Author Topic: Class warefare  (Read 7091 times)

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Offline Lt. Fred

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #15 on: March 09, 2012, 06:14:22 pm »
That's why I don't think conservatives have the right to call ending Bush tax cuts as class warfare; there's nothing violent about that except the tantrums they through if anyone mentions it.

Policy is not class warfare.
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Offline DasFuchs

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #16 on: March 09, 2012, 09:49:44 pm »
Or, even better, "punishing the rich for being successful!"

I never really got that claim as those rich were successful in terms of fucking over the people that worked for them, forcing them further into the poverty hole to take home millions....I mean fuck, what the hell are you ever going to spend those millions on? I'd be happy just making a million once in my life at which point I'd prolly still work just for something to do.

I just don't get the desire...or understand it...to fuck over people to gain more money you'll never spend on top of the millions and millions you already have.
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Offline TenfoldMaquette

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #17 on: March 09, 2012, 09:59:01 pm »
I just don't get the desire...or understand it...to fuck over people to gain more money you'll never spend on top of the millions and millions you already have.

I'd heard something along the lines of this: The human mind is shit when it comes to estimating how secure and successful it is. Instinct drives us, at least as a species, to never be wholly content with what we have; in primeval times, this kept our ancestors always hunting, gathering, and looking toward the horizon to see enemies before they got close. So everyone, no matter how objectively well off they are, tends to see their security - financial or otherwise - as a fluid, uncertain thing. They will never have "enough" because their standard for "enough" gets more expansive the more things they accumulate.

I still think it's a load of horse-shit.

Offline SpaceProg

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #18 on: March 09, 2012, 10:01:21 pm »
"The having is never as good as the wanting."

Offline StallChaser

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #19 on: March 10, 2012, 04:45:34 am »
I just don't get the desire...or understand it...to fuck over people to gain more money you'll never spend on top of the millions and millions you already have.

I'd heard something along the lines of this: The human mind is shit when it comes to estimating how secure and successful it is. Instinct drives us, at least as a species, to never be wholly content with what we have; in primeval times, this kept our ancestors always hunting, gathering, and looking toward the horizon to see enemies before they got close. So everyone, no matter how objectively well off they are, tends to see their security - financial or otherwise - as a fluid, uncertain thing. They will never have "enough" because their standard for "enough" gets more expansive the more things they accumulate.

I still think it's a load of horse-shit.

I think it's less that, and more like a giant pissing contest.  At some point, more wealth doesn't translate into a higher quality of life, and it just becomes a competition between rich people to have more and more extreme stuff.  The super rich have their own separate culture, where not having outrageously expensive designer items isn't a matter of comfort, but of embarrassment among the other super rich people who have it.  After all, you wouldn't want to be the poor sucker with a $10,000 watch in a room full of people with $100,000 watches.

Offline clockworkgirl21

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #20 on: March 10, 2012, 07:27:51 am »
Some nonsense from across in Britain...

It seems to me that the main difference between identifying as "working class" and "middle class" is that the working class admit they are proletarians. Many people identify as middle class but just because you work in an office rather than a factory doesn't make you not a member of the working class. Unless you own the office.* British politics has become less about class over time with the old partisanship (w/c =Lab; m/c = Tory)** weakened and yet at the same time class is as pervasive as ever. Just as an aside, I had a lecturer who asked a whole lecture hall of students at my uni if they are working class and no-one said yes. One of my tutors did the same in a seminar and I was the only one to say that yes I am working class. Class mobility has actually declined over time, not increased on both sides of the Atlantic. *** paradoxical really.

*Okay it's a little more nuanced than this but most people working in an office etc are at the bottom with crap jobs, etc, as I said, that's not middle class.
** it was once said that class is the be all and end all of British politics; all else is embellishment.
*** Source: http://www.monbiot.com/2006/07/07/willy-loman-syndrome/ if you haven't read this article I recommend it.

I'll steal a quote from Bill Maher here. Too many working class Americans see themselves as "temporarily inconvenienced millionaires."They're against tax hikes for the rich because they don't want to pay higher taxes when they get *their* millions.

Offline D Laurier

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #21 on: March 10, 2012, 08:25:58 am »
I think it's less that, and more like a giant pissing contest.  At some point, more wealth doesn't translate into a higher quality of life, and it just becomes a competition between rich people to have more and more extreme stuff.  The super rich have their own separate culture, where not having outrageously expensive designer items isn't a matter of comfort, but of embarrassment among the other super rich people who have it.  After all, you wouldn't want to be the poor sucker with a $10,000 watch in a room full of people with $100,000 watches.
This.
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Offline Atheissimo

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #22 on: March 10, 2012, 10:05:47 am »
Some nonsense from across in Britain...

