appreciate the links, though not your dig at liberalism (“central hypocrisy”, etc.) and apparent affinity for libertarianism. My guess is that most of your downvotes come from Quillette defenders, who like to think of themselves as a cut above Daily Stormer readers (albeit perhaps less honest).

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#54

Post by BigBubbleButt »

sremani wrote: post #43

Think of two middle-classes like Industrial vs Tech. The atoms world of America is a world of decline and tech for now is on ascendance. That will not continue perpetually, sooner or later the tech boom will end and re-industrialization of US will begin. But that will need us going through lot of pain, suffering and healing.

> That will not continue perpetually, sooner or later the tech boom will end and re-industrialization of US will begin.

What makes you think the US is going to ramp up manufacturing again?

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#55

Post by pron »

Is this a publication that normally publishes articles that are clearly well outside their authors' area of expertise and presents them in a semi-academic style after clearly doing no fact-checking?

Never mind silliness like analyzing Trump's "record support" in a survey begun during Trump's tenure, the way he presents wrong statistics with the help of the word "particularly" is downright ridiculous. People who like pizza tend to be shorter, particularly children.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#56

Post by sremani »

BigBubbleButt wrote: post #54
sremani wrote: post #43

Think of two middle-classes like Industrial vs Tech. The atoms world of America is a world of decline and tech for now is on ascendance. That will not continue perpetually, sooner or later the tech boom will end and re-industrialization of US will begin. But that will need us going through lot of pain, suffering and healing.

> That will not continue perpetually, sooner or later the tech boom will end and re-industrialization of US will begin. What makes you think the US is going to ramp up manufacturing again?

Unsustainability of long supply chains. The coronavirus is just chapter 1.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#57

Post by tzs »

> This class has become increasingly hereditary, in part due to the phenomena of well-educated people marrying each other—between 1960 and 2005, the share of men with university degrees who married women with university degrees nearly doubled, from 25 – 48 percent.

A large part of that may be due to availability. In 1959 (closest year to 1960 I found data for [1]), 6% of US women had degrees, and 10.3% of men.

If every person wanted to marry someone with a degree, there would only be enough women with degrees for about 60% of men with degrees to marry women with degrees.

If the actual number was 25%, then men with degrees were marrying women with degrees about 42% as often as was theoretically possible.

In 2005, it was 26.5% of women and 28.9% of men with degrees, allowing in theory for about 93% of men with degrees to marry women with degrees, if everyone with a degree wanted to marry someone else with a degree.

If it is actually 48%, then men with degrees were marrying women with degrees about 52% as often as was theoretically possible, up from 42% in 1959.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai...

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#59

Post by notduncansmith »

philwelch wrote: post #44
notduncansmith wrote: post #14

This article is a bit confused. It pits the left and right middle classes against each other and also against the oligarchy, and then brings up how Trump stands against the left middle class without mentioning how much he represents and supports the oligarchy that systematically takes advantage of both the right and the left. It also tries to cast the left middle class as allies of the oligarchy by bringing populist…

It’s interesting the way you equate fossil fuels with scarcity and renewable energy with abundance, when renewables are still a tiny minority of the world energy supply. In reality, it’s fossil fuels that allow for energy abundance, while the movement to transition to renewables is accompanied by energy austerity: less driving, less air travel, less meat consumption.

Our fossil-fuel-backed energy “abundance” is the same as the mortgage-backed financial “abundance” we had in 2007 and the international-kidnapping-backed labor “abundance” of pre-Civil-War America. It’s a loan the oligarchy takes out with no intent to pay it back. The alternative is not “austerity”, just living within one’s means and not externalizing one’s own cost of living.

Re: The Two Middle Classes

#60

Post by oarabbus_ »

mLuby wrote: post #58

So does Michael O Chruch's "3-ladder system of social class in the U.S." need revising? https://web.archive.org/web/20151006183427/https://michaeloc...

He's just an opinionated software engineer, not a forefront of sociological and economic thought.
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