this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Middle class people often think that they’re barely getting by but forget that they live larger and more luxurious than necessary.
Yeah but the theft of wealth from the middle class doesn't become false because a few people live it large.
In fact, middle class is always encouraged to live it large by 24X7 marketing by corporations.
Of course middle class people get stolen from, but they often use their job as an excuse not to organise which is lame imo because I know a lot of people who have it worse and put in way more effort in community building
Fuckin A man. I entered middle class briefly, for the first time in my life, by landing a coding job at six figures.
I let myself get warped, ethically, by my desire not slip below that line again, back into struggle.
But, fortunately for me, stepping away from the right path sapped my energy and I failed at the job and got fired. During the time I had that job my health suffered.
Now I realized that, at least for me, the only way I can rise sustainably is if I stay in accordance with my conscience. And the way it hurt my health, it made me realize it’s actually the right move to sacrifice the money to the conscience. The good feeling is better than anything money can buy.
I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s real for me. And honestly I feel fortunate to be weak enough that I can’t really operate in the world without that extra dopamine kick from my conscience. Like my discipline and focus aren’t great, and things fall apart when I start breaking promises and making bad ones and doing sloppy work for bad reasons, etc.
Just because a comment contains a criticism of X group doesn’t mean it’s a condemnation of the group and thereby a repudiation of all their grievances.
My point is that people don't want to discuss the real problem of the perverted capitalist discourse.
Its a shame that a middle class person who wants to use their extra income for joy is instead told to work hard and save money for half a century and die early without experiencing any kind of joy or reward for their hard work.
Sometimes you have to live a little. You aren't getting your good health back.
I've seen this play out first hand with people gradually climbing up the socioeconomic ladder as they reach middle age. They forget how things were at the lower middle class compared to the upper middle or even proper upper class.
It gets hard to talk about these days with the social media bullshit muddying up discourse. Because people start seeing red at the mere idea of broaching this topic.
People also have no idea what classes mean. Someone making 40k per year and someone making 400k per year will both say they are middle class. And both would be wrong.
They will both agree to broad idea that "rich bad" and "middle class is struggling". Their relative suffering is what they both agree on even though they're different.
If the 40k person saw how the 400k person lives in real life, they would be rolling out the guillotine for the 400k dude. But without proper context online that 40k person will go to bat for the 400k person if anyone brings up the topic of lifestyle.
The further up the scale the more luxury there is. However people work with more binary thinking. So it's easier to point at the dudes making 1000k or more. The territory of more unfathomable weath. Really there's a lot of excess going on way before we reach the multi-millionaire to billionaire strata.
I don't think this is entirely accurate. People who sell their labour for money are all working class.. and this would easily cover people right below rich.
Those who start letting money do work for them can be considered the owning/capitalist class.
Now if they are able to stop producing labour because the money they have is generating more money then at that point it becomes a problem because we have arrived at an infinite money machine which is unsustainable in a finite world.