It seems to me that the main difference between identifying as "working class" and "middle class" is that the working class admit they are proletarians. Many people identify as middle class but just because you work in an office rather than a factory doesn't make you not a member of the working class. Unless you own the office.* British politics has become less about class over time with the old partisanship (w/c =Lab; m/c = Tory)** weakened and yet at the same time class is as pervasive as ever. Just as an aside, I had a lecturer who asked a whole lecture hall of students at my uni if they are working class and no-one said yes. One of my tutors did the same in a seminar and I was the only one to say that yes I am working class. Class mobility has actually declined over time, not increased on both sides of the Atlantic. *** paradoxical really.

*Okay it's a little more nuanced than this but most people working in an office etc are at the bottom with crap jobs, etc, as I said, that's not middle class.
** it was once said that class is the be all and end all of British politics; all else is embellishment.
*** Source: http://www.monbiot.com/2006/07/07/willy-loman-syndrome/ if you haven't read this article I recommend it.

We had this discussion in Politics seminars last year. Our lecturer put it to us that the label 'Working Class' is having an identity crisis. There are many out there who believe that working class people work in factories or down mines, don't have a car, go on holiday to Blackpool ever other year, vote Labour etc. In the model of the traditional cloth cap wearing Northerner of the 50s.

Since the decline of the manual labourer that has happened throughout the Western world this is obviously no longer the case. The majority can afford 'luxuries' undreamed of by their parents, everybody can have at least one TV and car, most work in 'white collar' office jobs, a lot have enough disposable income for yearly foreign holidays etc. In short, most people would identify as 'Middle Class' by yesteryear's standards.

So what has happened? Has the working class just been re-defined or has it disappeared entirely, half swallowed up by 'lower middle class' and half dumped into a sort of 'underclass' with generations of unemployed in the same family? We watched a video of people being stopped in the street, most said they were 'middle class', one man in a suit and tie standing next to his BMW said he was 'working class'. Most tellingly, one family were asked if they would identify as 'working class' and said that they wouldn't, because they don't work.

In short, it's a big mess.
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Offline largeham

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #23 on: March 10, 2012, 10:15:47 am »
Just out of interest, what do people mean when they say "middle class"? Because the way I use that term is different from the way most people use it here.

Anyway, of course the GOP is going to complain about class warfare. They are the most obvious representatives of the capitalist class. They conduct class warfare daily, but when workers fight back, suddenly it is bad and has to be crushed. It is simply them using nationalist language (the idea that we all are the same because we belong to the same country, regardless of class) while fucking over the poor and workers daily.

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Offline Atheissimo

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #24 on: March 10, 2012, 10:17:11 am »
Another point, is that traditionally 'working class' occupations are either disappearing or being re-envigorated. Thirty years ago you could pretty reliably classify a mechanic as a 'working class' occupation. One of my family is a mechanic with his own garage and he's making money hand over fist; he can send his four kids to private school, go on hoilday to Disneyland, afford expensive Christmas presents, and that's even with his wife as a homemaker. He's making more than a lot of traditionally 'middle class' workers like accountants or middle managers that I know.

It was suggested in my seminars that education is a factor, that another indication of being Middle Class is a University level education. He left school at 16 and worked his way up from sorting tools at another firm, didn't do A-levels or go to University. But with the government target of 50% of school leavers going to further education, will that still be the case in 20 years?
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Offline largeham

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #25 on: March 10, 2012, 10:21:51 am »
"Traditional" working class jobs aren't disappearing as such, they are just moving overseas. Also, China isn't a really popular choice nowadays, India or Vietnam are the best places. China is experiencing quite a bit of industrial unrest, its just that we don't hear about it.

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Offline myusername

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #26 on: March 10, 2012, 01:19:46 pm »
Just out of interest, what do people mean when they say "middle class"? Because the way I use that term is different from the way most people use it here.

I think Middle Class is a bit of a tricky term to define. As I said, I count most people as working class because they are proletarians, no matter what job you have whether that's an old working class job or a job in an office, retail etc. But in the current day it is possible to be technically a proletarian and be middle class if you get a high enough income - similar to what would have been called the "labour aristocracy" in the nineteenth century. I'd class people like managers, etc as middle class. the pettybourgeoisie qualify as middle class but they're not the only people who are middle class. what others would call lower middle class I'd just call working class.

Offline Lt. Fred

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #27 on: March 10, 2012, 05:06:12 pm »
Something like 80% of Americans think they're middle class. They can't all be.
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Offline largeham

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Re: Class warefare
« Reply #28 on: March 10, 2012, 07:21:19 pm »
That's the point. People here use middle class in a weird, not very well defined sense. For me, the middle class is managers, small business owners, and professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc)*.

* Of course, one could argue this point, and these people may not be against workers rights, mainly because they don't exploit them in the way business owners or managers do.

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