21–30 of 355 posts
> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…
If the last two years have shown anything, it's that the "common man" in America is extremely susceptible to cheap propaganda and misinformation.
Half the country would happily watch the entire thing burn down as long as "their team" is doing the burning.
The "plebs", so to speak, have never been more controlled than they are today. If anything, I'm more pessimistic than ever.
Powerful interests will be able to harness the massive amounts of data collected by social media to carefully formulate and craft the exact message they want to control who they want and people who I thought would easily see through that are now completely brainwashed into believing things that they would have laughed at 20 years ago.
The rich will be fine, and the poor will eat each other alive, just as they're told to by the other rich men on the TV.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It really is true that there are unspoken codes and mores to follow, and it was uncomfortable when I didn't Any examples spring to mind?
Spending $10,000 on a flatscreen TV: low class. Spending $10,000 on a pair of speakers: high class.
What I'd really like to see is a similar table with smaller bucket sizes- namely, I'd like to see the intergenerational migration rates on the higher buckets. If we start seeing higher retention rates on the higher buckets and less entry into them from lower buckets, then we might be headed into a more fixed-class situation.
> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…
> The internet will almost certainly spawn a social movement to destroy the class system in the US. Right. I'm sure that the fact that the leading internet companies are run by Harvard (FB) and Stanford (Google) grads will not interfere with the Revolution in any way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility#Worldwide American dream? better say in Europe.
One of the biggest barriers to moving up in class is the people in your starter class. Family, friends, neighbors... almost all of them will start to get very aggressive with you if you seriously try to better yourself. I remember being accused of using too many "five dollar words", being a nerd for spending time learning technology, being a loser for reading books! I found the crab bucket mentality to be very real. I tried to encourage others to have the strength to stand against it, but few did. I don't really talk to anyone I knew from back then anymore.
Going from middle to upper middle was interesting as well. There you also see pressure to stay as you are but it's less overt and more of a second order effect of trying to keep up with the Jones. The amount of debt that I saw the average middle class person bury themselves in just to achieve what they thought represented a slightly higher class than they actually lived was astounding. You can't move up in class when you're living paycheck to paycheck to pay for your car leases, oversized mortgage and credit cards balances that are full from paying for regular international travel.
Every step I've made has meant breaking ties with the people who weren't happy to see me move on. Now I find myself at the glass ceiling and this time there's very real pressure from above to stay where I'm at. Rich people may let you in the door occasionally but it will be on their terms. It's up to you as a person to decide if you're willing to contort yourself to their demands. Yes you can "hit it big" with a startup or something but there's a lot of chance involved in that. At this stage you're best off living below your means and investing since upper middle class people have a pretty meaningful revenue stream. Just not enough to call it quits and retire.
> In the UK, class consciousness is woven into the national identity. In America, however, people often like to pretend that a class system doesn’t really exist. But, of course, it does. This is the most insidious part. The media in the US has historically been 100% controlled by rich people, and all major media still is. The evil rich people figured out that if you start a gender and race war among the 99%, you can…
http://www.thebookoflife.org/countries-for-losers-countries-...
I live in the U.S., but I think I'd prefer to live in one of the countries for losers.